+34A small-town lesbian bar in Greenfield, Massachusetts, became a global news story after relaxing its mask policy and facing intense backlash from customers over disability and inclusion issues.
A small lesbian bar in Greenfield, Massachusetts, has become the most famous bar in America after a global news story exposed a bitter internal dispute over masks, disability and diversity, equity and inclusion ideology.
Until last week, few people outside the sleepy US city had thought much about Last Ditch. Since it opened last year as a space for dykes, transsexuals, gender freaks, workers and their friends, it had become popular with the local queer community. It hosted drag shows, live-music karaoke, film screenings and other events. But a global news story it was not.
That all changed when a startling investigation into recent events at the bar exposed a viper's nest of woke grievances. The story went viral across the world. The outlet reportedly gained more than 1000 new paying subscribers because of it. Suddenly, Last Ditch is a source of global amusement and a cautionary tale about what can happen when a so-called DEI mindset is pursued to an absurd conclusion.
Last Ditch Bar Mask Policy Change
The trouble began on August 31, when the bar posted an announcement decorated with rainbows to its Instagram page. It is with love we inform our immunocompromised disabled divas we will be opening Saturday nights as mask optional, it said. Until then the bar had operated a strict mask policy, harking back to the dark days of the pandemic. It may have only opened in 2025, years after COVID-19 subsided, but the spirit of that time was alive and well.
All customers and staff were required to wear a well-fitted KN-95 mask or better. But business had slowed. Of the three founders - Jackie Matellian, Sage Territo and Asa Rosario - only Matellian was left. With loan repayments mounting, she hoped to increase business by relaxing the rules.
Customers reacted with fury to the relaxation of the rules. The post attracted hundreds of comments before they were turned off, most of which were highly critical. They accused Last Ditch of endangering its vulnerable clientele in the hope of attracting business from people who prefer not to wear a surgical mask when they are drinking with friends. Just say you're being complicit in a mass disabling event and get it over with, said one.
I hope your venue gets firebombed for robbing my fellow immunocompromised people of their Saturday plans just to scrape extra revenue from ablists, said another. No matter that Greenfield had not had a single reported case of COVID for months. These Last Ditch customers were adamant that the pandemic was still a deadly threat to them. Chastened, the bar issued an apology two days later.
We are sorry for our passive and dismissive tone of our change to the norms and schedule impacting the most intersectional of us, stated another Instagram post. We understand everyone faces different intersections and we are always working to consider all needs fully. The second statement only made things worse. In that post, Last Ditch had committed a sin against wokeness almost as egregious as dropping the mask requirement.
Social Media Accessibility Post Backlash
It had posted on social media without adding alternative text, which feeds screen-reader software that describes content aloud to the visually impaired. This is not an accessible post, someone complained. It indicates the lack of care or interest in disability intersectionality. The furore led to a crisis meeting on September 11, outlined in the article.
Ten people - all masked, and including two mediators there to keep the conversations productive - sat on the Last Ditch dance floor. Another 10 or 15 joined by Zoom. The meeting began with a calming breath exercise. Almost at once the online participants started a deluge of furious messages.
Crisis Meeting Mediator Confrontation
Trying to calm things down, one of the mediators, a licensed therapist, expressed hope that rather than just meeting online, the participants might get to a stage where they would know each other's faces. She was immediately shouted down for dismissing those attending virtually, which was not accessibility.
A Black attendee called Soe Noire, who identifies as a gender-expansive lesbian and uses he/him pronouns, criticised the mediator, who was white, for centring the feelings of a majority white and white adjacent staff. Another said the mediator's presence was wildly unsafe and wondered if, as a licensed therapist, she was tantamount to a member of the secret police who might have people hospitalised against their will. Matellian wept as she shared her struggles as the remaining owner.
She lived in her truck while she was trying to make the business work. Now that her co-founders had left the business, she was responsible for the $US50,000 ($72,000) loan they took out to open it. Noire was unmoved. You chose to use your time to spill tears and centre your feelings, he wrote in the Zoom chat.
This is incredibly racist and deflecting behaviour. After 3½ hours the meeting ended without any meaningful conclusion. I thought it was overblown, says LeiAnna Hamel, a 33-year-old academic visiting Last Ditch on Saturday night. The relaxation of the mask requirement was, according to Hamel, very measured and very targeted at reviving their business.
They announced it. It wasn't a surprise. People weren't going to show up being immunocompromised, and be exposed to something. It's like the most minor thing, and I think they were just trying to keep their doors open, says Luc, 21, who grew up in Greenfield visiting the bar.
Those behind the backlash, he says, aren't in Greenfield. Those people are hearing it on the internet, and they have an opinion. They're not even from here. The owners were just trying to make it so that this bar can stay alive.
Local Community Criticism of Bar Owners
The interesting thing was that by being a mask bar they had got in with this local constituency of people who seem very demanding, says Alex Lockie, a 36-year-old from Vermont. All the other bars around there don't have a mask rule but nobody's mad at them. And it just goes to show you that if you give a mouse a cookie, they'll ask for a glass of milk.
The story of Last Ditch resonated partly because it is funny but also because it speaks to a deeper anxiety about a DEI ideology that, taken to such extremes, becomes a kind of illiberal totalitarianism. Writing in, Katie Herzog said the bar was the latest progressive cause to be consumed by its own contradictions.
theage 
smh:‘I hope your venue gets firebombed’: The small-town lesbian bar left reeling after a ‘woke’ backlashThis story was compiled and edited by the HeadTopics newsroom and HT AI from the reports above.
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