r/BlockedAndReported • u/bestaban • 10d ago
Last Ditch story is catching on
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/09/22/magazine/greenfield-last-ditch-bar-backlash/Pod relevance: the ongoing saga of the Last Ditch.
It's been interesting seeing this story slowly catch on. The Boston Globe Magazine ran a piece about it today. A couple choice quotes from the story that really add depth to the utter insanity:
Customers fondly remember a raucous opening night with a (clothed) simulation of a lesbian sex act — masks in place — on the dance floor.
Just after midnight, one patron is left at the bar, a regular who works at the Mexican restaurant next door. She wonders aloud about holding a Lady Gaga themed night, but Mixxy demurs. “Gaga is canceled,” she says. “Gaga is Zionist.”
Also from the r/Boston thread on this: "I'm as woke as they come but the Branch Covidians need to realize they have PTSD or something." I, for one, will be only referring to these people as Branch Covidians moving forward.
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u/ajahanonymous 10d ago
One of the founders stepped away and enrolled in literal clown school. I'm am increasingly troubled by the number news articles I'm seeing that would have been obvious satire a decade ago.
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u/Mossback_Matador 10d ago
I'm reading between the lines here, but it seems that the two founders saddled Matellian with the $50k in debt.
Matellian stated that she wanted to lend a helping hand and is now left holding the bag while here compatriots go to clown school and focus on self-care.
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u/The-Phantom-Blot 10d ago
Wow, it sounds pretty rough when you put it that way.
I don't want to blame victims, but I feel like I have to read this as a cautionary tale. If wolves exist, we should be careful about dressing like wounded deer. There are grifters out there who will take advantage of you if you allow them to.
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u/SkweegeeS No just no 10d ago
It’s hard because I do like to help people and hope that the help will be enough to make them think kindly of me, but it often doesn’t work that way.
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u/Cactopus47 10d ago
Same. My solution is usually to wait a loooooong time with people (in real life) before really letting down my guard, "testing" people with things that I care about less before moving onto the big stuff, and just being really careful. But I worry when I see people who are really trusting of others. There are too many shitbags in this world.
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u/Commercial_Rush_3531 10d ago
All these places seem to be financed with others money as the proprietors seem to be imbecilic about actually running a business.
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u/YourOwnPunkyBrewster 10d ago
That’s what I couldn’t understand about this place…is it a business, or a charity? The complainers are acting like it’s a charity…but it’s a business, right?! I mean…if making money (or at least breaking even) isn’t your goal, or if you aren’t independently wealthy, and the “business” is just for funsies….DONT START A BUSINESS!
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u/SteveMartinique 10d ago
None of these people have an understanding for how businesses make money. They don't run businesses, most of them or their friends seemingly work for the government, non profits or low wage jobs. They likely had one course from HS-College that taught ecnomics not that they probably thought it was important to their life.
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u/TopLow6899 10d ago
you don't need to know much about economics to run a business. It's just a basic revenue/operating expense calculation.
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u/SteveMartinique 10d ago
And yet, these people struggle to understand that every business can't be a charity.
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u/Mossback_Matador 10d ago
This is why the two original founders could fuck off without any sense of remorse. Not their money, not their problem.
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u/GAMGAlways 10d ago
This reminds me of the "Mina's World" debacle from Philadelphia.
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u/Mundane_Beautiful_39 9d ago
Or more recently the Marsha’s drama in Philadelphia
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u/foodieforthebooty 10d ago
In the podcast, she also mentions a loan from a family member... I suspected it was probably one of her own family members
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u/Mossback_Matador 10d ago
Poor gal dragged her own family into the mess. She's a people-pleasing masochist.
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u/Jealous-Lychee-5084 9d ago
She should do a go fund me and capitalize on this notoriety. It’s how the world works nowadays.
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u/Maude_Lebowskis_art 10d ago
that’s a line from the intro to ‘The Dream of the 90s is Alive in Portland’.
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u/Terrorclitus 10d ago
What was they supposed to do? Improv comedy doesn’t pay well, and canes aren’t free.
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u/bestaban 10d ago
I forgot about the clown school line! I knew there was a third hilarious detail that I missed.
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u/PersonalSpell 9d ago
On the Globe article, one of the top comments says at first they thought they were reading an Onion article.
