As spaces close or relocate in search of cheaper rent, there is an opportunity to rethink both the nature of queer space and the boundaries of Seattle’s gayborhood. Wildrose co-owner Martha Manning talks to a customer at her bar. “People have met their partners here they’ve been coming here for Pride for 10 years,” she says. “They get emotional, saying, ‘You can’t close,’ and we’re trying not to.”Įver since I wandered its gritty streets as a gender-confused closeted teen, Capitol Hill was magic a chosen home.
My two gay best friends and I were dinner regulars at the Broadway Grill haunted mortuary-turned-gay-bar Chapel and danced our hearts out at club and drag performance venue R Place, where I always felt welcome, both before and after I came out as queer and gender-expansive. I even fumbled early attempts at flirting with women at the Wildrose while my wingmen watched. When Kristina Hudson English, who co-founded community group The Social Queer with wife Molly, left Baltimore’s queer district in 2015, she wanted to go where she felt welcome, which meant Capitol Hill and within walking distance of the Wildrose. “I love the space - the bathrooms, the red paint, the rough-around-the-edges vibe,” English says. “‘Magical’ is a good way to put it,” says Sarah Toce, publisher of the Seattle Lesbian.