A Boston Globe article that put the spotlight on the Greenfield, Massachusetts Last Ditch Bar & Arts Venue — a progressively spirited space catering to “dykes, transsexuals, gender freaks, workers, and their friends” (as stated in the bar’s own promo material) — recently went viral.
The controversy centered on the bar’s original requirement that all those who entered must wear KN-95 (or similar) masks, a rule that become optional over the past summer, sparking a social media campaign against (plus some in defense of) the establishment.
Reports the Boston Globe:
When one Western Mass. lesbian bar announced in late August that it was relaxing strict requirements for COVID-style indoor masking, all hell broke loose.
Was the establishment, facing a critical lack of cash flow, simply trying to make an overdue adjustment to the post-pandemic reality?
Or was it, as one commenter suggested, trying to “kill disabled people in the name of your own leisure and convenience”?
That already intense debate and discussion reached another level this week when the Globe wrote about the dustup, spawning a nationwide wave of reaction.
The story has been — by far — the most popular on The Boston Globe site the past two days, attracting hundreds of thousands of readers.
And reaction has flowed from a bewildering cross-section of society: Republican stalwart Ted Cruz, a Wall Street Journal reporter, and the creator of the infamously defunct streaming service Quibi were among the cast of characters in what became known as the Lesbian Bar Discourse on social media.
Here’s how it started
At summer’s end, the operators of the Last Ditch in Greenfield found themselves desperately needing to attract more patrons to pay their bills.
The bar, which had been stalwart in requiring indoor masking, announced the change gingerly: “It is with love we inform our immunocompromised disabled divas we will be opening Saturday nights as mask optional.”
“The new policy,” Annalisa Quinn wrote for the Globe Magazine, “was not received with love.”
Social media objectors accused the bar of discrimination and of willful disdain for the needs of the immunocompromised. One hoped publicly for a firebombing.
The truly engrossing tale — you really do have to read it all — seems to have something for everyone. Predictably, conservatives were happy to find another example of “woke” excess.
Others were stirred by support for the well-meaning but intensely struggling bar, and utter bemusement at the idea that indoor mask debates were still hot topics six years later.
LGBTQ Nation’s headline drove that part home: “Lesbian bar with a mountain of debt faces massive backlash for loosening masking requirement in 2026.”
Our unique geography
But as the Globe’s Travis Andersen found, many other commentators took care to point out the unmistakable local flavor to the seemingly unhinged commentary.
“It’s great to see so many people discovering, via that Boston Globe article, the very special culture that is the Pioneer Valley in Massachusetts,” political analyst Matt Yglesias wrote on X. “Even in today’s flattened out, homogenized world some places are truly unique.”
Business Insider’s Katie Notopoulos agreed. “A lot of people will incorrectly diagnose the Covid conscious lesbian bar drama as a woke problem,” she wrote on X.
“True heads understand it as a Massachusetts crank problem. These local cranks exist as part of a sacred fabric of obstinate resistance.”