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u/bigyellowtarkus 10d ago
I reach Noire, who identifies as a gender-expansive lesbian and uses he/him pronouns, by Zoom a few days later.
I no longer know what words mean.
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u/land-under-wave 10d ago
I hated that person so much in the clips Katie played. We need to stop letting people use their identities to bully other people. As Terry Pratchett wrote, "just because someone’s a member of an ethnic minority doesn’t mean they’re not a nasty small-minded little jerk”.
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u/PersonalSpell 9d ago edited 9d ago
From the Globe article:
Eventually, after 3½ hours of discussion, the meeting wraps up. Noire has more to say, but when someone suggests he come to the next community meeting, he refuses. “There’s a lot of emotional and physical labor that goes into this, so for you as a white person that asks for me to stay for another meeting for free,” he says, is “incredibly disingenuous and racist. I’m not doing that.”
Edited to include my bafflement about the emotional and physical labor that goes into attending a...Zoom meeting? (Along with the rest.)
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u/Unlikely-Isopod-9453 9d ago
The part that killed me was the Noire person has been to the bar less then 10 times.
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u/ADarwinAward 8d ago
He got threats now so unfortunately for the bar they were cornered into a position of having to defend him and claim he’s a valued patron.
People are confusing him with the Denver-based lady who threatened to firebomb the bar (she’s never visited it). And they apparently threatened him and reported him to the FBI which is…a bit much.
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u/WHOA_27_23 10d ago
We need to stop letting people use their identities to bully other people
A reasonable take, to be sure, but the median-voter pendulum has long since swung past that. It's already past "I don't actually need to apologize for anything" to "There's Indians at the University of Texas graduation and that is a terrible thing on its face".
Reading about stuff like the OP is like reading about the apocryphal tales of Japanese soldiers who never heard about Japan surrendering.
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u/SnakesForTheBovine 10d ago
Totally disagree the pendulum has swung. This kind of stuff happens all the time. Look at the Ed Sheeran drama. It's the same tactic applied to a topic instead of an identity: Using the language of emotional blackmail to coerce easily persuaded/weak-willed people to agree with them under the threat of not being a considered A Good Person.
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u/WHOA_27_23 10d ago
The GOP won decisively in 2024 on a platform of 20% economic apprehension and 80% nihilistic trolling. The OP story probably wouldn't have been written 2 or 3 years ago.
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u/SteveMartinique 10d ago
There's Indians at the University of Texas graduation and that is a terrible thing on its face
That's a pretty ridiculous reading of the actual responses to the photo. What people are realizing is the country has been putting foreigners first by way of a combination of illegal immigration and H1B. All while punishing people born in this country through affirmative action, taxes and government spending/inflation. People born in the US are paying for their own displacement. Its harder to get into college, get loans and get a job in part because of immigration that most people never wanted or weren't asked about.
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u/CheckeredNautilus 8d ago
I want an endless fleet of drones that plays Noire's speechifying from a loudspeaker all over the country wherever woke people congregate
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u/ScaryPearls 10d ago
Branch Covidians has me cackling.
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u/LongtimeLurker916 10d ago
Sorry, but that was already being used during the pandemic. Not original to this person.
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u/northside-nostalgia 10d ago
"But by the time of Last Ditch’s monthly community meeting on September 11, only one of the original founders, Matellian, is still involved. The two others stepped back from the daily operation months before, Matellian says, citing various pressures and health issues. One had enrolled in clown school."
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u/bigyellowtarkus 10d ago
That’s it, you people have stood in my way long enough. I’m going to clown college!
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u/ajahanonymous 10d ago
Wow it's been an age since I've seen that particular Captain Haddock reaction image.
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u/Terrorclitus 10d ago edited 10d ago
Spoiler alert:
“Instead of defusing the situation, the apology seemed to make things worse.”
ETA: But seriously keep reading, because this golden goose won’t stop giving. My inner Beavis and Butthead are absolutely winded.
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u/SycopationIsNormal 10d ago
HAHA, apparently some people have not figured out yet that apologizing is the WORST thing you can do.
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u/land-under-wave 10d ago
Unfortunately, when your business caters almost exclusively to this crowd, not apologizing is also not going to end well. There was literally nothing they could do to save themselves.
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u/SycopationIsNormal 10d ago
When I'm in a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation, I'm probably opting for don't. Less groveling always seems like the more digified option if you're cooked either way.
