Happy weekend lovely people! I am so excited to be bringing the second featured guest contributor to the new iteration of Good Queer News. This one comes from the lovely Lee Soeburn. She’s got a really delightful voice and knows how to tell one hell of a story.
I pay all my contributors (and they get an extra share of the profits when people upgrade specifically on articles they wrote) so your support helps grow the love every way I can!
You had to be there.
Leon’s euphoric celebration “Homecoming” was all over Baltimore revelers’ socials. The Insta stories got blurrier and sweatier. Videos of DJ Shyboi’s sexy, modern, funny, and nostalgic vibes at once drop the beat, bring the heat, and make you laugh. “I truly look forward to my sets at Leon’s,” says Shyboi. “The reopening [was] like a full-on celebration. How can I describe it? Like the opposite of a funeral, if that makes sense?” Local diva Fernette Branca showed up at 3pm, left for work, then came back to stay til 3am. “I’m certain me and my partner were the last non-employees on the premise,” Fernette says with pride.
Cue Stefon1 1voice: The country’s silver-medal for oldest gay bar is Leon’s. And this place has everything. Two bars, front and back: everyone has a preferred watering hole, you know? (wink!) A tiny stage. A massive screen. Two bathrooms: one for hookups, and one where they send the lesbians, straights, and lost-looking tourists. Sticky plastic cups with heavy pours. Don’t go to Leon’s if you have plans tomorrow. Or! Go there every night because you’re one of those party gays.
Introverts could live Leon’s “Homecoming” vicariously if you didn’t want to go back when it was crazy, packed, and loud. Maybe you wanted your first time back to be on a quiet, empty, weekday afternoon. When the bartender will catch you up on gossip and pour your beer of choice, because they know you don’t go for the usual translucent cocktails.
Regardless, years from now the elder queers will hum nostalgically over a bubbly and say “Remember that time Leon’s closed?”
It started with a handwritten note on both the front and back doors of Leon’s. You know the note. Nearly ubiquitous since the pandemic, it’s the little note on the locally owned and operated bar or restaurant that everyone loved and now it’s gone. Just like that. For DJ Shyboi, it started with the July 15th IG post which mourned the owner’s passing and called for “one final, special shift,” to “raise a glass to Ron and share your favorite memories.”
“I remember the mood was somber,” says Shyboi, “Leon’s is not only a bar; it is a community space.” The gritty spinal column of big gay Baltimore, Leon’s is the connective neural fluid from once-flourishing gayborhoods, now long gone, to today’s meandering queer landscape of events, bars, and third spaces. “Temporarily losing Leon’s left a lot of queer folx in Baltimore, and specifically in Mt. Vernon, adrift and uncertain.”
Mt. Vernon is the quintessential once-flourishing gayborhood, at least a dozen locations catering to the queers have closed in the last couple decades. Fernette recalls Leon’s closure “absolutely removed a space for me and my partner over the summer, and impacted my bartender friend’s employment, as well as my own drag gigs. I’d already bought all the damn rhinestones.”
The community took care of Leon’s displaced staff and patrons for over two months with mutual aid, loving kindness, and open doors. “I have so much gratitude,” says Cade, a Leon’s bartender, “for the sacrifices made and the work put in for us to have a source of income during an uncertain period of our lives.” They said one hero of this effort was Ryan Haase, the owner of nearby Club Car. Fernette agrees, “Ryan and crew…deserve praise for stepping up to the plate.”
Cade says Ryan “offered to host all of Leon’s regularly scheduled programming with Leon’s bartenders working the shifts.” This meant Club Car, normally open only on weekends, took on “four more days a week (a 200% increase in hours of operation), no small task for ownership and management of The Club Car.” Neighboring gay bar The Drinkery also offered shifts and shoulders to cry on for the bartenders and patrons. “Spirits of Mt. Vernon, Mount Royal Tavern, Club Charles, all of these spaces opened their doors to a group of people who had suddenly lost their favorite haunt.”
On the night of “Homecoming,” the new owner of Leon’s triumphantly announced “we’ll be here forever!” Fernette Branca sincerely proclaims: “They’ll get rid of this bar when all the nasty, undead, cockroach gays and queens are unglued from the floor, probably only due to the residual warmth from the heat death of the universe.” That night, according to Shyboi, “I think everyone acknowledged the immense effort and dedication by everyone involved in the reopening.”
Do you know a local queer space that could use this kind of love? “The unsung heroes,” Cade says, “are the friends and chosen family, even the acquaintances, who came together and offered help in the smallest ways.” This is your sign to make a plan and go visit your local queer space. Maybe make a Halloween recovery visit on Sunday, November 1st? Or get together with your community for support on election night, November 3rd?
If you’re an introvert, spread the word about that space on your socials, or buy some merch from them for holiday gifts this year. “The regulars who showed up for karaoke at The Club Car and tipped a dollar or two more than usual,” Cade continues. “The small discount here or there, the offers of services if there was no cash to give, the strangers who indulged me with no idea how badly I needed a distraction.”
Alas, we have a word limit2 here. When I told Cade, they said: “750 words? To convey the generosity and love found within Baltimore’s queer community?” Like Leon’s on her busiest nights, it may not be big enough, but folks make it work and somehow it fits just right.
About the Author: Lee Soeburn lives in a writing house she calls the “Sea Quill,” because it serves as a sequel to her 25 years lived in Alabama, closeted and by another name (and because her spouse hates puns!) She writes protopian (not dystopian, rarely utopian) future stories, grants for local creators (“Keeping artists from starving since 2022”), and fanfiction, so much fanfiction.
Thanks again to Lee for writing a great article that brought me a great hit of joy! If you’re interested in submitting a guest article or becoming a regular contributor, you can submit using this google form! If you’ve already submitted, thank you!! There’s a lot of great stuff in there and I’m doing my best to go through it all and get stuff set up on the content calendar :)
All my love as always,
Ben
Stefon would have a LOT more to say about Leon’s, I’m sure! I hereby personally invite Bill Hader and John Mulaney to write a Leon’s review in Stefon’s voice for a future issue of Good Queer News.
Because Ben Greene is a champion, he let me go over by like 200 words.