As being openly queer has become more acceptable - and let's be clear, that acceptance isn't spread equally across the community trans women are still nearly three times more likely to be attacked on the street than non-trans women - gay bars have struggled to stay relevant.īetween 20, nearly 37% of the LGBTQ+ bars in the U.S. In the United States, queer nightlife has alway been a place where LGBTQ+ people could be their authentic selves, away from the judgements and violence of society. The pandemic has dealt a fatal blow to several others. But gentrification, rising rents and changing tastes have closed many queer venues in the last decade. The idea that all these people can be under one roof happily, there aren't really other physical locations like that," Craig says.Īkbar and other queer bars have played pivotal roles in helping people come out, introducing couples, organizing political actions and connecting LGBTQ+ people to each other. "The wonderful thing about gay culture is that we were always welcoming to outsiders because we all felt like outsiders ourselves as we were growing up. The outpouring of support speaks to people's love for Akbar and their desire to preserve queer spaces.Īlexander and Craig are proud that Akbar is the kind of place where you can flirt up a storm with the cute bartender who poured your cranberry vodka, hang with coworkers for happy hour or bring your parents. The owners announced that 20% of all donations above the original goal will go to the Coalition, a nonprofit that assists trans Latinx immigrants. But if a queer space disappears, that's a big loss to our community and to queer people in general," Alexander says.īy late December, the campaign to save Akbar had raised more than $190,000. "If a restaurant fails, someone else will open up a restaurant. The money will pay back a small business loan they took out to cover expenses and help keep them solvent through 2021, which they expect to be a lean year. In early December, they realized they couldn't continue carrying the bar's debts and mortgage payments, so they launched a crowdfunding campaign on Dec. Costs piled up to the point where Alexander and Craig had to start dipping into their retirement funds.
Even for the nine-day stint in June when bars were allowed to open, Akbar has been completely closed since March. They joke its glory days happened during the Obama administration but the bar was doing well until COVID-19 hit. Even as their street corner gentrified, Akbar remained popular.
Owners Peter Alexander and Scott Craig wanted a space where people, gay or straight, could find community.įor years, they've offered an alternative to sexualized nightlife by hosting stand-up comedy, crafting, cabaret and karaoke nights. When Akbar opened at the corner of Sunset and Fountain on New Year's Eve in 1996, Silver Lake was a neighborhood with few gay bars for a community reeling from the devastation of AIDS. Other than that, you'd have to head to Club Chico in Montebello or hit up DTLA to find a spot catering to people of color. If you live in Boyle Heights and want to go to a queer bar in the neighborhood, your only option, until now, was Redz Angelz, a small lesbian bar that opened in the 1950s. Despite queer liberation, or maybe because of it, LGBTQ+ bars and clubs have seen a wave of closures during the past decade including Jewel's Catch One in the Crenshaw District, Club Ripples in Long Beach and The Palms, which was West Hollywood's only dedicated lesbian bar.įor queer people of color, the losses have been profound.
Seats at these tables are getting fewer and farther between. This is the table that everybody in our community gets a seat at," Octavio says. "We were looking to create a space that would make our guests feel comfortable and, more importantly, that would make them feel like they belong. It was ensuring no one in the Latinx community was excluded. The most important change, however, wasn't physical.