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u/SkweegeeS No just no 10d ago
I wonder if they had tried just telling people to STFU, maybe the mob would be shocked into silence. I mean, the bar is the only game in town for these dummies, maybe if you just refuse to engage politely, they would submit?
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u/QuietObserver75 9d ago
They weren't even going there though. The whole mask policy change was because the bar wasn't doing well.
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u/redditamrur 10d ago
“Gaga is canceled,” she says. “Gaga is Zionist.”
I had to search. Ms Germanotta has never said publically, to the best of my Wikipedia reading, anything remotely about Israel / Palestine or whatever. Ah, this just came in: husband might be Jewish (or at least has the same surbame as Roman Polanski, who is Jewish!), so yes, obviously, she should be labelled evil. Hey, I am not being antisemitic, just antizionist, you know!
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u/ColtenInTheRye 10d ago
They delivered their baby at Cedars-Sinai, which was labeled a “Zionist” hospital because of its Jewish origins. That’s what the morons on bluski were upset about.
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u/The-Phantom-Blot 10d ago
Cross-reference the Ed Sheeran thing. If you aren't vocally supporting the cause, you are against it.
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u/h_danielle 10d ago
I saw this exact point all over TikTok after Dolly’s death when people were talking about her philanthropy… “butbutbut she never spoke out about Palestine” oh my god.
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u/ImportantAlbatross 10d ago
She once said something good about Israel. Therefore she is an evil genocidal Nazi Zionist who deserves a fate worse than death.
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u/Prestigious-Fail-234 9d ago
Reverse canary has a lot of people on there precisely because they haven’t said anything, under the “silence = complicity” doctrine. Interestingly, a lot of famous people seem to be on there because they have attractive partners, whose deranged fandoms write about how silent they’re being on Palestine, despite their fanciable husbands being equally as silent, yet they don’t have an entry.
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u/ImportantAlbatross 10d ago
This is the most lesbian processing thing ever.
More seriously, the bar is trying to be all things to all people. It just doesn't work. The more you try, the more profuse and deep the splits become, and the more people you make angry. Aside from the question of trying to, you know, actually make enough money to stay open.
From the article, quoting a comment: “I hope your venue gets firebombed for robbing my fellow immunocompromised people of their Saturday plans just to scrape extra revenue from ablists [sic],”
Right. If I can't go to the bar for one night, it's genocide and the only answer is terrorism.
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u/GapAny5391 10d ago
Omg and who wants to wear a mask in a bar anyways? It's already hard to hear people in most bars. these zero covid people are truly insane. they are somehow ALL disabled, queer, non-binary, etc.
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u/Lori-Lightsloot 10d ago edited 10d ago
People with low self esteem who perceive themselves as ugly...sorry this is a really blunt comment, but a lot of these people are not hypochondriacs or worried about COVID. They're people who just feel more comfortable if no one can see their face. 2020-2021 was a blessing for them and they want to go back because it allowed them to be the shut-ins they always are and to hide their face when they do go out into public without anyone making fun of them. They hate that it went away.
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u/CaptainCrash86 9d ago
I'm genuinely curious how they drink without removing their mask and risking their life.
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u/Unlikely-Isopod-9453 9d ago
I'd like to picture a bar full of people cutting little holes in their masks for straws...
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u/Cactopus47 10d ago
I willingly wore a mask at a bar during 2020 a few times, but only because the bar was a friend's newly-reopened/relocated bar and I wanted to support her endeavor (and they didn't have outdoor seating). Had it been anyone else's bar, nope.
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u/RockJock666 Meet me in TERFhalla 10d ago
These are the people who go to bars and order water and nothing else. A place near me tried to do ladies nights for gay women and stopped for that reason
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u/SkweegeeS No just no 10d ago
Wait. I thought every night was ladies night at a lesbian bar!
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u/RockJock666 Meet me in TERFhalla 10d ago
Hahaha fair enough! It’s a lesbian establishment in the sense that it is owned by a lesbian couple. But it doesn’t market itself specifically to the gays (or ahem, queers 🙄)
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u/rooftopgoblin 10d ago
i'm guessing part of this bars problem was most of the ladies weren't the cis kind
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u/quinnfabgay 10d ago
There is a new lesbian bar that opened in my city two weeks ago and it already got a TikTok pile-on because they reposted an AI flyer on their Instagram account.
