“I’m genuinely humbled by it and I don’t quite know how to thank people yet.” Blackstones at 6 Pine St., near Longfellow Square, is Portland’s last remaining gay bar and one of the only ones in Maine at a time when the establishments are also declining nationally. “We hoped to get $10,000 and the fact that we hit $25,000 in 10 days, I’m kind of not shocked – and shocked,” Currie said recently. But less than two weeks after he created a GoFundMe page asking neighbors to help save Portland’s last gay bar, they had raised enough in pledges to survive the winter.
He said the decision was a difficult one that he and Pekins tried to avoid, and that it made him uncomfortable. The coronavirus pandemic has left many local bar owners without a path forward, and reality set in for Blackstones manager Carl Currie last month.Ĭurrie had just come out of a staff meeting with bar owner Matt Pekins where they decided they would have to ask the community for money to stay afloat until spring.
