This Lesbian Bar In Massachusetts Ended Their Mask Mandate. All Hell Broke Loose.

We've established a pattern on this show, as I'm sure you've noticed, and the pattern goes like this. I bring up some kind of current event or cultural issue. I explain the event or issue, and then I offer my analysis of said event or issue. And that last step, the analysis is typically very important because without it, I would just be reporting on things that are happening. That would make me a reporter or a journalist, which is somehow a species even more debased than podcaster. And so, to avoid any species charges of journalism, I like to color my recounting events with my own opinion, as opposed to journalists who come to think of it do the exact same thing. However, on rare occasion, there is a circumstance so momentous or bizarre or extraordinary that it leaves almost no room for subjective analysis. All I can do, in these cases, if I'm going to speak of it at all, is simply relay it to you in stupified amazement. So for example, if aliens landed in my backyard or if I went hiking in the woods and I happened to see Bigfoot dash through the trees, riding a unicorn or something, all I would be able to do is just report the event. And all you'd be able to do is listen and conclude that I'm a schizophrenic lunatic just as you'd always suspect it. But the point is, I wouldn't have much of a take to offer, okay? The event would speak for itself. And that is a situation that we find ourselves in today, thanks to a now infamous article this week in the Boston Globe. Now this article is not about Bigfoot, although it does feature a number of people who one can assume probably bear a striking resemblance. Instead, the article has this title. A Western Massachusetts lesbian bar required K-95 masks, when it changed the rules, all hell broke loose. Last stitch bar in Greenfield wanted to build community, they got a firestorm instead. Now, I'll reiterate here that this article is from this week and this week did occur in the year 2026. We have not entered a time warp that sent us barreling back to 2021. So this is a firestorm over a relaxed mask mandate in the current year AD. So already we have a situation that's obviously quite funny, but it gets so much better or so much worse. Depending on whether you're cynical enough to find the collapse of Western civilization somewhat amusing as I do. I fear that if I try to summarize the article, you'll be deprived of the Alice in Wonderland journey that those of us who read the entire thing experienced. And so we're going to go through this piece by piece. Bear with me. Here it goes. Quote, the August 31st Instagram post from last stitch bar in Arts Avenue, a lesbian bar in Greenfield, was upbeat teasing a new DJ lineup and a volunteer meetup, but part way down the rainbow-hued post labeled updates was a sentence that would splinter the queer community in this small pioneer valley city and beyond. It's with love. We inform our immunocompromised disabled divas will be opening Saturday nights as mask optional wrote last-itch. Previously patrons were required to wear a well-fitted KN95 mask or better at all times. The new policy was not received with love. Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that immunocompromised disabled divas sounds like the worst 70s disco band of all time. You're also wondering what KN95 or better means. What would be better? A gas mask, a hazmat suit, a full scuba diving outfit? Maybe those are all safer alternatives, I don't know. Of course, if you're really serious about public health, then another option is to have your lungs surgically removed so that you aren't expelling or breathing in any infected air at all. And those are all perfectly valid points, but let's stay on task. We've barely started reading on. The new policy was not received with love, just say you're being complicit in a mass disabling event and get it over with. Wrote one commenter, "People like you kill disabled people in the name of your own leisure and convenience, post another. I hope your venue gets firebombed for robbing my fellow immunocompromised people of their Saturday plans, just to scrape extra revenue from Abelus," wrote a third. The thread grew to 442 comments, some supportive, but many furious. People running the bar were accused of being Abelist, eugenicist even for relaxing their signature policy in the face of what commenters consider an ongoing pandemic. Greenfield has not reported any COVID cases in more than two months. I will say that mass disabling event is a much better band name, so there's that. But that aside, keep in mind, as we continue, that the illustrious last-stitch lesbian bar had only announced a relaxation of the mass policy for one day of the week. And even then, masks are optional, not prohibited. So according to the, let's be polite and call it strained logic of these, let's be polite and call them fanatically delusional whack jobs. They're only being potentially exposed to deadly COVID fumes on one night of the week, and then only if they choose to go to this bar, which they don't have to, and then only if they also are forgoing their own mask and has Matt's suit, which they don't have to. So it seems that even if we make the astronomical