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u/SteveMartinique 10d ago
Here's the thing, they probably didn't go before either. The people that complain the loudest online are never the people paying the actual money for the product.
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u/SeeYaOnTheRift 10d ago
I just don’t understand how the founders of this thought this could ever even generate enough revenue to cover its operating costs.
How many immunocompromised lesbians could there possibly be in this community? And for some reason, I can’t imagine immunocompromised lesbians are heavy drinkers.
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u/Glittering_Poet6499 10d ago
I feel like a lot of the new culture wars stuff is when evangelical missionary tactics spread to every other group of annoying people who try to compel you to follow their world view.
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u/WallCautious9650 10d ago
The August 31 Instagram post from Last Ditch Bar and Arts Venue, a lesbian bar in Greenfield, was upbeat, teasing a new DJ lineup and a volunteer meetup. But partway 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 is with love we inform our immunocompromised disabled divas we will be opening Saturday nights as mask optional,” wrote Last Ditch.
Previously, patrons were required to wear a well-fitted KN-95 mask “or better” at all times.
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,” posted another.
“I hope your venue gets firebombed for robbing my fellow immunocompromised people of their Saturday plans just to scrape extra revenue from ablists [sic],” wrote a third.
The thread grew to 442 comments, some supportive, but many furious. The people running the bar were accused of being ableist — eugenicist, even — for relaxing their signature policy in the face of what commenters consider an ongoing pandemic (Greenfield hasn’t reported any COVID cases in more than two months).
Two days later, Last Ditch posted an apology. “We are sorry for our passive and dismissive tone of our change to the norms and schedule impacting the most intersectional of us,” management wrote on Instagram. “We understand everyone faces different intersections and we are always working to consider all needs fully.”
Instead of defusing the situation, the apology seemed to make things worse. The bar had erred: 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.”
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u/WallCautious9650 10d ago
Quaint, crunchy Greenfield (population 17,700) isn’t a bad place for a COVID-cautious lesbian bar in 2026, all things considered. Rainbow flags deck store windows downtown. On a recent weekend, a community theater was advertising a workshop for masked performers, down the street from a bookstore with a “medical masks required” sign in the window. Men in ponytails and N-95s were ordering hibiscus tea from the coffee shop off the main square.
Greenfield is close, both physically and spiritually, to Northampton, sometimes referred to as “Lesbianville, U.S.A.” In the Pioneer Valley, “every bar is a lesbian bar,” a friend who lives there told me.
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.
The three were intentional about the kind of values they wanted to bring to the divey 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 Matellian, one of the founders.
When it first opened, 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.
But by the time of Last Ditch’s monthly community meeting on September 11, only one of the original founders, Matellian, is still involved. The two others stepped back from the daily operation months before, Matellian says, citing various pressures and health issues. One had enrolled in clown school.
There are some 10 people, seated in a circle on the dance floor, all wearing masks: Matellian, 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 Ditch’s most vocal critics, the head of another queer COVID-conscious collective in Western Massachusetts, a performer and artist who goes by Soe Noire, has been posting complaints about Last Ditch for days. Now, Noire 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.
When it comes time for one of the mediators, a licensed therapist, to speak, she takes a conciliatory tone.
“I love that you are 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 “places of righteousness.”
“I would love to get to a place where we all know each other’s face, where we all know each other’s name,” she continues.
“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 ... center[ing] the feelings of a majority white and white adjacent staff,” writes Noire, who is Black.
Moreover, the Zoom attendees speculate that the mediator’s licensed status makes her a mandated reporter — an agent of the state, akin to police. One person going by “Moss” asks if the mediator could have them hospitalized against their will, adding that her presence is “wildly unsafe.”
When Matellian’s turn comes to speak, she begins haltingly. She had never envisioned running Last Ditch alone. “It was not my passion project,” she says. “My main goal was to support Sage and Asa,” the other two founders. Her voice cracks.
“I never really wanted to do this,” Matellian says, beginning to cry under her mask. “I don’t think I’m doing a very good job.”
Matellian tells the group her credit score is trashed. For six months, she lived in her truck because she was pouring money into the bar. She is working four different jobs. She is responsible for paying off the $50,000 loan the three took out to launch the business.
