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Woke Mob Crashes Out After Lesbian Bar Drops Mask Mandate

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by blueapples
Monday, Sep 28, 2026 - 11:00

blueapples on X | ashesofacacia.substack.com

Six years removed from the coronavirus pandemic, memories of 2020 seem like a fever dream to most people whose lives have returned to a sense of normalcy decoupled from the hysteria that gripped the world. For others, the mass formation psychosis that infected society is a nightmare they still find themselves living, despite the rest of the world waking up from it. The uproar following a Massachusetts lesbian bar’s decision to ditch the mask requirement it still found itself enforcing years after any government mandates have been in effect highlights the lingering effects of the pandemic that have proven to be more debilitating than the virus itself.

Safe and fun times at the Last Ditch Bar!!!!

After consulting the Massachusetts LGBT Chamber of Commerce on how to draw in new customers in an effort to save its faltering business, the Last Ditch Bar and Arts Venue in Greenfield, Massachusetts, announced its decision to drop a policy requiring its patrons to wear face masks on August 31st, 2026. “It is with love we inform our immunocompromised disabled divas we will be opening Saturday nights as mask optional,” the bar wrote in a post published on its Instagram profile announcing a new lineup of DJs and other events designed to breathe new life into the establishment.

Despite not opening until 2025, ownership had previously required customers to wear KN-95 or higher-grade face masks to enter the bar every day that it was open. However, that restriction proved to be a costly decision, as the archaic and dystopian policy proved to plunge the establishment into dire financial straits from the alienating effect it had on potential customers. Faced with the precarious position that requirement placed them in, the bar’s ownership made the decision to announce that it would be relaxing its rules by making Saturday nights mask-optional in an attempt to attract new customers.

Although the bar’s ownership anticipated that the new policy would turn the tide for the business’ fortunes, the decision had an antithetical effect, as the announcement was met with outrage from an angry mob of customers who viewed the change as an attack on their health and well-being. Within days of posting the announcement, the bar found itself battered by a deluge of hundreds of comments attacking it for dropping its mask requirement — even for just one day out of the week.

Critics of the bar blasted it with histrionic comments, categorizing the new policy as setting the stage for a “mass disabling event” and labeling it as a “eugenicist” ploy against their faithful customers. Comments decrying the change were filled with not just the woke terminology that defined the zeitgeist of the age of COVID hysteria but also the unhinged psychology that fueled the collective outrage of that era. “I hope your venue gets firebombed for robbing my fellow immunocompromised people of their Saturday plans just to scrape extra revenue from ableists,” wrote one commenter, whose remarks stood as a microcosm of the madness the bar found itself unable to escape.

The fallout from the decision proved to be much more damaging than just the sheer outrage the bar faced in the comments section of its announcement. Following the implementation of the new policy, the business found itself in the throes of a boycott against it organized by irate once-loyal customers who were previously its lifeblood. What once were the busiest nights of the week for the bar transformed into a barren landscape devoid of any business.

Before dropping its mask requirement, the Last Ditch Bar was already struggling to stay in business due to a range of radically leftist policies at odds with the reality of commercial success. In addition to requiring masks, the bar also operated on a delusional business model built on the philosophies that “nobody will be barred from entry due to lack of funds,” and “poor and unhoused people are welcome in the space.” That philosophy was emblematic of the politics of the bar’s three owners, housemates Jackie Matellian, Asa Rosario, and Sage Territo, one of whom is a drag performer demanding to be referred to by it/its pronouns. It was also the impetus for the ownership of the bar falling behind on bills and being unable to pay themselves or their staff.

Confronted with the reality of the pressures of running a business, Rosario and Territo left the ownership group of the Last Ditch Bar months before it announced its decision to make masks optional on Saturday nights. The extent of the comedy of errors that plunged the bar into the turmoil it found itself facing was distilled by the fact that one of the owners left the establishment to enroll in clown college, viewing that decision as more pragmatic than trying to make the floundering business succeed. Now alone as the last remaining owner of the bar, Matellian found herself having to pick up the pieces of the failing business by doing damage control in the wake of the outrage over dropping its mask requirement.

The bar first issued an apology, stating, “We are sorry for our passive and dismissive tone of our change to the norms and schedule impacting the most intersectional of us.” In an attempt to quell the animosity the bar was still facing, Matellian then hosted the bar’s monthly community meeting on September 11th to provide a forum to allow disillusioned customers to air their grievances. The meeting proved to be little more than another chapter in the Kafkaesque tale of the bar’s ongoing demise. The attempt to salvage the bar’s faltering fortunes ultimately became a platform for the unhinged masses at the heart of its demise to accelerate that downfall.

Matellian decided to have the community meeting held at the Last Ditch Bar simulcast on Zoom to accommodate as many participants as possible. The 10 people who attended the meeting in person were outnumbered by as many as 15 who joined the event virtually and immediately hijacked it by posting the same hysterical comments that plagued the bar’s initial announcement to drop its mask requirement. As each comment was posted, it was read aloud for everyone attending in person to hear. Those comments included criticisms of how the meeting was conducted. One angry participant attending virtually through Zoom wrote, “It’s messed up that the mediator is dismissing those attending virtually. That’s not accessibility.” Another virtual participant chastised Matellian for hosting a licensed therapist in attendance to address the feelings of attendees of the meeting, claiming they could use their position to force dissidents against the new mask-optional policy into mental hospitals against their will. “A lot of people are calling for an acknowledgment of harm and I’m hearing a white therapist...center the feelings of a majority white and white adjacent staff,” another wrote.

The latest round of inescapable outrage that unleashed itself during the meeting was enough to finally break Matellian, as she burst into tears from the onslaught of comments. “It was not my passion project,” Matellian cried through her mask. She went on to explain the dire financial straits she found herself in as the last remaining owner, including her responsibility over the $50,000 small business loan she had taken out with her housemates to open the bar. “I never really wanted this,” she said as she wept. Despite the need to focus on trauma and harm that Matellian’s audience kept emphasizing, their fixation was not matched with any empathy, as they callously dismissed her tears. “You chose to use your time to spill tears and center your feelings,” one attendee responded to Matellian’s sobbing. “This is incredibly racist and deflecting behavior.”

Although the downfall of the Last Ditch Bar has played out like a black comedy, the saga is more of a horror story encapsulating how deeply damaging the consequences of the coronavirus still prove to be. While critics of the pandemic response can rightfully point to the bar’s example as evidence of the malignant leftist indoctrination inculcated through the mass formation psychosis that ensued following COVID, the hubris of reveling in its demise clouds their judgment from seeing a much deeper issue. Six years after the pandemic began, a return to normalcy is itself a sign of social malaise, as the post-COVID world order has accepted allowing the architects of the pandemic to escape any accountability as its new normality. While that acceptance is not as hysterical as the behavior exhibited by those still living in the insanity that crippled the world in 2020, it is a symptom showing how the ills that the pandemic brought upon the world have yet to find any remedy.

Contributor posts published on Zero Hedge do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Zero Hedge, and are not selected, edited or screened by Zero Hedge editors.
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