leaps of logic required to grant them their underlying premises, you know, that there is a COVID pandemic currently happening, and that masks are necessary to protect against it. And that COVID aside, there's any personal protective equipment in the world that can save you from the hellish primeval diseases and afflictions that must cover every square inch of a CD lesbian bar, Massachusetts. There still wouldn't be any reason to be overly upset at this lesbian bar with its slightly relaxed mask policy on one day of the week out of seven, and yet these people are upset. In fact, they're so upset that they think the bar should be burned down with everyone inside it. In the name of public safety, of course, note to how the person who makes the fire bomb threat isn't even trying to justify it using any kind of like tortured self defense argument. Instead they wish a fiery death on everybody associated with the bar for interfering with quote, their Saturday plans, I mean, at least the other angry commenters have the decency to pretend that the bar is actively eradicating the entire disabled population or whatever. This one on the other hand is just casually saying that anyone who causes them to have to like shift around their weekend schedule deserves to burn alive. Your bed has one job, which is to provide a comfortable place for you to remain unconscious for several hours. So nowadays there are sleep trackers and apps and supplements and elaborate night time routines. People are monitoring 17 different metrics to determine whether they successfully went unconscious for eight hours. Maybe all that has some value, but before you redesign your entire life around sleeping, you might want to consider the thing you're actually lying in every night, which is your bedding. That's why I like partnering with Bowling Branch. Their bedding makes your bed noticeably better without requiring you to develop a new lifestyle around it. Their sheets are made from 100% organic cotton and woven specifically for airflow. There's no synthetic cooling technology or chemically treated fabric involved. It's simply the way the cotton is woven. They're incredibly soft and breathable and the quality is obvious as soon as you get into bed. Bowling Branch makes the rest of the bed too, including pillows, comforters and their waffle blanket. So if your bedding has been around longer than some of your children, perhaps it's time. Bedding wasn't something I thought too much about, but after trying Bowling Branch, trust me. It's worth it. Upgrade your sleep with Bowling Branch. Get 15% off your first order plus free shipping at Bowling Branch dot com slash walls with code walls. That's Bowling Branch B-O-L-L-A-N-D branch dot com slash walls, code walls to unlock 15% off exclusion's apply. Now the saving grace for the bar is that this commenter is we can assume a woman who is we can assume morbidly obese and who we can assume wouldn't know how to make or deploy a fire bomb, even if she had an Ikea instruction manual. And we can assume would probably just blow herself up in the process accidentally anyway. So that's the good news. Continuing two days later, last ditch posted an apology. We're sorry for our passive and dismissive tone of our change to the norms and schedule impacting the most intersectional among us. Management wrote on Instagram, we understand everyone faces different intersections and we are always working to consider all needs fully. Instead of diffusing the situation, the apology seemed to make things worse. The bar had aired. It posted an Instagram card without providing alt text for the visually impaired. This set off a fresh round of accusations of ableism. This is not an accessible post wrote one user. It indicates the lack of care or interest in disability intersectionality. Now, I don't want to break up the momentum here as we get into the second act, but I'll just clarify a couple things. First in case you aren't up on the lingo, okay, the phrase everyone faces different intersections is not as far as I know a reference to a city with a confusing and chaotic street layout. Okay. She's not talking about Boston or Washington, DC. Intersections here refers to the places where all of your personal victimhood identities meet. And the goal, if you're on the left, is to have an intersection that is as busy and frantic and poorly marked and congested and convoluted as possible. So your personal victimhood intersection should resemble like a traffic intersection in Nairobi. No traffic lights, no signs, 12 different roads, converging at at once, pedestrians wandering into the road and getting flattened one after another. That's how you win on the left. Now, meanwhile, as a straight white male, my intersection doesn't exist. It's just one straight, well-maintained, well lit road, everything humming along smoothly. And so in the leftist view, I lose. They all point and laugh at me and say, "You're normal and functional and not in a state of constant crippling self-obsession. Those are second and related. If you're wondering what alt text is, it's a written description of an image which makes the content more accessible for blind people. Now you might be slightly confused by this because you're thinking, or at least I was