the building under one of america's oldest gay bars is for sale for $2.5 million. the bar's owner wants the community to buy it. we'll pass the hat.

via the San Francisco Chronicle and the property listing

The White Horse Inn opened the year Prohibition ended and has been pouring ever since, through every app that promised to make gay bars obsolete. Now it has to outlast a real estate listing.

The two-story building on Telegraph Avenue in Oakland that houses the bar is for sale at $2.5 million, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Friday. The listing, from Tamara Spokane of Citrine Advisors, went up on Oct. 2 and describes a roughly 7,600-square-foot mixed-use building with the bar on the ground floor and five apartments upstairs, "fully occupied."

The bar is not for sale, and it is not closing. Spokane told the Chronicle that a sale will not affect the bar's seven-year lease, which runs through 2029. What happens after 2029 is the question nobody can answer yet.

who is selling, and why

The building belongs to Graham Bell, who bought it in 1986 and ran the bar himself from 1980 to 1995, according to the Chronicle. "I just turned 82, owning a building is a lot of responsibility and I've decided to reap the rewards, so to speak," he told the paper. The bar, he added, "is a tradition I hope to see continue." Fair enough. We would also like to retire at 82 on a building we bought in 1986.

Patty Dingle, who has owned the bar since 2022, told the Chronicle she is exploring buying the building herself and may look for partners, possibly as a collective like the one that runs the Stud in San Francisco, or a nonprofit like the Oasis. She also said revenue has been falling year after year. "This bar needs to live way beyond my years," she said.

The bar's official opening was 1933, the Chronicle reports, and it is widely billed as the oldest continuously operating gay bar in the country. (That title has rivals, and we are not going to referee it this morning.) Mama Celeste, who founded the Oakland drag festival Oaklash, told the paper she saw the White Horse as an alternative to "more cisgender, white, gay-dominated spaces," and that Dingle, a Black lesbian owner, "really solidified that."

This fall has not been kind to old gay bars: we have already written about the Las Vegas Eagle and the Boulevard in Pasadena closing. The White Horse at least has a lease through 2029 and an owner with a plan. Start the fundraiser, we'll bring singles.