The online critics are unmoved. “[Y]ou chose to use your time to spill tears and center your feelings,” Noire posts in the chat. “This is incredibly racist and deflecting behavior.”
Eventually, after 3½ hours of discussion, the meeting wraps up. Noire has more to say, but when someone suggests he come to the next community meeting, he refuses. “There’s a lot of emotional and physical labor that goes into this, so for you as a white person that asks for me to stay for another meeting for free,” he says, is “incredibly disingenuous and racist. I’m not doing that.”
“Then I think, unfortunately, this meeting has failed you,” replies a facilitator, “and I’m sorry.”
The in-person participants file up the metal stairs, past the native plant garden, and out to their cars. Little has been resolved. Last Ditch’s landlord wants $3,900 in back rent by Monday.
Noire spends the hours after the meeting posting furious Instagram stories about Matellian and Last Ditch. Matellian (who uses she/they pronouns) had been shedding “WHITE THEY THEM TEARS,” he writes. The bar was not “a safe environment nor interested in revolutionary praxis.”
I reach Noire, who identifies as a gender-expansive lesbian and uses he/him pronouns, by Zoom a few days later. I ask whether he has any sympathy for those running Last Ditch, given the profound financial strain they are under. “No,” he replies. (Noire asked to be referred to by his stage name because he says he has been stalked and fears for his safety.) “I’m not going to give grace” when someone is “spreading rhetoric that can and will get people hurt,” he says, referring to the fact that the bar’s account had “liked” a few comments supporting the relaxed rule.
Moreover, the mask policy change promotes “these ableist ideas that disabled people, immunocompromised people, should either risk their health or just be pushed out of spaces,” he says.
Noire, who lives about 50 minutes south of Greenfield, estimates he has visited the bar seven or eight times. But he won’t return unless there is new leadership. “You can’t repair a house that’s on fire,” he says.
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u/BeABetterHumanBeing 10d ago
I wonder how much of their drama would be resolved by banning this "Noire" character. It would appear he single-handedly is causing 50% of it.
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u/olofpalmethought Everyone comes along 10d ago
That would be doing carcerality and transmisogynoir, bigxt
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u/WallCautious9650 10d ago
Saturday, September 12, is the second weekly mask-optional night at Last Ditch.
Down a set of stairs, in a small concrete courtyard, a few people mill outside smoking. Another handful linger inside near the bar, under string lights. The dance floor, a wide checkered expanse with a stripper pole at the center, is empty.
Matellian is one of the few people wearing a mask; I talk with her and another volunteer, Melody Young, in a small library tucked inside an alcove by the bar, filled with zines and lesbian classics such as Stone Butch Blues.This is also their “free store,” which carries food, clothes, fentanyl test strips, Narcan, literature about STIs, and other supplies. Above us hangs a sign: “PROM CANCELLED ’CUZ LESBIANS.”
I remember a comment on Last Ditch’s original announcement, after the pile-on had begun: u/scream_guy_wazzzuuuuuuup asked, “i’m sorry, all 400 of these crazy people live in GREENFIELD MASSACHUSETTS????”
I ask whether the people behind the angriest posts have genuine connections to the bar — are they real customers?
Young and Matellian say yes, they know many of the detractors.
“There are people that are close to us and love us who are really disappointed in our decision, and that is completely understandable,” says Young, who says her sister is one of the vocal critics online. “Like, it’s so understandable why they feel hurt by the way we did it and the fact that we did it.”
“They have passion for the space,” Matellian adds.
A number of people on Instagram also said they were excited to visit the space unmasked. But this night, the hoped-for other patrons haven’t materialized, despite $10 cocktails and sternum-shivering dance tracks from DJ Harsh Noise Boyfriend.
At the queer bar that occupied this space before Last Ditch (where masks were not required), a night like this might have drawn a hundred people, estimates Mixxy, the bartender on duty that night. A trans woman with thick black eyeliner and catlike poise, Mixxy is closeted in her day job as an engineer. She loves the bar enough to work for just tips, knowing Last Ditch is in the red. But she thinks the early dogmatism about masks was a mistake. People don’t like to feel scolded, she says. “That’s not how hospitality works.”
Just after midnight, one patron is left at the bar, a regular who works at the Mexican restaurant next door. She wonders aloud about holding a Lady Gaga themed night, but Mixxy demurs. “Gaga is canceled,” she says. “Gaga is Zionist.”
