Bartenders at Chill Bar are slinging drinks — a vodka soda here, a couple “margarita martinis” there — beneath two glittering, life-size mannequins suspended from the ceiling.
Outside, a group of women in all pink and matching cowboy hats arrive on the back of a bar bike. Up the street, a server at Hunters offers up a tray of neon Jello shots to customers sitting on the patio. Masks, occupancy limits and social distancing aside, it could be any pre-pandemic Friday night on Arenas Road, an entire block lined with gay bars and businesses in downtown Palm Springs.
“Some people we haven’t seen for about a year and a half,” said 57-year-old Tony Lawrence, sitting with his partner and two friends outside Quadz bar. “It’s like, ‘My god, you’re still alive.’”
Palm Springs has long been one of the most popular LGBTQ destinations in the country. Despite more than a year of on-and-off closures and fluctuating health mandates, at least six of the seven bars on Arenas Road are open again. The only question mark is Stacy’s Palm Springs, which has been open intermittently, but appears to have been closed for the last few weeks. The bar’s owner could not be reached for comment.
In other parts of California and across the country, some gay bars haven’t been as lucky. San Francisco and Los Angeles, for example, have seen several famed establishments go under; The Stud, San Francisco’s oldest LGBTQ bar, was one of the first to announce it was shuttering last May.
Many bar owners on Arenas are now cautiously optimistic that there’s an end in sight.
Riverside County moved to the orange level of California’s four-tiered, color-coded reopening framework in April, meaning bars that don’t serve food can now be open outside with modifications. Establishments that serve meals can open indoors with a capacity limit of 50% or 200 people, whichever is less. The state plans to get rid of its tier system all together on June 15, given the vaccine supply is adequate and hospitalizations remain low.
Rob Giesecke, the owner of Chill Bar Palm Springs, partially credits his business’ survival to the tight-knit community that came together and “formed ranks” around the historic street. Customers sat in outdoor patios in 120-degree heat when they could have stayed home. Some started GoFundMe pages for Arenas bars.
Because of those loyal customers and friends, “we are still here,” Giesecke said.
“For the LGBT community, we are dependent on our chosen families,” he said. “These bars are more than just drinking places for people; this is where the community comes together.”
Three decades of history on Arenas
Exactly 30 years ago, in 1991, the first gay bar opened up shop on Arenas.
Named Streetbar, the business was followed by roughly a dozen others over the next three decades. Up until the 1990s, most local bars specifically for LGBTQ patrons had been concentrated in neighboring Cathedral City, which was unincorporated until 1981 but only a few miles from the heart of Palm Springs.
“Gay establishments used to stay off of the main streets, out of the way,” Bob Mellen, co-owner of the Vista Grande Resort, a gay resort hotel in Palm Springs, told The Desert Sun in 1996. “Now we feel more welcome so we don’t have to hide as we used to.”
These bars are more than just drinking places for people; this is where the community comes together.
David Farnsworth, now the co-owner and general manager of Streetbar, started working at the business in 2000. Then, Palm Springs was firmly a seasonal destination, and was often quiet from June to October. Arenas relied on local foot traffic rather than tourists.
“We’re like a gay community center bar. Local gay men treat this as their living room,” Farnsworth said of Streetbar. “It’s been ground zero for them for forever.”
But maintaining that familial atmosphere has sometimes been challenging in the era of coronavirus. There are standard COVID-19 rules for customers, like ordering food with drinks, staying 6 feet apart and wearing a mask if “in motion” — not to mention the fact that they are nearly impossible to enforce, Farnsworth said.
And keeping a bar, even a beloved one, from going under in 2020 was often touch-and-go. Streetbar was forced to close last March, then reopened for just 12 days in June before being shut down again under new county guidelines.
Farnsworth eventually applied for an emergency loan. Then the bar got to be about six months behind in rent. All told, he estimates it will take three to five years to get back on solid financial footing and pay back the loan.
Streetbar also had to alter its offerings dramatically. Though the bar had never served food before the pandemic, that was the only way it could open last fall under the state’s most-restrictive purple tier.
At one point, Farnsworth was at an Alcoholic Beverage Control office when an employee informed him that the bar had to serve substantial meals, not just prepackaged food, either in Streetbar’s own kitchen or through a contract with a restaurant.