thinking, if blind people can't see the image, then how can they see the written description of the image? Well, the answer to that question is to begin with how dare you ask for an explanation about the lived experience of disabled folks. They don't have to explain themselves to you. You're disgusting, bigot. You should be stabbed in the stomach and thrown into a pit of scorpions. Also, the answer is that blind people use screen reading technology that can read the image description. Now, if you're next going to ask why the screen reader can't itself just describe the image, well, then I refer you back to the pit of scorpions. Now, of course, even if the last-ditch lesbian bar had included alt text that may have been more accessible for the blind, but it would have done nothing for the Helen Keller style blind and death community. Indeed, the alt text just assumes that those who are visually impaired aren't also intersectionally hearing impaired, which itself is an ableist and bigoted and colonialist assumption that is morally tantamount to genocide, if you ask me. I mean, at the very least, the bar could have provided the alt text, but then also mailed a description of the text in braille to everybody in the community. Is that so much to ask? That seems like a logical compromise. Although that even that raises its own intersectional problems, because what about disabled people who are blind and deaf and also have no arms or legs? How are they supposed to hear the text description or feel the braille? What do you want them to do? Smack their head against the braille, dragging their forehead across it, is that what you want? Do you think it's funny to imagine a blind and deaf lesbian with no arms or legs flailing her head against a piece of braille in order to understand the new masking guidelines at the local lesbian bar? Would you like that? Okay, would that be amusing to you, fascist? This is again why you should be killed with all due respect. Anyway, let's jump forward a few paragraphs and continue. Quote, "Nevertheless, last ditch, which opened last year as a bar for dykes, transsexuals, gender freaks, workers, and their friends, is struggling." Three housemates in their mid-20s opened it together, hoping to fill the void left by two local queer bars that had shuttered. One of the trio, Asa Rosario, a drag performer who uses it its pronouns, envisioned a venue where it and its friends could perform. Quick time out here just to say that although I'm very firmly on the record as someone who doesn't care about your personal pronouns, it is one personal pronoun that I might actually respect. I never thought I'd say that. But if you want me to call you it, or that, or that thing, or my god, what is that monstrosity, then you know what? I'm on board. I can do that. I am willing to do that. Continuing. Quote, "The three were intentional about the kinds of values they wanted to bring to the Divy Basement Bar, which they decorated with discoveries from Facebook marketplace and pieces from local artists. No one would be turned away from the space for lack of funds. Poor and unhoused people are welcome in the space. The police were not. Our mission is to create systems of care and action and aid," says Jackie Mattellian, one of the founders. When the first open last ditch did fairly well, customers fondly remember a raucous opening night with a clothed simulation of a lesbian sex act masks in place on the dance floor. But over time, foot traffic to the bar slowed. More and more visitors said they didn't have the cover fee. The bar let them in anyway. The owners fell behind on bills and couldn't pay themselves or the people who worked there. So after consulting with the Massachusetts LGBT Chamber of Commerce, they came up with a plan to bend one of their rules and hopefully attract more customers. Up at the time of last ditches, monthly community meeting on September 11th, only one of the original founders, Mattellian, is still involved. The two other step back from the daily operation, months before Mattellian says, citing various pressures and health issues, one had enrolled in clown school. Now, there's obviously quite a lot going on in these couple of paragraphs. I am particularly fascinated by that last sentence. And the article doesn't dwell on it or tell us anything else. It just tells us, oh, yeah, they went off to clown school. No other information, but I want to know more. One of the queer lesbian founders of this bar has stepped away from the business in order to enroll in clown school. There are a lot of insulting and sarcastic remarks available here, which I am far too polite and mature to make. Okay, you could, for example, observe how for a woke LGBT person to become a clown is to become paradoxically less creepy and bizarre. Gay leftists are the only people in existence who go to clown school and come out more normal and presentable than they were going in. You might say that. I'm not, I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that because it's insulting and beneath me. I'm saying that you might say that. And how, again, how dare you say that? Instead, I find myself focused on the fascinating fact that clown school is a thing that actually exists. I mean, I'd heard of it before. I always