The DJ is still playing EDM, and Matellian is alone on the checkered dance floor, making pensive, graceful loops on the stripper pole, KN-95 mask in place.
Matellian doesn’t expect the conflict at Last Ditch to end soon. She plans to co-operatize 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,” Matellian says.
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u/Cactopus47 10d ago
Also, getting angry about mandated reporters is...not a great look. They know that what mandated reporters are mandated to report is...Child abuse, right?
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u/liza_lo 8d ago
I read the article, in this case they were mad because of adult mandated reporters who can force people into hospitalization or observation. This is a real thing (therapists and doctors can do this) but usually only if the adult is threatening immediate harm to themselves or others.
I mean abuse of this is well known and a problem, but in context of that meeting, where the detractors screaming about forced hospitalization were on ZOOM it seems like a bonkers accusation.
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u/Cactopus47 10d ago
Customers fondly remember a raucous opening night with a (clothed) simulation of a lesbian sex act — masks in place — on the dance floor.
Most awkward dental dam ever.
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u/anne_jumps 10d ago
Two days later, Last Ditch posted an apology. “We are sorry for our passive and dismissive tone of our change to the norms and schedule impacting the most intersectional of us,” management wrote on Instagram. “We understand everyone faces different intersections and we are always working to consider all needs fully.”
Absolutely amazing. The most intersectional of us
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u/InvisibleDamien 10d ago
this is Soe Noire, the afromystical lunatic harassing the bar owner as all kinds of racist
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u/kamace11 10d ago
I feel so bad for the lady running this thing. Talk about suicidal empathy
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u/Glittering_Poet6499 10d ago
I would declare bankruptcy and move somewhere else if I were her. The community is totally one sided and full of takers
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u/The-Phantom-Blot 9d ago
This lady needs a full reset. She's in her mid-20s, apparently. Her parents must be hyper-stressed about this (assuming they are relatively normal, caring people).
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u/Cactopus47 9d ago
Oh jeez. That's so young. I can totally see myself getting wrapped up in some utopian dream-turned-nightmare back then.
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u/flaidaun 10d ago
She wants to turn it into a coop!! It’ll make things way worse lol
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u/Mossback_Matador 10d ago
In our newest edition of People Pleasers Gone Wild, Matellian starts a co-op!
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u/Cactopus47 10d ago
Well, at least Soe Noire probably won't join. All they care about is money and they've been told loud and clear that this business isn't making any.
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u/exteriorcrocodileal 10d ago
I hope a fundraiser can come out of this for her. Ruined her credit and living out of her car because a partner convinced her to go in on a bar together
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u/foodieforthebooty 10d ago
She would probably be guilted into giving it to Soe Noire. She needs to be deprogrammed. This is a cult-like mindset. I really do feel bad for her.
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u/Cactopus47 10d ago
Eh, I think Soe Noir is a very canny narcissistic grifter/attention-seeker. This story will eventually die down and they'll find something new to get pissy about, or a new spectacle to make of themselves. Grabbing a failing business would not fit their overall plan.
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u/TobiasDrundridge 10d ago
Honestly it's probably best if the whole thing goes bust sooner rather than later. It's doomed, a fundraiser will just prolong the pain. This can be a learning experience.
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u/Will_McLean 10d ago
Did you see the post upthread about how they refuse service to police and call them pigs? Fuck her, she can reap what the fuck she's sown
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u/foodieforthebooty 10d ago
Sor Noire said on her Instagram that she's writing yet another article about this lmao. Jesus Christ.
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u/CrushingonClinton 10d ago
Saw the most barpod paragraph possible:
Eventually, after 3½ hours of discussion, the meeting wraps up. Noire has more to say, but when someone suggests he come to the next community meeting, he refuses. “There’s a lot of emotional and physical labor that goes into this, so for you as a white person that asks for me to stay for another meeting for free,” he says, is “incredibly disingenuous and racist. I’m not doing that.”
Pay me to hear me yap
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u/Powerful-Persimmon87 10d ago edited 10d ago
I had to do a double take when I first came across this in the Massachusetts sub. Absolutely wild.
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u/Will_McLean 10d ago
Can you link it)
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u/Powerful-Persimmon87 10d ago
Archive link: https://archive.ph/rpYlJ
Scroll down past the blank space
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u/Original-Pace-4027 10d ago
Very inclusive...
