The Boulevard, the only gay bar in Pasadena, plans its final night under owner Steven Terradot on Saturday, Oct. 31. Terradot, 69, is retiring, though a buyer could still reopen the bar.
“I’m old and I’m tired,” Terradot told Colorado Boulevard in an Oct. 12 story.
The send-off is a Halloween party called “Last Call at the Boo-levard!” It starts at 7 p.m. at 3199 E. Foothill Blvd., LAist reported. It’s 21 and over, and costumes are encouraged.
“Well, the final night will be Halloween, so we should be jam packed,” Terradot told Pasadena Now.
Gayety • Explainer
The Boulevard’s Next Chapter
- 1999
- Steven Terradot buys the Pasadena bar.
- 2021
- Customers help raise money and renovate after the pandemic shutdown.
- Oct. 31, 2026
- A Halloween farewell is planned under Terradot’s ownership.
- Mid-November
- Terradot says he will wait for an offer before closing for good. A buyer could reopen the bar.
A Buyer Could Still Reopen The Boulevard
The bar is for sale. Terradot told LAist he’ll wait until mid-November for an offer before closing for good.
“There’s a lot of people that have approached, but a lot of them don’t have the means, nor do they have the know-how,” he told Pasadena Now for an Oct. 17 story. He put the bar’s chances at “50-50” then.
He owns the liquor license but rents the building, Pasadena Now reported. A buyer could keep it going “if the landlord is able to work out a lease that’s beneficial to all parties,” he said. “So far, that hasn’t happened.”
Baltimore’s Leon’s closed in July after owner Ron Singer died and reopened Sept. 30 with his family in charge.
Two part-time bartenders and several drag performers will lose work. “They lose their Friday night and their weekends here. It is a hardship on them,” Terradot said.
Terradot told LAist business has more than tripled since the news got out.
More Than Four Decades in Pasadena
Randy Biggs and his partner, Carl, opened The Boulevard in 1981, LAist reported. They’d bought The Office, a gay beer-and-wine bar, and got a liquor license. Visit Pasadena, the city’s tourism bureau, dates the bar to 1979.
It outlasted Encounters, Copa and Nardis, Pasadena gay bars that have since closed, Pasadena Now reported.
Terradot started coming in the early 1980s and was tending bar by 1985, Colorado Boulevard reported. Then came AIDS. “I lost 11 friends during the AIDS epidemic,” he told LAist. Customers pooled money for medicine, food and rent for people who’d lost jobs or health insurance.
He bought the place in 1999, when it was struggling. “The first Friday night I owned this bar, we did $200 on the register,” he said. He added karaoke and drag.
“We’ve had weddings. We’ve had funerals. We’ve had college graduations,” Terradot told LAist.
Pasadena Regulars Raised Money to Reopen the Bar After COVID-19
The pandemic closed The Boulevard in March 2020 for more than a year. Terradot used up a federal Paycheck Protection Program loan and paid bills with unemployment checks, Patch reported in June 2021.
“It was also embarrassing for a guy my age to collect unemployment,” he told the Los Angeles Times, according to Patch.
Regular Mark Lanza started a GoFundMe with a $50,000 goal. On the page, Lanza called the bar “the last true safe haven for the LGBTQ community within 20 miles of the Pasadena area.” It had raised a little more than $20,000 by June 10, 2021.
Lanza and his husband, Mark Chou, helped remodel it, Spectrum News 1 reported. “Especially in the gay community, we’re there for our friends because they become our family. They are our family,” Terradot told the station.
San Gabriel Valley Regulars Lose a Local Hangout and Tuesday Trans Nights
Drag performer Honey B. Hive hosts the bar’s Tuesday trans nights. “A lot of the San Gabriel Valley comes for Tuesdays,” she told LAist. “People have been coming ever since it started. It feels very familial.”
David Imai has been a regular since 2012. “This place has a reputation of being the gay Cheers for a reason,” Imai told LAist. “It does feel like we are losing a resource and a local hangout for those of us living in the San Gabriel Valley.”
Joseph Hawkins, a former director of USC’s ONE Archives, discussed gay bar closures on LAist’s AirTalk in a segment posted Oct. 19. “Some bars don’t have the clientele that they used to because of the internet,” he said.
“A lot of our young people go to straight bars or go to other places,” Terradot told Pasadena Now. “So we’d like to keep a safe place, but there also has to be a demand for it.”
