Last Ditch soft closure leaves $50,000 startup loan unresolved

By Marcus Bennett

Last Ditch announced a soft closure on Oct. 26 after founder Jackie Matellian carried a $50,000 startup loan while the landlord sought $3,900 in overdue rent. The Boston Globe reported that workers had gone unpaid.

By September, Matellian had spent months living in her truck while working several jobs to keep the Greenfield, Massachusetts, lesbian bar open. She was the last remaining original founder. The figures show a business whose cash could not cover labor, debt and occupancy.

Why did the mask policy fail?

Last Ditch built its offer around access and harm reduction. It welcomed lesbians, transsexuals and other queer people who could not afford the cover, and ran a free store with food, clothing and harm-reduction supplies. It required KN95 masks or better. For immunocompromised patrons, those precautions made a night out safer.

The inclusive model explained why the community cared. It also complicated how owners financed the venue. Desperate for cash, management announced through a cheerful Instagram post that Saturday nights would become mask-optional. The change alienated immunocompromised regulars. It did not attract enough new customers to pay rent.

Its operating choices were inseparable from its economics: cover-free admission, safer nights and community services built loyalty, while the same inclusion made the venue harder for its owners to finance.

A subsequent community meeting lasted three and a half hours and ended without a resolution. The policy shift fractured trust and left the financial crisis unresolved. The dispute became national entertainment, but attention did not repair the operating model. By Oct. 26, Last Ditch had announced its soft closure.

Last Ditch was functioning as a community social center while carrying a bar’s payroll and rent. One venue cannot replace the wider social infrastructure around it.

Can a cooperative relieve the pressure?

Matellian had told The Boston Globe she planned to turn the bar into a cooperative. New members would need to assume work she had been doing and agree on how existing debt would be handled. The analysis states the ownership priority plainly: “I also want us to inherit the ability to put actual premises under our control.”

A second test is equally concrete: “Sharing authority has to include sharing responsibility for the work, with limits on what any one person is expected to carry.”

Cooperative membership would spread decision-making and give members a role in handling debt, but it would also create more opportunities for disagreement, procedural disputes and shared work that no single member can postpone.

A cooperative label will not redistribute those duties if Matellian remains the person everyone calls when something goes wrong. Shared ownership would also give members power to dispute decisions and occasions to disagree about them. That is a governance problem, not an accounting trick. Members who debate without covering shifts leave the same burden on Matellian.

What did Western Massachusetts build first?

UMass Amherst documents more than 400 lesbian and feminist groups active in the region between 1968 and 1978. Northampton had the Common Womon Club, Lesbian Gardens, Womonfyre Books and the Nutcracker’s Suite self-defense dojo. These places made social life and organizing possible outside institutions that routinely excluded the women who built them.

By pooling money, owning property and sustaining organizing outside institutions that routinely excluded them, these groups built a practical economic base for community life and mutual support.

In 1976, women behind Common Womon pooled money to buy property through Ceres Inc., the nonprofit they had formed. Donations and a loan financed renovations. An adjacent storefront produced rental income and housed the Nutcracker’s Suite, then Womonfyre Books. Property control gave the women room to support other projects and helped pay for their shared place.

Common Womon also collected sliding-scale membership dues. The Valley Women’s History Collaborative lists benefits that helped sustain the club. This history offers an operating model built around pooled capital, property control, rental income and member contributions rather than dependence on one owner.

Why do operating records matter?

Common Womon closed in 1982. Womonfyre lasted until 1989. Womonfyre faced harassment and threats from outside the lesbian community, as well as conflicts over sexual politics and what the shop should sell. Its archive preserves those disputes alongside bank statements and instructions for running the store.

Keeping bank statements and operating instructions beside evidence of sexual-political conflict reveals a practical lesson: governance needs records, rules and training, not merely good intentions.

Last Ditch would need procedures for collective decisions and conflict resolution. A disagreement over how to run a bar does not become abuse because members are arguing. Treating every conflict as a character judgment can keep the argument alive after the conduct stops or the policy changes. The practical response includes paid training and a written account of the work.

What would make a reopening credible?

First, Last Ditch needs to determine whether a new ownership group can remain in the building on terms the business can afford. A cooperative would also need shared labor, transparent books and creative financing strategies.

Reopening will require more than a new label or a familiar group of supporters, because the proposed structure must absorb labor, resolve old debt and carry costs that one overwhelmed founder could not sustain. Decision procedures must cover disputes without allowing personal blame to outlast operational decisions. Members need training and a written record of responsibilities that lets them cover shifts.

Anyone asking the community to save Last Ditch must accept shared control of what survives. Last Ditch can reopen durably only if inclusion becomes enforceable economics rather than one person’s burden, and prospective owners can show that the venue will carry its obligations.