After nearly half a century in business, Scandals, a Portland LGBTQ+ bar, says it will close its location on Southwest Harvey Milk Street on Sunday, Sept. 21.
I don’t think anything you said is wrong, but the owners didn’t cite the landlord as being the problem. They plan to open a new more family friendly space in the same city but in a different neighborhood. To me, that says that rent isn’t the problem, but the market demand has shifted. Bars don’t make as much money as they used to, and LGBTQ+ families exist. Even the name, Scandals, is a relic from an era when “nontraditional fraternization” was considered “scandalous.”
Of course, we also have Nazis and rapists and criminals openly corrupting the government and destroying the global future, so “progress” is relative.
I don’t think anything you said is wrong, but the owners didn’t cite the landlord as being the problem. They plan to open a new more family friendly space in the same city but in a different neighborhood. To me, that says that rent isn’t the problem, but the market demand has shifted. Bars don’t make as much money as they used to, and LGBTQ+ families exist. Even the name, Scandals, is a relic from an era when “nontraditional fraternization” was considered “scandalous.”
Of course, we also have Nazis and rapists and criminals openly corrupting the government and destroying the global future, so “progress” is relative.
I’ll take the “mutual agree” on all that. In the back of my mind I was thinking how “the location is really the core problem here”.
I do think that what I said is relevant to other commercial vacancies around town, so I had to soapbox a bit to blow off some steam.