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.”
"I love people," says Becca Balint. "I love getting to know them. I love figuring out what makes them tick. I love laughing with them.... I love people, and I get energy from them."
The U.S. Representative from Vermont is definitely a people person: personable, gregarious, cheerful, and willing to engage in conversation, whether it's about serious, pressing political issues or more informal interactions, like cooing over her communication director's pet dog, who briefly appeared on screen during the first minutes of our Zoom interview.
Born on a U.S. Army base in Heidelberg, West Germany, Balint, the daughter of a service member who was himself an immigrant from post-World War II Hungary, lived briefly abroad before moving stateside to Peekskill, New York.
A popular LGBTQ nightclub in Sacramento, California, is prohibiting patrons who wear MAGA-related attire from entering the establishment.
Badlands, in the city's Lavender Heights district, announced the policy on social media. Management claimed they were motivated to impose the ban after a patron wore a MAGA hat while in the bar, leading some patrons to complain that they were made to feel uncomfortable and unsafe.
"At Badlands Sacramento, we are committed to creating a space where the LGBTQ+ community and our allies feel safe, welcomed, and respected," TJ Bruce, the bar's owner, wrote in a social media post. "Recently, a guest entered the bar wearing MAGA attire, which led to some discomfort among patrons.
Nick Cave has graced the world with major exhibitions, design objects, sculptures, and installations filling public spaces from museums and gardens to the Times Square subway station. Internationally renowned for his signature Soundsuits, the artist, through singular skill and artistic alchemy, weaves fabric into majestic totems, and casts haunting, colossal figures in bronze.
His artistic imagination seemingly knows no bounds. Even a video call can become a work of art in Cave's hands, as I discover when he pops onscreen for the interview clothed in black, framed from the neck up against a deep black background, his perfectly-lit head floating in space.
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