“And I just burst into tears. I was just at the end of my rope, I had no money,” he said. “I had to go sit in my car for about a half-hour and collect myself, then go back in and say, ‘Okay, I’m really sorry, I’m going to send you flowers.’”
A big reason Streetbar is still in business is due to its staff, Farnsworth said. He’s known some of the guys for nearly 20 years. They’ve come in on their days off, put up tents in the parking lot to meet outdoor requirements, and now work three different patio areas and generally “do everything,” he said.
“I’ve been very fortunate that I’ve had this team of people who are so dedicated and so together and such a family,” he said. “We’ve really held each other up. They’re an unbelievable group of people.”
‘One of the toughest’ years of business
Across the road from Streetbar, Alex Ordoubegian and Josh Snyder were sipping drinks outside at Quadz on Friday. The couple, from San Diego, were visiting Palm Springs for a long weekend.
“It’s a gay safe place, where you have a good feel of community here,” Ordoubegian said of Palm Springs. “That’s why I think all of us from San Diego come out here.”
Next to the young couple was Tony Lawrence and his group, who live in the Palm Springs area and have been frequenting the Arenas bars for many years; two friends in the circle were in their 80s. Until recently, when he was vaccinated, Lawrence and his friends had been hosting patio cocktail parties rather than going out to the bars.
“It’s really liberating,” he said of being on Arenas again. “You feel an element of safety now because people are being vaccinated, but you’re still cautious, you’re still careful in crowds. We generally stick with our own circle.”
Quadz owner Jim Osterberger calls Arenas the “gay soul” of Palm Springs.
“When things started to open up a bit, there was so much pent-up demand that people wanted to go and do something again, and enjoy the company of their friends,” he said.
Other gay bars in California haven’t been able to reap the benefits. Four storied gay bars in Los Angeles shut down permanently in the past year. Many others have not been able to reopen yet, like The New Jalisco Bar in LA, which has been closed for more than 12 months.
Though steadier business is now returning to Arenas, Osterberger said 2020 was “one of the toughest” years of the 16 that he’s owned the bar. Like Streetbar, Quadz became a pseudo-restaurant to keep the doors open, Osterberger said, which meant installing pizza ovens, refrigeration and other expensive alterations.
“When this is over, I don’t want to ever want to make a pizza or serve another piece of food again,” Osterberger said. “We opened as a bar. That’s what we specialize in.”
Osterberger says he tries to be optimistic about reopenings, but after so many months of changing tiers and conflicting mandates from the state, that’s tough to do. As for the tier system sunsetting in June, “I’ll believe it when I see it,” he said.
Adaptability in 2020, future of Arenas
Palm Springs has always been a popular destination, said Masio Winston, part-server/bartender and part-manager at Chill Bar. But as vaccines roll out and regulations loosen, Winston said he’s seen the city become even more of a haven for tourists.
“I’m sweating because I’m thinking about all the people who are outside,” he said during a whirlwind break Friday night, as temperatures hovered around 102 degrees. “It feels like more people want to be here than we can actually have seats for.”
Chill Bar has brought back DJs and opened a back room with socially distant “cabanas,” owner Giesecke said, but other nightlife entertainment like go-go dancers has not yet returned. The bar also had to build out its own kitchen last year. Fortunately, the previous business in the space was a restaurant, so some kitchen infrastructure remained.
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Riverside County could move into California’s least-restrictive yellow tier in a few weeks, if coronavirus metrics improve. Bars that aren’t serving meals could then open inside at 25% capacity or 100 people, whichever is fewer. Restaurants still must be at 50% capacity indoors.
For now, the Chill Bar atmosphere is slightly changed from early 2020, but not necessarily in a bad way, Giesecke said. A willingness to be adaptable has been key in surviving as a business, he said.
“Before, when we were inside, you were in a nightclub and you were dancing,” he said. “Now you’re outside and you can be under the stars, and you’re still listening to great music, you’re eating great food.”
Arenas bar owners have ideas for the future of the area. Streetbar co-owner Farnsworth, for one, is in favor of designating the street pedestrian-only and planting a rainbow arch on either end.
But there’s also a simple joy in merely making it to 2021, and for Streetbar, its 30-year anniversary.
“We made it,” Farnsworth said. “We made it.”
Contact Amanda on Twitter at @AmandaCUlrich or by email at amanda.ulrich@desertsun.com.
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