Struggling MA lesbian bar starts turning away customers for fear of being ‘infiltrated’

The bar owner, who is struggling to dig out of $50,000 in debt due to waning business, drew an outraged response from the community of “immunocompromised disabled divas” in Greenfield, Massachusetts, and beyond after announcing that COVID masks would not be mandatory for one night a week.

But at its very first mask-optional event, a Goth night on Saturday, the Last Ditch Bar turned away dozens of hopeful revelers by declaring it a “private event,” and that only those who could name someone inside were allowed to enter, the New York Post reported.

That decision came three hours after the event’s official start time, with staff telling the gathering crowd of patrons outside that it was holding a last-minute emergency meeting until 10 p.m.

Although Massachusetts leftists have staunchly opposed requiring identification to vote in the state, having ID is a requirement for Last Ditch’s mask-free night, which potentially restricts access for millions of women and minorities.

As an ostensible “security measure,” those who were allowed inside the bar on Saturday were required to relinquish their IDs at the door and retrieve them on the way out.

Of those hoping to get into the bar, many seemed encouraged by the mask-free policy.

“I thought it would be more inclusive for me to go on Saturdays,” Patricia Sonaike, a student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and member of the LGBT community, told the Post.

That was in stark contrast with the response from a vocal group of activists who flamed the bar’s social-media accounts after the new mask-optional policy was first announced.

“I hope your venue gets firebombed for robbing my fellow immunocompromised people of their Saturday plans just to scrape extra revenue from ablists,” one person wrote in response.

It was not immediately clear who bar owner Jackie Matellian feared was trying to infiltrate the venue or for what purpose.

The Globe story elicited the attention of high-profile media personalities and lawmakers, including Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., who posted on X that she was “getting a group together to visit the weird lesbian bar” but subsequently followed up that the trip was canceled because “no one wanted to mask.”

Matellian opened the bar last year with two housemates as a haven for “dykes, transsexuals, gender freaks, workers, and their friends.”

It also welcomed “[p]oor and unhoused people, implementing a “pay if you can” policy for its cover charges that may have contributed to its financial losses.

Matellian’s two business partners later stepped back from daily operations, “citing various pressures and health issues,” which included one enrolling in clown school, the Globe reported.