thought it was more of like a figure of speech, but it turns out that it's a literal physical reality. I had to look it up and I discovered that, indeed, there are many clown schools. There are like a lot of them. In fact, you can go to the website, clowns without borders, which is, again, real, and find a list of dozens of clown schools all across the country and even the world. When's the last time anyone's even seen a clown? There's like thousands of clown schools. I mean, we're just churning out millions of clowns. I've never even, I haven't seen a clown in 35 years. Where are all these clowns? That's my question. Like, I've never been one to be, oh, clowns are scary, but the fact that we're creating so many clowns and no one knows where they are, that's kind of terrifying. What are they all doing? Where do they go? Now, one of the more prestigious institutions appears to be the Northeast clown institute whose website offers many academic resources for clowns and prospective clowns, including the 2026 Northeast clown institute course schedule, which covers topics such as the business of clowning, kids shows juggling for fun and where to hide the bodies. That last one is not really a listed topic, but I assume they covered it at some point. I should also note that the Northeast clown institute has a board, I look deeply into this, okay? It has a board of directors with 20, members on their board of directors. All with names like woohoo, boohoo, bee boo, rascal and disco. Now, helpfully disco the clown also has a video linked on the website where he provides a brief lecture on the legal issues of clowning. I am here to tell you that clowning is not all funding games or lashing giggles. Apparently disco the clown is a lawyer. He's been in a practice for 40 years serving clients who either don't know he's a clown or were specifically looking for legal representation that knows how to make a puddle out of a balloon. I don't know. I watched his lecture because I have no life. And I discovered that some of the legal pitfalls clowns face according to disco are the possibility that a balloon breaks and a child chokes on it or that a child might develop a skin infection from face paint or that the clown might be accused of, quote, unwanted touching. Disco notes that this latter issue may not be covered by insurance. Anyway, none of this is directly relevant to the matter at hand, but if you were wondering about the intricacies of clown higher education or if you were not wondering at all, now you know. We move now to the climatic scene in this saga. I mean, the saga of the lesbian bar, not the clown school. Distinction is subtle, admittedly. Here it is. Quote, there are some 10 people seated in a circle on the dance floor, all wearing masks. Italian, a handful of volunteers, some bar patrons, and two designated mediators who will facilitate conversations between parties who disagree. Another 10 or 15 people join the meeting via Zoom. The plan is to go clockwise, sharing views on the masking decision and the financial future of the bar. Each person has two minutes to speak. It begins with a calming breath exercise. Almost immediately, the proceedings are derailed. One of last ditches most vocal critics, the head of another queer, COVID conscious collective in Western Massachusetts, a performer and artist who goes by soey noir, has been posting complaints about last ditch for days. Now, noir joins the meeting on Zoom. He and other critics begin to flood the Zoom chat with irate messages, which are dutifully read aloud to the group. Quick note, noir identifies as he. I'm not sure if he actually is a he. In fact, I'm not sure if any of these people in the article are actually female lesbians. I don't know. People that this lesbian bar is staffed and populated entirely by dudes and dresses. I don't know. I'm not sure I'm too busy to investigate the matter any further, especially now that I wasted 45 minutes researching clown schools. So we'll just have to move on. Reading on, quote, "When it comes time for one of the mediators, a licensed therapist to speak, she takes a conciliatory tone." I love that you're here online, she says, but these platforms alienate us from each other. I'm talking about social media. She asks whether participants can try to remove themselves from, quote, places of right righteousness. I'd love to get to a place where we all know each other's face, where we all know each other's names. You can't know each other's faces. You're all wearing masks. That's sort of the whole point of the thing. But anyway, it's messed up that the mediator is dismissing those attending virtually. That's not accessibility, someone responds in the chat. A lot of people are calling for an acknowledgment of harm. And I'm hearing a white therapist centering the feelings of a majority white and white adjacent staff writes noir who is black. Moreover, the zoom attendees speculate that the mediator's license status makes her a mandated reporter, an agent of the state akin to the police. One person going by Moss asks if the mediator could have them hospitalized against their will, adding that her presence is quote, wildly unsafe. Now, I don't want to be judgmental. Far be it for me. My audience knows I am not one to