When I enter the bar, co-owner Shelley Brothers is sitting in the big picture window, bathed in the red glow of humming heater coils. It’s split into a social and a seated bar area a framed poster of queer icon Joan Jett, for whom I was a teenage doppleganger, hangs on the scarlet-hued walls. The “Rose,” as patrons affectionately call it, is a comfortable dive. Next to sex shop Castle Megastore and its massive silicon molds is my destination: the Wildrose. I cut through Cal Anderson Park, named after Washington state’s first openly gay legislator. … isn’t a zoo and we aren’t your pets” Neighbours, the nearly 40-year-old nightclub institution often targeted by hate crimes.
At the time, the queer bars I pass are sitting silent and shuttered: Pony, whose signage announced in 2014 to a changing neighborhood, “This is a very gay bar. On a rainy winter day in 2021, Capitol Hill’s rainbow-colored crosswalks stand in stark relief against the steely sky.
