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Southeast Portland LGBTQ+ bar Crush is wrapping up nearly 25 years serving the city’s queer community. New Year’s Eve will be Crush’s last night in business, according to a social media post announcing the Buckman neighborhood bar’s closure posted Dec. 2.
If any of this sounds familiar, it’s because Crush announced its pending closure exactly one year ago to the day. Four days later, an employee’s investment would buy John “Woody” Clarke’s bar another year of serving craft cocktails and elevated pub fare made with fresh, locally sourced ingredients down the block from Revolution Hall, Eater reported at the time.
“We realize this news sounds familiar as we narrowly avoided closure last year,” Crush’s announcement reads. “But sadly this time it is a reality.”
When it opened in 2001, Crush’s restrooms were radical at a time when large gender-neutral bathrooms were practically unheard of, and bars catered to gay or bisexual men and women, leaving little room for people whose identities and orientations were more fluid. Entertainers could cut their teeth on Crush’s intimate stage with nearly any show or dance party imaginable. It survived the closure of other nearby gay bars, such as Starky’s, to become an institution.
When the pandemic hit, Clarke infamously called the cops on unionizing employees who staged a sit-in protesting their pending layoffs. Clarke ultimately settled after the Oregon Bureau of Labor & Industries sided with former Crush employees in their complaint of retaliation. Queer Portlanders with a long memory still remember the 2020 incident, though Crush was far from deserted over the following four years.