A community meeting on 11 September was held to address the controversy, with some participants joining via Zoom to voice their opinions on the new mask mandate.
During the meeting, Jackie Matellian, the bar’s last remaining owner after the other two owners quit months earlier, became emotional while speaking about the pressure she was under.
“It was not my passion project,” Matellian said. She said she had been left responsible for a $50,000 business loan, and had been living in a car for six months while working four jobs. “I never really wanted this,” she added. “I don’t think I’m doing a very good job.”
This community meeting was not able to bring forth a resolution.
This really says more about the community than anything else.
Its honestly tragic that people can be this vitriolic over someone who impacted their own life so hard to provide the kind of third space that people beg for.
Literally a group of J Jonah Jameson’s.
i’m someone who managed a third space. it became successful.
then I gave up, because it became nothing but people shoving their personal politics down everyone else’s throats and demanding the space ONLY be for ‘people like them’. I straight up quit, because all I could see was people who wanted to turn our third space into a space for them and theirs, and exclude anyone who didn’t look/speak the way they wanted, including myself.
this is the problem with ‘inclusivity’ and all that. there is no such thing. all there are is different versions of exclusivity, and people will get violent and hostile if you try to take their exclusivity away.
because it’s not about social justice, it’s about their own weird egotistical power trip.
Making masks optional one whole day of the week hardly seems like something that deserves a boycott, especially if the alternative is the bar going out of business.
Yeah, but they made the poor decision to placate this small demographic for so long, this will always happen when they change.
Context a lot of people seem to be missing by only reading the title:
This bar was catering to immunocompromised patrons. Not just women but women who can’t go to other public venues. This seemed to be a big part of the bar’s success.
It would be like a board game pub not letting people play board games one night a week.
But then if you actually read the article, the bar has only been open since last year and has been failing horribly, while the owner is working several jobs and lives in her car to try and keep it open. This was pretty much a last ditch effort to try and make enough money to not have to shut down and now the community members who have wanted a place like this to exist the most are getting all pissy and boycotting it. Essentially guaranteeing it’s closure.
Yeah, this is 100% right.
My State is full of people like this. They scream and moan about things not catering to them… and when what they want does cater to them they won’t support it, and they don’t understand that businesses need customers to exist…
they just seem to want business to exist that cater to them… but don’t actually want to ever patronize to such businesses. but the second that business decides to try and make itself more appealing to more customers… it’s EVIL. And if you patronize this business… YOU are evil now too.
And if you try to point this out to them… they just go mental. They don’t understand that businesses have costs, they think the notion of profitability/sustainability is also EVIL.
Same with housing. They protest for cheaper housing. OK, we need to build more housing then. And then when more housing is proposed to be built, they protest it too. The same people most of the time.
Generally here the people who scream the loudest are the most hypocritical. They screech at everyone we need more small independent businesses… but they all shop at Amazon and Target exclusively.
I agree with you on everything but the housing part. The opponents are more often property owners in the area who have “something to lose” - in their resale value and the neighborhood getting more congested (but let’s be real, their main reason is not wanting to live by the filthy poors)
That said, I wouldn’t have moved here if there was a 20-unit building on the block so I imagine I wouldn’t be thrilled about one getting built.
Considering how deep in the red the bar is that it’s relying on volunteers, success might not exactly be the word. Since it’s got on one remaining owner who was only in it to support two owners who’ve left, the bar is not going to be around much longer without a dedicated, forgiving customer base. I have seen similar establishments with much more accommodating followings close.
So you didn’t actually read it, then.
I think I’m the only one who read it based on the comments.
What year is it?!
i wondered the same. seems like that’s a thing with those bars
COVID-era safety norms have been especially prominent in some queer and disabled communities, sometimes creating friction with commercial realities, and online call-out culture can rapidly affect small hospitality businesses.
Some conventions (mainly furry ones) still require masks in their dealer halls.
Both MFF and AC have not required masking since… 2022?
FC still does, though they haven’t been consistent year to year
They catered to immunocompromised women.
