The fight to save one of Baltimore’s last gay bars

Soon after Jim Becker came out as gay in 1967, he ducked into a Mount Vernon bar called Leon’s.

In the dark, smoky bar, men used pseudonyms for fear of being outed, as homosexual acts were illegal in Maryland. Bartenders, wary of vice squad raids, would blow a whistle if couples leaned in for a kiss.

But to Becker, arriving at Leon’s was a kind of homecoming. He could explore his identity, connect with other gay men and build community in the anxious years before the 1969 Stonewall uprising, a pivotal moment in the LGBTQ+ rights movement.

“Once I came out, I made it a point to go to Leon’s every night for a while,” said Becker, 81. “That’s how most of us met our friends.”

For generations of LGBTQ+ Marylanders and their friends, visiting Leon’s, Baltimore’s oldest continually operating gay bar, was a rite of passage. Through repression and liberation, the tragedy of AIDS, the victory of marriage equality, and anxieties of the second Trump administration, Leon’s bartenders kept slinging drinks and welcoming regulars.

That changed abruptly last month when Leon’s closed — temporarily — following the death of its longtime owner, Ron Singer.

As Singer’s heirs work to reopen Leon’s, many in the queer community have been rallying around the bar, fearful of losing a living link to LGBTQ+ history. Dozens of queer-centered bars and nightclubs have closed in Baltimore in recent decades, part of a national trend fueled in part by greater acceptance of LGBTQ+ people and the rise of dating apps.

“It’s such an institution. It represents the last of those old pre-Stonewall gay bars,” said Ben Egerman, the author of a series of zines about Maryland’s queer past.

Samm Singer, who inherited the bar with her three siblings, plans to run it with her husband, longtime bartender Sam Smith, and hopes to reopen in the coming weeks.

At Leon’s last week, bartender Joe Leloudis recounted the history of the bar, which was founded by convicted bootlegger Leon Lampe soon after the end of Prohibition in the 1930s.

Leon’s “quickly became a place of degenerates and weird people,” Leloudis said.

But the bar “didn’t come out of the closet” until the 1950s when patrons ushered in a gay man who had been roughed up by police, Leloudis said, and assured him he’d always be safe there. By the late ’50s, the clientele was primarily gay men.

Many remnants of Leon’s past remain. Liquor bottles sit on a wooden dumbwaiter that drag queen Shawna Alexander used to make a grand entrance into the bar.

Three ghosts haunt Leon’s, Leloudis said. There’s a chain-smoking chef who emits an otherwise inexplicable puff of smoke, a voyeuristic phantom lurking in the bathroom and a lonely shadow that paces the bar just before last call, looking for one last hookup for all eternity.

While many other queer-centered bars have closed, Leon’s has drawn steady crowds and even seen an uptick in business in recent years, said Samm Singer.

Samm Singer said there’s been an outpouring of support, including from the Drinkery and Club Car — gay bars that have hosted Leon’s karaoke and trivia nights and allowed Leon’s bartenders to work shifts behind the bar.

“The community is amazing,” Singer said. “I’m inheriting my family business, but I’m also working with family.”

Singer and Smith plan to maintain Leon’s quirky, divey vibe. The back bar is festooned with Pride flags, Christmas tinsel, bloody paper Halloween knives and a skeleton with an erection.

Leon’s main draw — besides low prices and a heavy pour — is community, patrons say. The bar hosts regular karaoke nights and drag shows, and serves a full Thanksgiving feast each year for those who don’t feel welcome at a family table.

Dozens packed into Leon’s last month for a final toast before the temporary closure.

“It was so, so packed. It made me so happy,” said patron Derek Chavis, 41. “People who I hadn’t seen in a long time, people I had never seen before — they were just there and having a good time.”

Two other gay bars, The Pepper Hill Club and Eddie’s, opened around the same time as Leon’s, said Egerman, whose history zines have been compiled into a book.

Decades ago, customers learned about the bars by word of mouth or guidebooks published for gay men and lesbians, Egerman said.

Following Stonewall, the number of gay and lesbian bars around the country grew rapidly.

Baltimore was home to dozens of queer venues in the late 1900s and early 2000s, including Club Bunns, The Hippo, The Gallery, Grand Central, Coconuts, Port in a Storm, Nellie’s, Mary’s — all of which are now closed.

The number of gay bars across the country dropped by 41% between 2002 and 2019, before COVID triggered further closures. The number of lesbian bars has plummeted from 200 in the early 1980s to 36 today, according to the documentary “The Lesbian Bar Project.”

As the mainstream culture has grown more accepting, LGBTQ+ people have felt less drawn to queer-centered spaces. The rise of dating apps has enabled queer people to meet outside of bars. And people are drinking less, and less frequently.

Still, LGBTQ+ people and allies mourn the loss of queer-centered nightlife and the culture that grows from it.

“The nightlife in Baltimore saved a lot of our lives,” said artist and filmmaker Shan Wallace, 35. “I’m comfortable in my body, in my sexuality, in my androgyny, because there was a place for me to be comfortable.”

Wallace, who previously worked for The Banner and is making a documentary about Black LGBTQ+ nightlife in Baltimore, said she had little exposure to Black queer culture until she began frequenting Club Bunns.

“You could go to Club Bunns and get a meal or join a book club to discuss Toni Morrison’s ‘The Bluest Eye,’” Wallace recalled.

At least half a dozen Baltimore bars still center LGBTQ+ people — including the Drinkery, Club Car, and The Eagle — or are queer-owned or very welcoming, such as Ziascoz, Melanie’s at Griffith’s Tavern and The Rowan Tree.

Regular events, including the monthly Butch Gardens dance party at Peabody Heights Brewery, Dyke Night at the Ottobar and Nectar at Current Space, also cater to the queer community.

But there’s no other place like Leon’s.

Cade Granger, 27, said he was newly out when he started tending bar at Leon’s four years ago.

“I found community here that I would not have otherwise found,” Granger said. “It’s a place that everyone knows is always open.”