He likens the bar’s trajectory – closing down and then slowly opening up to more and more people – to his own journey. “I was able to develop some really good friendships to help me through this new chapter of my life,” Davis said.ĭavis sees The Lumber Yard as a lifeline that kept him sane through the darkest days of the past year. The gregarious Moore quickly befriended Davis and introduced him to a wider social circle. Finally, fellow regular Richard Moore noticed and struck up a conversation. As a self-described “newly single introvert,” he quickly found The Lumber Yard, a safe haven he could frequent to get out of the house and have some human interaction.įor two months, Davis went to the bar three or four evenings a week, sat alone at a table outside (too nervous to talk to anyone), drank a few cocktails and then went home. Davis, 34, moved to White Center after a difficult breakup just before the pandemic set in. Ryan Davis was one of those regulars and he came to rely on the bar as much as it was relying on him. “It was probably one of the sweetest things that happened during this whole thing,” Adams said. The softball team Lumber Yard sponsored in previous years started a GoFundMe and raised money for the bar. White Center bar and restaurant owners made the rounds, ordering meals from each other’s kitchens to help everyone stay in business. And they made a point to reach out and see if there was anything they could do for us,” Adams said. “The only way we survived, truly, was because of the community we built with our regulars. Lumber Yard also came to rely on the loyal community grown over their first two years in White Center. They scrimped and saved and applied for PPP loans, which allowed them to rebuild an outdoor patio space. Like many small businesses, they had to improvise and experiment to keep afloat, paring down their menu to a daily special, limiting liquor restocking orders, offering takeout and table service instead of a line at the bar. With a maximum of only 30 patrons allowed in the 200-person capacity space, Adams and a single cook manned the bar by themselves for the majority of 2020. “It was like we had just opened again, but in a neighborhood that didn’t know we were here,” Adams said. But business was down by two-thirds compared to the previous year. Lumber Yard was able to hold on, but barely.Īfter three months closed, Nathan Adams, who opened Lumber Yard in early 2018 with his husband, Michale Farrar, was able to reopen in June. They closed in March 2020 and were unable to reopen. But the pandemic hit hard and took Swallow with it. Health officials appeared optimistic that the expected June 30 reopening will not be rolled back.Ī little over a year ago, two gay bars, The Lumber Yard and Swallow Bar, faced each other across 16th Avenue SW, in a neighborhood that seemed to be gaining traction in the West Seattle LGBTQ community as a more convenient and laid-back alternative to the Capitol Hill nightlife scene. This week, the one-shot vaccination rate hovered near 68%.
State officials, including the governor, promised to reopen earlier, if 70% of Washingtonians age 16 and older got at least one coronavirus shot.
Jay Inslee's announcement that Washington state will completely reopen by June 30, although some wish they would have had more definite information earlier for planning purposes and worry about future rollbacks. Others, though, were able to reopen or have plans to open soon, effectively extending Pride month festivities into July.īusiness owners are cautiously buoyed by Gov. Seattle’s queer bar scene has been precarious in recent years and 2020 struck the final blow to several long-standing LGBTQ haunts including Re-bar and R Place, which lost its lease and is still in search of a new location. According to a survey by the Washington Hospitality Association, 2,369 bars and restaurants across the state closed permanently over the first six months of the pandemic, 1,023 of those in King County alone. The last year was devastating for the hospitality industry statewide. “It was awful, it was traumatic, but it was an opportunity to make change.” “Your life was ripped away from you,” she told the room. After her number, she takes the mic and the mood shifts as she begins to address the reason we haven’t been able to enjoy a live show like this in so long. “I live for the applause, applause, applause” Lady Gaga confesses through pumping speakers as 7-foot-tall Dolly, née Derik Kleinhesselink, works the room in black stilettos and a pink wig.