Bars in WeHo’s Boystown Remain Closed Despite Lifted Restrictions

Los Angeles County met the threshold for the less restrictive orange tier in the State’s Blueprint for a Safer Economy. In a revised Los Angeles Health Officer Order that went into effect April 5th, bars are now allowed to open their outdoor patios with distancing, masking and infection control safety measures in place. Despite the recent lift in restrictions, bars that don’t serve food like Trunks, Motherlode, Micky’s and Revolver, all located walking distance from each other in WeHo’s Boystown/LGBT District, remained closed this past weekend. All four bars have outdoor patios, however under the orange tier, indoor operations are still not permitted.

A source tells WEHO TIMES that Micky’s will not open until they are able to operate at 100% capacity. “With the diminished capacity and even with the outdoor seating, which we have, we did three or four studies and crunched the numbers a couple of times and it came to something really untenable,” Micky’s bartender Jason Beers, said in an interview with Gay Los Angeles. “We would have to have business 80 percent of the time to turn a profit. So financially, the numbers didn’t work for us.”

The same could be said for Mother Lode, Trunks Bar and Revolver Video Bar. They have much smaller outdoor patios than Micky’s.

According to a source, Mother Lode will open on May 1st, but it is not clear if the timeline is based on the expectation that restrictions will be lifted to allow indoor operations at bars by next month.

Trunks and Revolver, as well as FUBAR on the east side of WeHo, remain silent on social media. Calls and emails are not being returned about when they anticipate opening.

Bars were allowed to re-open in West Hollywood on Friday June 19, 2020 after being shut down on March 15th. Governor Gavin Newsom ordered the closing of  bars in Seven Counties in California on June 28ty. Los Angeles is one of those counties, which directly impacted the City of West Hollywood.

The shutdown was in response to California’s surge in coronavirus infections and increasing hospitalizations after reopening most sectors. Bars have been shut down since and has forced several bars to close for good. Gay institutions like Rage Nightclub, Gold Coast Bar and Flaming Saddles have shuttered due to their lack of revenue during the pandemic. Gym Bar initially shut down, but it is coming back to life at a new location two doors down from Rage.

The closure of the bars did not deter the Santa Monica Boulevard from being busy this past weekend. There were crowds on the sidewalks and the usual lines at the Abbey and Rocco’s.  Fiesta Cantina also had a line that curled up San Vicente Boulevard. Police were called at one point to do crowd control and make sure people were wearing masks.

Every county in California is assigned to a tier based on its positivity rate, adjusted case rate, and health equity metric. Counties must remain in a tier for at least 3 weeks before moving to a less restrictive tier. Counties must meet the next tier’s criteria for two consecutive weeks to move to a less restrictive tier. If a county’s metrics worsen for two consecutive weeks, it will be assigned a more restrictive tier. California has reached 4 million vaccination doses in the Vaccine Equity Benchmark. The yellow tier is not far where most indoor business operations are open with modifications.