make judgments about people, especially harsh judgments. But I will just say that if you're the kind of person who has to worry about being hospitalized against your will, that's a pretty good sign that you're the kind of person who should be hospitalized against your will. But there were no hospitalizations to come out of this meeting, sadly. That would have been productive. Instead, all that was learned apparently is that the woman who owns the place not only wants to murder the entire disabled community, but is also, of course, racist. We're told the Italian tried to engender some sympathy from the group by pointing out that the business is going under and she's in debt and you know, she's doing whatever she needs to do to keep her head above water, keep the doors open. But as the article reports, her critics were quote, unmoved. They chastised her for centering her feelings and spilling her white tears and forcing black heroes like noir to quote, do emotional and physical labor. Now noir never explains how exactly attending a zoom call involves physical labor. Maybe he or she or whatever has an internet connection that can only be, you know, powered by physically running on a wheel like a giant hamster. I'm not sure. And these are questions that just cannot be answered because they cannot be asked because asking a black person anything or expecting them to explain or justify any claim they make at any point for any reason is racist and you know, and more ethically problematic than the Holocaust, I would even say. The article finally ends on a melancholy note recounting the very sparsely attended mask optional Saturday night that followed this meeting. And here's what it says quote, just after midnight, one patron is left at the bar, a regular who works the Mexican restaurant next door. She wonders allowed about holding a lady Gaga theme tonight, but Mixie demurs. Gaga is canceled, she says. Gaga is Zionist. I don't know who Mixie is or why she sounds like a caveman here. Gaga cancelled. Gaga bad. Gaga Zionist. Gaga make Mixie sad. Maybe that was just a transcription error. I don't know. Maybe there really is a missing link and you can find it at a lesbian bar in Massachusetts which actually wouldn't be all that surprising, who knows. But here's the final paragraph quote, the DJ is still playing EDM and Mattelian is alone on the checkered dance floor making pensive graceful loops on the stripper pole KN95 mask in place. Mattelian doesn't expect the conflict at last ditch to end soon. She plans to cooperatize the bar so she doesn't bear so much financial liability, but that will come with its own challenges. And the discord about masking is unlikely to go away, but it comes with the territory, she says. There's conflict, but we just hope that there's more repair than conflict. That's the price you pay to be in community. Mattelian says, I have to say, there's something depressing about all of this. Not because I feel bad for this woman or anyone else involved in the story, but because the picture of a sad lesbian in a COVID mask tears streaming from her eyes, somberly gyrating on a stripper pole in an empty lesbian bar while EDM music blasts from the speakers is maybe the funniest single image that it's possible to imagine. That mournful stripper pole performance may in fact be the most hilarious event to ever occur. Have you ever heard of anything funnier than a depressed lesbian and a surgical mask weeping because the other lesbians accuser of genociding the disabled as she performs a dough full routine on a stripper pole in the middle of an empty dance floor at midnight. I haven't. I don't think I ever will, which means it's all downhill comedically from here. And it demonstrates again that satire is impossible. I cannot satirize these people because in my wildest and most demented imagination, I never would have thought to end the story that way. In fact, I don't think I could have invented most of the details of this story. It's not possible to exaggerate these people for comedic effect. It's not possible to take their logic to a more cartoonish extreme than they have already taken it themselves. And you know, there's something kind of tragic about that. In a weird way, I now know how our friend Mattelian must have felt while she was grimly twirling on that sad four-lorn stripper pole. The sense of mourning, of confusion, of not knowing where to go from here. I feel a kinship with her. You know, we both lost something through all of this. She lost her dreams of having a bustling lesbian bar filled with vibrant and strange and unsightly creatures resembling the Star Wars cantina scene. And I lost my dream of ever being able to mock these people more hilariously or effectively than they already mock themselves. So we are in the same boat in many ways. It almost makes me want to, you know, perform a grieving ritual on the dance floor. But I fear that would be an act of ableist appropriation. So instead, I will just say that the last ditch lesbian bar and its owner and its other owner often clowns school and noir the black lesbian who's maybe or maybe not actually a man. And for that matter, disco the clown, God bless him. And everybody else involved in this story at any level are all today. Cancel.