D.C. lost yet another LGBTQ nightlife venue on Tuesday with the announcement that Cobalt, located at 1639 R St. NW, has closed its doors for good.
Owner Eric Little confirmed the closure in a message posted to the club’s Facebook page.
“It’s no secret that the building that housed Cobalt and the adjacent property recently sold,” Little wrote. “With the combination of the sale of the buildings, the start of demolition, costly infrastructure repairs and upgrades that we would need to shoulder to remain open for the short remainder of our lease (without an opportunity to extend the lease) along with a slow decline in sales we decided it was the right time to close the business to focus on our other businesses and some personal family needs.”
Even prior to Little’s announcement, speculation about the club’s fate had swirled for weeks, and hit fever-pitch after a photo was posted to Facebook showing the club’s main entrance door with a sign reading “CLOSED FOR WATER PROLBEMS” (sic) posted on the glass.
In the Facebook post, Little thanked the customers and staff who contributed to the club during its two-decade run, saying he was proud of Cobalt’s legacy.
“The gay bar industry has been changing over the past few years with the popularity of dating apps, changing social norms, and pop-up parties/events at non-gay venues and we applaud these evolutions as positive progress,” Little wrote. “And it is our hope that patrons will encourage these businesses to support the greater LGBT community to continue the good work and social change that Cobalt and all of the many other gay bars, restaurants, and businesses (past and present) have worked so hard to achieve.
“We understand the property will be redeveloped into residential use and we wish the new building owners and future residents the best of success and hope that the buildings will bring them all as much joy and happiness as it has brought the entire Cobalt family.”
The Elton John Impact Awards are expanding this year, honoring LGBTQ figures and allies for their cultural impact and support of LGBTQ organizations.
Hosted by Billy Porter and radio personality Elvis Duran, the special -- presented by iHeartMedia and P&G -- will debut June 1 as a podcast series on the iHeartRadio app and an audio broadcast across iHeartRadio PRIDE stations.
The podcast series aims to raise visibility and funding for LGBTQ organizations, including the Elton John AIDS Foundation.
"Growing up, my family was politically aware," says Democratic California State Sen. Scott Wiener. "I remember in 1980, when Reagan was elected, I was 10 years old. I remember our house was a house of mourning that election night, and there was a sense in my home of just trepidation of what was going to happen because even though Reagan seems somewhat more benign than Trump, it was a very right-wing takeover.
"My family was very aware and attuned to what was happening, and especially as Jews, you're always attuned to who's taking over the government and what they could do."
Growing up in Southern New Jersey, in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Wiener, the son of an optometrist, was raised in a conservative Jewish family, with ancestors who fled the pogroms of Russia and Eastern Europe in the early 20th century before immigrating to the United States. While his hometown ultimately transitioned from a farm town into a more developed suburb, there was no local synagogue until Wiener's parents formed one with a dozen other Jewish families from the surrounding area.
When Metro Weekly first spoke with Milo Miles, late last year, the Canadian adult performer was already well aware that crossing the border into the United States could be a risky proposition.
"In Canada, we have pre-clearance," Miles said, referring to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Preclearance operation at Toronto Pearson Airport, whereby passengers heading to the U.S. are screened in Canada before boarding their flights, rather than when they land stateside. "They take their job a little too seriously. I have two phones, a personal one and a business one. The personal one usually gets cleared before I cross the border. No Trump memes, for example. Sex work is really frowned upon, and sex work alone is probably reason enough to prevent entry. There are precautions that I take."
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