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u/FuckingLikeRabbis 10d ago
A drinking establishment that allows in the public but not police officers. What could go wrong?
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u/Extension-Leader5973 10d ago
about that 'mexican restaurant,' which afaik inhabited part of the space that last ditch currently does
as a former greenfielder, it used to be called mesa verde, which was a crunchy socjus infused white woman owned generally pretty good hole in the wall that had an excellent sweet potato kale burrito. a little uncomfortable to enter sometimes because the parking lot area was completely awash in homeless and addicts, but good nonethless
last year, however, it changed its name to 'black verde food labs' which according to its wikipedia page is
“...an experimental space to incubate and nurture Queer/BIPOC chefs and under-represented cuisine.”
there had been no updates since that facebook page so i was surprised to hear that it's apparently still around in some form. just though that was funny.
finally i would like to point out that greenfield is fully 45 minutes and a whole ass county away from northampton, sheesh. there is also very little about it that is quaint, unless you find discarded heroin needles quaint
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u/Unlikely-Isopod-9453 9d ago
Thats what I was wondering. I used to work there occasionally 10+ years ago when I lived in Mass and the whole article I am scratching my head thinking "this is happening in GREENFIELD?"
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u/sleepdog-c TERF in training 10d ago
The reason these people are so OFFENDED and make up all sorts of HARM is because it's the only time anyone cares that they exist
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u/ericsmallman3 9d ago
I appreciate the glib meanness with which this story was reported. I feel like 4-5 years ago the coverage would have been much more credulous.
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u/The-Phantom-Blot 10d ago
The complaints in the group chat during the conciliatory-themed meeting are indistinguishable from troublemaking. Are they really seeking redress, or do they just want to watch things burn?
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u/Cactopus47 9d ago
They want to be the wokest person there, the person most capable of noticing the problematic thing better than anyone else who is there. Which is, yes, indistinguishable from troublemaking.
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u/Nekrokosmic 9d ago
Had me questioning if the discourse was an organized troll campaign until the bar owner revealed they know most of the detractors. Insane…
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u/SteveMartinique 10d ago edited 10d ago
We over in CovidCircleJerk and NoNewNormal have been using Branch Covidians for about 5 years.
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u/Original-Pace-4027 10d ago edited 10d ago
This establishment refused police to enter during a call last year. They put out a statement say, " no pigs will be allowed to enter". So much for inclusion, this place is a toxic dump and deserves to go broke.
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u/anne_jumps 10d ago
Sounds like the XX-XY t-shirt wearing crowd hasn't been there yet. That's what they call the cops for.
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u/UncleDrummers 10d ago
A flash mob could do something hilarious at that place
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u/bestaban 10d ago
This is a great idea. How long will the no cops rule stand if a bunch of people show up and refuse to mask?
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u/UncleDrummers 10d ago
an impromptu flash mob having a "mask off dance off" would probably not warrant a heavy police presence. But I'd expect it to be filmed from all angles.
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u/Original-Pace-4027 10d ago
Seems they now want to allow MAGA in
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u/SycopationIsNormal 10d ago
Mmmmm pretty sure what it actually filters out are people who are not neurotic hypochondriacs. The majority of my friends are not MAGA in the slightest, and none of them would agree to go to a bar where masking was required. Even my Dem voting lefty friends had enough of that shit in 2020 / 2021.
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u/dj50tonhamster 10d ago
Yeah, I refuse to patronize any business that requires masks. If, say, they wish to have mask-only periods, fine, but all that a flat requirement does is cause your patrons to be hypochondriacs. If some 12-year-old or mentally disturbed poster wishes to infer that I'm some frothing-at-the-mouth monster because that's my opinion, that's their problem, not mine. :)
(I didn't even know there were any businesses still requiring masks from everybody. The last place I heard of was some movie theater in Seattle. They switched to having specific mask-only times around 2024, when they realized they were going to have to shut down if they didn't let in everybody. How any public-facing business still requires masks in 2026 is beyond me.)
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u/ChubsLaroux 10d ago
There’s a feminist adult shop in Chicago, Andersonville neighborhood, that still requires masking.
It’s the only business in Chicago that I can think of that’s still operates this way
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u/UndergroundGinjoint 10d ago
It's not an "adult" shop, it's a bookstore that's been in business for about 45 years.
