The Paycheck Protection Program, for example, covered wages for employees sidelined by the pandemic, but many of the people who work in gay bars, including performers, are considered contractors who were not eligible.
LGBT businesses also tend to be backed by less capital than their straight-owned counterparts, leaving them less of a margin to weather downturns in business, Mattson said.Īnd while pandemic closures dealt a blow to the entire restaurant and bar industry, government programs intended to help them often weren’t available to LGBT clubs and bars. The rise of geolocating smartphone apps, such as Grindr, has to some degree supplanted the role of gay bars as places for queer people to meet each other, Mattson said. Many host events aimed at attracting LGBT patrons, such as the monthly “Werk it Wednesday” drag show at the Hamilton Kitchen & Bar in Allentown and Twin Rivers Brewing Co.’s “Easton Tea Dance.” Mattson, who has studied the role and decline of gay bars in small American cities, said a couple of trends have contributed to the dwindling number of LGBT bars across the country.Įating, drinking and dancing establishments are generally more accepting of same-sex couples, freeing some LGBT people to socialize in places that are not specifically LGBT-focused, he said. “You’re not going to get a cocktail in a church basement.” “Coming to a peer-led experience that meets in a church is very different than hanging out in a bar or a restaurant,” she said. While organizations such as the Eastern Pennsylvania Trans Equity Project provide peer support and social groups and, before the pandemic, sponsored barbeques, picnics and group dinners at restaurants, they don’t provide the same experience as letting one’s guard down and meeting new people in a bar, said Corinne Goodwin, the group’s executive director. The Lehigh Valley LGBT Archive, a joint project of the Bradbury Sullivan center and Muhlenberg College, has launched the Stonewall Memories Project to preserve images, stories and memorabilia from the bar’s patrons over the last five decades. “It’s an LGBTQ nightlife that exists in other communities that will be paused in the Lehigh Valley for the foreseeable future.”