The Stud was a way of life - a better way of life. Gay bars, once found in every nook of the city, have been all but relegated to the Castro and SoMa neighborhoods.īut losing the Stud is more than losing another gay bar. Esta Noche, a Latinx nightclub on 16th Street that opened in response to the discrimination against queer people of color in traditionally white gay bars, shuttered in 2014, replaced by a craft-cocktail bar. The Lexington, the city’s only lesbian bar, closed in 2015. The loss will come as another hit to the already eroding LGBTQ culture in both SoMa and San Francisco on the whole. While they claim that this is not the club’s demise, with real-estate prices in the neighborhood some of the highest in the city, the Stud may very well close for good. San Francisco may now be slowly coming back to life, but the owners say the bar won’t reopen its SoMa location, a planned move that was accelerated by the pandemic. But the sweat-drenched dance floor has been dry since March, when the coronavirus pandemic shut down most of the city, the Stud included. Over the next few decades, it helped launch top-billing performers like Ana Matronic of Scissor Sisters, who got her start on the floorboards here in the 1990s and survived a major earthquake and two dot-com boom rental markets. “‘Hi Dianne, love your hair,” shouted some of the queens as the Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Sedated” blared through the speakers, according to Mark Freeman’s 1994 historical article of the space.Ī post shared by Tobirus Mozelle on at 6:37pm PDTĪfter moving locations to Harrison Street, just two blocks away, in 1987, the Stud turned even more experimental, with some evenings featuring Dolly Parton ditties or a klezmer-music mosh pit. She arrived during the club’s Monday punk night. Even then-mayor Dianne Feinstein popped in during a reelection pit stop later that year to shake hands with patrons. George Matson, one of its first owners, described it as a “ bar for people, not just pretty bodies.” When the White Night riots erupted in 1979, after Dan White received minimal sentencing for shooting and killing Mayor George Moscone and Harvey Milk, people came to the Stud to party.
The Stud started life as a man-heavy, macho space when it opened on Folsom Street in 1966, with wall art that changed according to the zodiac calendar. Jinkx Monsoon, winner of the aforementioned season five of the reality show, sang while strumming a ukulele.Īfter going into the wee hours of the morning - after dozens and dozens of performances, some of them live, some prerecorded - the Stud as we knew it came to an end. Juanita More, famed local drag queen and DJ, talked about going to the Stud when she was in high school. Peaches Christ, the filmmaker–slash–drag queen whose midnight-movie screenings helped put Showgirls on the cult-cinema map, talked about how she once got eighty-sixed from the bar and had to deliver a handwritten apology letter to get back in. Out came a barrage of queens, past and present, performing songs, swapping stories, and reading each other just like they did onstage during pre-coronavirus times. Then, with whiplash speed, the party started. “But also of channeling our pain into performance, celebrating life even as we acknowledge the darkness surrounding us.” “In times like these, we queens fall back on traditions of taking to the streets,” said Mahogany, a season-five queen on RuPaul’s Drag Race. native Honey Mahogany, wearing a black gown and a crown of black flowers, looked directly into the camera as she opened the ceremony, held on May 31. It was a splendid, fitting farewell for the Stud, San Francisco’s iconic gay bar: a virtual 12-hour drag show that swung from festival to funeral and back again.