That was pretty surreal for me, especially since it was early in my career and I’m trying to make sure Major League Baseball doesn’t know I’m gay. So I went in there that night after the Red Sox game, and of course, the NESN replay is showing on the screen. “Fritz was definitely a sports bar,” Scott said. That would be the long-gone Luxor, located upstairs from Mario’s Italian Restaurant on the fringe of Bay Village, but that’s a story for another day. I remember there was another gay bar nearby, a video bar, that was up over a restaurant.” I found Fritz, which turned out to be very close by. “One night, after I had worked the plate at Fenway Park, I was back at the hotel, looking for a place to go out and grab a beer. “The umpires used to stay in a hotel on Stuart Street,” Scott said. (File photo by Elaine Thompson / Associated Press) “That was pretty surreal for me … sitting in a gay bar watching myself do a plate game on television,” said Dale Scott, who was the first active major-league umpire to come out as gay. While not technically a gay bar, it’s a lively, gay-friendly establishment that’s involved in Boston’s LGBTQ+ community, including its sponsorship of the annual Chandler Street Block Party. The space formerly occupied by Fritz, meanwhile, is now The Trophy Room. It’s basically the same ownership, some of the same staff, and, absolutely, the same clientele. When Fritz closed in 2014 - again, it was a lease situation - Cathedral Station emerged on Washington Street. For it’s impossible to have a discussion about Cathedral Station without talking about its predecessor, the much-loved Fritz, which operated for years on the corner of East Berkeley and Chandler streets, about a half-mile away. Rumors of Cathedral Station’s uncertain future have been circulating for months. Nobody’s going to pay $5 million to buy a piece of property to own a gay bar.” “The future of gay bars, LGBT bars, whatever you want to call them, they’ll have to be smaller places that hold 100 people, 120 people, where you can get a lease. “Prices in Boston are out of control,” said Billy Svetz, 81, a part-owner of the bar. Proponents and opponents will be allowed to weigh in via video conference call and by telephone.Īnd if Cathedral Station does close? Finding a new home in the city won’t be easy. A virtual hearing will be held by the city’s Zoning Board of Appeal Tuesday morning at 9:30. The dispensary has already been approved by the Boston Cannabis Board. The bar has been operating on a month-to-month basis since its lease ran out in 2020, and now a - what else - cannabis dispensary is poised to move into the building at 1222 Washington Street that has been Cathedral Station’s home since 2014. In an age when dating apps have made it so that old-fashioned, big-city gay bars are going the way of daily newspapers and mom-and-pop neighborhood convenience stores, Cathedral Station, located in the city’s South End, faces an uncertain future. Suffice it to say, Major League Baseball’s celebration of Pride Month hasn’t been without its controversies.īut Boston’s queer sports fans now have more important things to worry about: They might be losing their beloved gay sports bar.
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