The pandemic didn’t end, the numbers just got low enough that most are willing to accept the remainder. Some communities have kept making the effort to stay away from the “acceptable losses” mentality which for those most immunocompromised may be their last lifeline to any in person contact with the rest of humanity.
So thanks for making a facetious joke I guess, but both sides of the issue in the article are real and there are no easy answers.
There were and likely always will be diseases out there that kill people or significantly degrade their freedom in life. It’s not just Corona.
Yes, it’s a bit sad it took this long for enough people to reconsider if that’s ok or not. You’re free to continue choosing and calibrating the acceptable death rate of your actions. Just don’t be surprised when others do not choose the same rate you personally consider acceptable.
This place is literally closing.
You better not drive, or eat meat, or use mined resources.
Nobody is choosing a death rate. The acceptable death rate is obviously zero but live does not work that way. Come down from your high horse.
He said from his own high horse.
☝️"nO yOu!!!1!"
Numbers going down to levels comparable with numerous other diseases is very much the pandemic “ending.” By your logic, the Black Death never went away. Some people still die from Yersinia pestis each year.
It’s one thing to mask up in a real pandemic. It’s another to advocate for a position where humanity will have to remained masked from now until the end of time.
It’s one night. You think it’s acceptable for the community to hold the bar hostage like petulant children, for attempting to save itself from closing? The last owner is living in her car.
That is call an endemic disease. Which is where most pandemics wind up. Diseases didn’t suddenly come into existence in 2020, it is myopic to think that covid is exceptional. To the immunocompromised all transmittable diseases are dangerous and there are thousands of them that are endemic. The people claiming there is still a covid pandemic are uneducated conspiracy theorist on the same level of the anti-vaxxers.
Masks don’t just inhibit the spread of Covid. They caused a precipitous drop in influenza, another potentially deadly disease, during the height of the pandemic. And other respiratory diseases were diminished as well. People with compromised immune systems were ironically safer in public places than any other time in their lives. Now these spaces which continue masking provide social interaction and emotional support for them and their friends. I didn’t know it was a thing but I think it’s great, I hope they make enough business to continue. I mask when I’m in indoor public places because my vulnerable spouse is recovering from their second pneumonia hospitalization this year, but I’m aware masks are better at containing germs than keeping them out, which is why the group effort is more effective.
Im sure getting people to practice basic hygiene would also help, people are nasty.
I don’t know about you but I find wearing a mask helps remind me about washing my hands before touching my face.
I do think it could lower profits in a bar because you’d be more conscious about drinking and eating.
If you are were a mask while not sick, you are delusional. It is hygiene theater. Unless it is a properly fitted N95 mask you are doing nothing than giving yourself false security. Having a venue specifically for the immuno-compromised is fine and all but if there are not enough of them to keep the business afloat, boycotting them wont change that. Maybe having specific events hosted at the bar would work better than expecting everyone at all times to cater to a specific demographic. Also the sorts of people that dont wash their hands and cover their mouths with their elbows while coughing dont care and infact actively try to negate the efforts of others.
Who said it’s not a well-fitting N95? I don’t mask for appearances. It’s snug around my nose so my glasses stay clear.
As for the bar, there’s obviously a large supportive community or they wouldn’t be trying to get the bar to continue the ongoing protocol, or their boycott wouldn’t threaten the bar’s finances. Anyone trying to negate the efforts is gonna regret angering the lesbians.
N95’s are considered the best but even a cloth mask is actually better than no mask. Don’t make perfection the enemy of good.
… this sounds like classic taking an axe to your own leg scenario. I don’t think there’s that many lesbian dive bars left there for the patrons to decide to financially wreck a bar to be a good decision.
According to the article, there are plenty in the area.
Could you quote that line of the article please? I’m not seeing it.
Lesbian bars have sharply declined in number across the US over recent decades, making surviving venues culturally and historically significant. Queer bars often function as informal community centres as well as nightlife venues, hosting mutual-aid events, fundraisers and political organising. COVID-era safety norms have been especially prominent in some queer and disabled communities, sometimes creating friction with commercial realities, and online call-out culture can rapidly affect small hospitality businesses.
