A Philly gay sports bar will close its doors this weekend after members of the LGBTQIA+ community accused it of a cocktail of egregious behavior, including transphobia, misogyny and a slew of microaggressions.
With Game 1 of the WNBA Finals set for Saturday afternoon, instead of a celebration of everything queer, Marsha’s South Street will hold its own funeral. After facing serious allegations of the bar not being gay enough, Black queer bar owner Chivonn Anderson tried to hold on for dear life, but ultimately she was left no choice but to call it quits during the Holy Grail for gay sports bars.
“It is with heavy hearts that we have decided to close Marsha’s doors for good. We have loved serving this community, and still believe that more than ever this city needs more women/queer/BIPOC- owned businesses,” Anderson wrote Thursday on the bar’s Instagram page.
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“For all of our beloved regulars and supporters- we will miss you! Please come by this weekend and say goodbye. We will be open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for one last hurrah before we shut down,” she added.
How is it possible for a Philly gay sports bar not to be gay enough? This all started back in April when Black trans manager and bartender Olivia Rhodes claimed that the place was a hellhole for gays to work. “Marsha’s may claim to be a queer safe space, but it is nothing like that,” Rhodes said on Instagram.
It was the ultimate insult.
Word quickly got around. Fair or not, Marsha’s was in trouble. Rhodes also claimed the bar’s general manager, Rylan, said that nonbinary queers were “overly emotional, too sensitive” and that the place needed to hire more men because the bar could use “more testosterone.”
You get the point. The workers wanted this place to be way gayer. More trans.
“Marsha’s has a long history of misogyny, and racism that doesn’t align with the queer identity it claims and represents,” Rhodes charged.
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Another former worker, who is a biracial, bisexual woman, claimed she was treated poorly, too. There were also allegations levied on Reddit by an employee who says the head chef misgendered workers. “Marsha’s is actively and explicitly not a queer space, it’s at BEST a space for cis white lesbians to come ogle the 3-4 minorities that come through on any given night and at worst it’s just a straight sports bar half-heartedly marketed as vaguely lesbian adjacent,” a Reddit user added.
Anderson tried her best to weather the storm. She even bent the knee in a September Instagram post that was clearly a full-court shot to save her business as the WNBA playoffs were firing on all cylinders.
“We have trained staff on biased language and microaggressions,” the bar owner wrote. “We enforce a zero-tolerance policy against hate and bias. We have worked with, and will continue to work with, amazing restorative justice practitioners in our community that have held us accountable. We have done the work, and we want to keep growing.”
Too late. The gays already canceled you, Chivonn. Now you’re hosting a funeral as Angel Reese tips off her first WNBA Finals.
“It must be liquidated,” the angry Reddit user wrote in April of the bar.
Mission accomplished.