Last Ditch, the Massachusetts lesbian bar that was at the center of a viral Boston Globe article, has finally responded to the attention it received all over the country. The statement that began the controversy was the bar announcing on August 31 that it would ease its mask mandate on Saturday nights, instead making them mask optional.
“Our community should expect more details in the future,” the bar posted to Instagram on Thursday. This was its first communication since the Globe article. The post did not go into further details about the state of the bar. It instead requested aid go to Soe Noire, the performer quoted throughout the original article with critiques about Last Ditch’s decision.
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“Today we need to address the safety of the community itself. Stop harassing Soe Noire,” the post continues. “It is neither productive, progressive, nor valiant to attack and harass a black patron. He has been a collaborator and performer of Last Ditch for a while, and he deserves to speak his mind about accountability and repair from the bar.”
Last Ditch clarified some “disorganized” comments in the Globe’s article, explaining that Noire “did not call for a shutdown, nor did he call for the bar to be firebombed.” The post adds that Soe did not make any belittling comments about the owner’s homelessness and that “Soe has been getting additional threats, slurs, and harassment, and now he is being reported to the police over something he did not do.”
The original article quoted a person from a Zoom chat who said they hoped Last Ditch would be firebombed for “robbing my fellow immunocompromised people of their Saturday plans,” though that quote was not attributed to Noire.
Noire, a gender-expansive lesbian who uses he/him pronouns, criticized a white therapist brought to a Zoom mediation session, according to the original article. He claimed the therapist was “center(ing) the feelings of a majority white and white-adjacent staff.” He also criticized the bar owner, Jackie Matellian, for “incredibly racist and deflecting behavior.”
A community note appended to Last Ditch’s Instagram post features a user who wrote that “Noire is quoted multiple times by the Boston Globe using the language of inclusivity to bully and harass the staff and owners of Last Ditch after the bar relaxed mask mandates for Saturday nights.”
The bar turned off comments for the Instagram post and, after the article was released on Tuesday, also closed its Google Reviews.
The presence of the bar has been relatively silent since Tuesday, and that is likely partly due to the unexpected and sudden media attention for the small town.
Elizabeth DeNeeve, the owner of an “alternative clothing store” in Greenfield, shows empathy for the bar. “They were being trolled and told that despite all of the hard work they were doing interacting with the community, that it wasn’t enough; it wasn’t the right kind of interaction,” she tells the Recorder. She said she hopes the attention “brings them endless business.”
City Council President Lora Wondolowski also told the Recorder that she is concerned with Last Ditch’s ability to persevere through the attention as a small business.
It certainly is a factor of concern. Matellian is the only remaining owner of the three who launched the bar. She told the Globe that she had been living out of her truck for six months, had a “trashed” credit score, and was working four jobs to pay back a $50,000 loan that launched the bar. Many staff work on a volunteer basis to keep the business afloat.
In April, Last Ditch opened a donation site that originally sought $4,000, but has since increased its goal to $15,000. At the time of this writing, the fundraiser has reached 120% of its goal, surpassing its target. The money will go toward paying back rent, a commercial air purifier, paying staff, facilities maintenance, and structural repairs.
Despite the online backlash, many local business owners who spoke to the Recorder praised the bar’s decision to have a one-night-only mask-optional policy, given that the economics of running a small business in 2026 are not ideal.
Economic conditions and the difficulties of running a small business are of particular concern in LGBTQ+ spaces, as several gay bars have closed in recent years due to financial difficulties.
Photo courtesy of Unsplash
