Leon’s Backroom, a gay bar in Baltimore’s Mount Vernon neighborhood since 1957, will temporarily close following the death of longtime owner Ron Singer earlier this month.
in facebook In a post on Wednesday, July 15, Baltimore’s oldest gay bar announced it would be open from 4 to 9 p.m. for a “last special shift” before temporarily closing its doors. Staff said they will try to reopen the bar as soon as possible.
Leon previously said on social media: post The company was only accepting cash to help staff get through the transition and try to keep the business running, officials said. baltimore banner.
Neither post provided a planned reopening date.
Leon’s Backroom, located at 227 W. Chase St., was open daily from 4 p.m. to 2 a.m., according to its website. The bar regularly hosted karaoke nights and drag shows, and offered daily drink specials.
According to the Baltimore NBC affiliate WBALThe bar said in a social media post that Singer, who died on July 7 at the age of 66, “made Leon’s a place that so many people were proud to call home.” Every year he hosted a Thanksgiving dinner The bar offers free food to people who have nowhere else to go.
“I asked him more questions and found out that a lot of people here don’t have a place to go, whether it’s broken families, whether they’re part of the LGBTQ community, there’s a lot of single people. So I served my first Thanksgiving meal,” Singer told WBAL at the time. “That’s the right thing to do, but there’s also a lot of wrong in this world. So if we can do even a little bit right, that’s all that matters.”
Source: Metro Weekly – www.metroweekly.com
