The bar shuttered its doors in March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the collective announced a more permanent closure that May, commemorating the moment with an online drag funeral. But even as it closed, the collective prepared for the future, holding online drag shows and selling merch to stay afloat.
Ryan compares the road to reopening to the myth of Sisyphus. “I’m not gonna lie, I was losing hope,” she says. “But it’s so fun to be able to share in something that we’ve worked so hard on over the years, and to have our level of excitement mirrored in so many other people — even people who I’m meeting for the first time, who want to tell me their own personal story with the Stud, what it means to them or how excited are for us. It really has made the whole wild ordeal feel so worth it.”
As much as the collective wants to carry on the Stud’s legacy, there are new things to look forward to in this latest iteration, too. The new location is much bigger, with two bars and an additional outdoor patio space, though it is still undergoing upgrades; Ryan says they have plans to take out an industrial kitchen in the back and add in a stage, which the bar currently lacks.
In typical San Francisco fashion, the new space comes with its own chaotic, gay history: it played host to a vegetarian restaurant that was a front for a group whose members were implicated in the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, and before that served as a leather bar called the Stables in the ’70s. (“This is my dad joke at the moment, the fact that we’re bringing the Stud home to the Stables,” Ryan says.)
In terms of events, they hope to bring back some old favorites while also making space for new generations of club kids and baby queens. (A queer K-Pop dance party is already on the calendar!) For the collective, Ryan says, it’s important to find the “balance between honoring this amazing legacy, and then also setting it up to succeed moving into the future… we feel ourselves as both the stewards of the past, and also the people who are responsible for ushering in this new generation.”
Even with its new look, longtimers like Bieschke can still feel the ghosts in the space of those who came before. “I really do feel that sense of relief, and optimism, and safety when I come into the Stud,” he says. “It feels like a home to people like me who had to find their way in the world, who don’t fit in anywhere else. It’s just a wonderful, loving community that accepts you, warts and all.”
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