In the Pioneer Valley, “every bar is a lesbian bar,” a friend who lives there told me.
From the archived Boston Globe article.
Oh wow I missed that article. God, the toxicity of the community.
Yeah reading the article was pretty infuriating.
This is such a niche demographic that I have to wonder how it was ever viable. From the article, it sounds like it was specifically targeted towards lesbians (not the broader LGBTQ, or LGBTQ-friendly), who are immunocompromised, and want to spend time at a bar socializing with other immunocompromised lesbians. That’s going to be a vanishly small percentage of any community. I’m betting that total population in the city is what they would need to have at the bar every weekend.
As a business model, it would probably even be a stretch to target that one day per week.
Deleted by moderator
The apology post didn’t land well with their followers due to a lack of alt text. Comments included: “This is not an accessible post,” and: “It indicates the lack of care or interest in Disability intersectionality.”
Are these people strawmen? Because they sound exactly like the kind of people chuds make fun of.
I live in MA. People like this are everywhere here.
They are not straw, they are very real, and they love to go around fucking up everyone else’s good work because they are so self righteous and entitled.
In my own city they wanted to rebuild a park that was falling apart, and the project took 5 years, because insane people living nearby repeatedly sued the city to stop them from fixing/improving this park, and the suite were dismissed again and again because they were baseless, but entitled arrogant people don’t care about anything other than getting their way, and punishing/hurting other people when they can’t. And their ‘talking points’ or ‘concerns’ are always baseless, hysterical, and simple factually wrong.
Good news is they finally started construction on the park last spring, bad news is the costs of rebuilding it are now double what they would have been if they project had proceeded 5 years ago… and this is exactly why everything in the USA pubic works projects costs double or triple what it does in other countries… because so many of our private citizens are deeply emotionally invested in opposing development of any kind whatsoever, even when it’s restoring a park with dying trees and crumbling walking paths.
Lived in a few states, with MA being one for about a year. MA pretty much is the strawman in right wing political cartoons made real. Shit, even doing the state taxes took longer than my federal taxes and the state taxes from the next state I moved to, combined.
Like if half the reactionary folks out there were honest with themselves, they’d realize they don’t hate liberalism or leftism, they just hate Mass.
LOL yeah same to a shocking amount but you can also really bad polyamory to my experience. But also add Portland depending on what side of the country you are on.
We can all be ok with getting the ick from some people.
It’s like they watched PCU and said ‘yes, please’.
ahh… so thats what the daily show joke was about
Shitidentity politics like this is one of the major reasons the left is so fragmented. Calling out this kind of mental illness is considered rude now. I guess we’ll just have to burn it down and start over.Deleted by moderator
Carefully
cunningly, like their linguistics.
Why do Massachusetts lesbians wear masks in the bar?
Because it’s a bar for immunocompromised women and they don’t want people to die.
So… don’t go on the mask-free night…
That kind of defeats the purpose of it being a safe place for immunocompromised women.
Yeah. You know what else defeats the purpose? Getting it shut down because the owner doesn’t wanna be homeless anymore.
Having a mask free night isn’t going to save a failing business. Having vulnerable customers get sick and die there most definitely WILL.
Right, so fuck that woman. It’s her fault for trying to start a business. Let’s not put a sign up telling compromised not to come in that night, let’s just let it go under without trying anything, and condemn that fucking whore to the streets possibly for life, because she dared do something for the community. And don’t forget to be a petulant toxic asshole so the rest of society never stops mocking you.
And the community is allowed to say “we don’t want to come to your bar any more”, and that’s EXACTLY what this boycott is. They aren’t telling her she has to change, just that they won’t be coming to her bar any more if she doesn’t. People are allowed to choose not to visit a piece. And you somehow have a problem with that??? You seem to think a boycott shouldn’t be allowed and that people should be FORCED to visit her bar? WTF is wrong with you?
