Trouble is a brewin’ at this watering hole.
A Massachusetts lesbian bar descended into a catty culture war and faces a potentially business-ending boycott from sudden enemies who flipped out when the owners lifted a longstanding mask mandate — for just one night a week.
Greenfield’s Last Ditch Bar scrapped Saturday mask requirements on Aug. 31 in a bid to boost business — but the move completely backfired, sparking uproar from members of the small city’s queer community.
Some critics dramatically likened the decision to a “mass disabling event,” a “eugenicist” attack and a host of other hot-button terms that escalated to threats of violence.
“I hope your venue gets firebombed for robbing my fellow immunocompromised people of their Saturday plans just to scrape extra revenue from ablists [sic],” one commenter wrote on the western Massachusetts bar’s post announcing the change, the Boston Globe reported.
Instagram/@lastditchbar
“People like you kill disabled people in the name of your own leisure and convenience,” wrote another, while a third said, “Just say you’re being complicit in a mass disabling event and get it over with.”
And that was all because masks were made “optional” just once a week.
Last Ditch, which opened in 2025, still requires masks all other days even as Greenfield hasn’t reported a COVID case in months.
The business soon found its divey barroom bare on what used to be busy nights, as irate customers banded together to boycott.
Sales had already been slumping due to the bar’s floundering business model that includes rules like, “Nobody will be barred from entry due to lack of funds,” and “Poor and unhoused people are welcome in the space.”
The mask mandate was another rule, as Last Ditch vowed ableism — infringements on disabled patrons enjoying the venue — was strictly barred.
That meant the face coverings were required to protect anyone who was immunocompromised. It remains unclear how anyone was expected to drink while masked.
The bar’s three owners — one a drag performer using it/its pronouns, another now in clown school — began to slip behind on their bills and couldn’t pay themselves or even their staff.
So the trio decided to lift the mask mandate on Saturdays to try to boost revenue and keep the lights on, the Globe reported.
“It is with love we inform our immunocompromised disabled divas we will be opening Saturday nights as mask optional,” Last Ditch merrily wrote in the August Instagram post that blew its world apart.
Management first tried to apologize for its supposedly flippant post, writing “We are sorry for our passive and dismissive tone of our change to the norms and schedule impacting the most intersectional of us.”
But that only fanned the flames — because Last Ditch’s post failed to include written “alt text” describing the written message for visually impaired people.
“This is not an accessible post,” somebody commented. “It indicates the lack of care or interest in Disability intersectionality.”
Desperate, Last Ditch tried to address the controversy in its monthly community meeting on Sept. 11.
But the event was immediately hijacked by the outraged masses who joined by Zoom and began filling the chat with hysterical comments, each read aloud for the in-person group to hear.
Then things were really set off when one woman attending in-person, a therapist, said she wished everybody could be there so they could talk together.
“It’s messed up that the mediator is dismissing those attending virtually. That’s not accessibility,” somebody wrote, while others claimed it was “wildly unsafe” to have a licensed therapist who they claimed could use her power to force them into mental hospitals against their will.
“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,” another offered.