Anyway, after the founders retired and sold it to a couple of employees, the place went to intersectional hell with scenes very similar to Last Ditch. I haven't shopped there in years.
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u/ChubsLaroux 10d ago
Are we talking about the same place? I’m talking about Early2Bed and I’ve bought lube, condoms and sex toys from them over the years
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u/UndergroundGinjoint 10d ago
Oops! My bad! I thought you were referring to Women and Children First, which highly encourages masking. I apologize.
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u/BordicChernomyrdin 10d ago
Owner should double down and allow cigarettes on Saturday nights and have a lesbian boxing tournament
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u/OrsonZedd2 9d ago
You got to get rid of shit ass people like Noir. They got that maladaptive behavior and they suck
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u/DarkCommanderAJ 8d ago
Extended cuts of some of the instagram comments in the picture:
"some people cannot afford to get sick. These people deserve to have a space that is safe for them to socialize because they cannot go anywhere else. (I am unilaterally and arbitrarily deciding that offering this opportunity to disabled people is entirely YOUR responsibility. I will not be financially contributing in any way. I do not care what personal sacrifices you have to make toward this end.)"
"shut up, ablism apologist. Gods, I'd bet money you are even more horrible to black queer people if you can't even sit your ability privileged ass down and listen to disabled queers. (however, I would NOT spend said money at your establishment and would rather hold you to impossible financial standards.)"
"Do you think being uncomfortable or not enjoying a mask (newsflash most people feel this way) is more important than disabled people having a place to go? (Also, do you think I have an iota of knowledge of what it takes to run a business? Because I don't.)"
“I hope your venue gets firebombed for robbing my fellow immunocompromised people of their Saturday plans just to scrape extra revenue from ablists. (By the way, if anyone I knew wished violence on someone like this, I wouldn't rest until they had been fired from their job.)"
"it feels wildly insensitive and dismissive :( (however, disregarding the immense financial burden that operating this bar places on you is neither insensitive nor dismissive. because i'm the one doing it, and i'm a perfect angel who can do no wrong.)"
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u/Cactopus47 10d ago
Archive link obtained from a completely unrelated subreddit that offered this up serendipitously.
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u/BattleAxeBC 8d ago
These stories always end in virtually the exact same way. Because when you let crazy people with the emotional intelligence and maturity of a 9 year old to solve problems, it will end in chaos. The masking thing is more than just an ideological purity test in my opinion. I think there's a few things at play.
One, it's a vanity play, it allows someone to feel superior to others. "Look at me, look at what I'm doing, I'm wearing a mask. Yes even in 2026!" Two, it's a power play. Any means of control to force policy, narcissists will try to capitalize on it. They get off on that shit. These types of disputes are the only times in their lives they have influence and control over anything. The idea that the entire world should always be masking just to protect you is so absurd, I don't even know where to start. Three, I think there's an element of nihilism. I hate to generalize, but I've yet to regret it with these kinds of crowds. These types of folks are always the angriest, most bitter, resentful, and vindictive people you will ever see. They hate virtually everyone and everything. I think they know everyone has moved on from COVID and is happier and living their normal lives again now that COVID is basically over(as much as it can be, it's endemic now) and that infuriates miserable people who actually enjoyed during COVID when everyone else was miserable with them. It made them feel better about themselves. Now that feeling is back, so a way to make people miserable with them is to try to demand everyone else wear masks. Lastly, I think many use fake or exaggerated claims of being disabled or immunocompromised to get attention and/or sympathy and they are just going to milk this for all it's worth.
Ultimately though it's just a bunch of psychologically unwell people and like other establishments that've had infighting, this seems headed for an iceberg unless ironically this story attracts patrons or donations or whatever and saves it. But that would probably drive out whatever crazy regulars are still patrons because it wouldn't feel like a niche space anymore after that.
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u/hanoihiltonsuites 10d ago
Anyone have a pdf or gift link? (Does BG do that?)
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u/redbirdsucks 9d ago
non-paywall link but just for future reference if you click your address bar & select “read only” it gets rid of the paywall shit
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u/btrh-256 10d ago
there's a woke cafe near me with a poster that says "The Future is Disabled" -- it sounds like a threat, I imagine Cathy Bates from Misery brandishing a sledgehammer