Annalisa Quinn‘s story published on Tuesday in The Boston Globe Magazine — “A Western Mass. lesbian bar required KN-95 masks. When it changed the rules, all hell broke loose” — is, in this reporter’s opinion, a perfect piece.
That’s in part because it is written entirely straight. It contains paragraphs like:
Three housemates in their mid-20s opened it together, hoping to fill the void left by two local queer bars that had shuttered. One of the trio, Asa Rosario, a drag performer who uses it/its pronouns, envisioned a venue where it and its friends could perform.
and:
But by the time of Last Ditch’s monthly community meeting on September 11, only one of the original founders, Matellian, is still involved. The two others stepped back from the daily operation months before, Matellian says, citing various pressures and health issues. One had enrolled in clown school.
and:
Moreover, the Zoom attendees speculate that the mediator’s licensed status makes her a mandated reporter — an agent of the state, akin to police. One person going by “Moss” asks if the mediator could have them hospitalized against their will, adding that her presence is “wildly unsafe.”
Really, you just have to read it — and to do so, you will almost definitely have to subscribe to The Boston Globe unless you get another subscriber to email it directly to you. The Globe doesn’t offer New York Times–style gift links. (There are unauthorized ways to read the piece, like finding it on an archive site.)
And people are subscribing, a lot of them In the first day after the story was published, it drove 1,000 new Globe subscriptions. A Globe spokesperson told me Friday that it has now spurred “several thousand” people to subscribe; that’s in just about four days.
The challenge for the Globe, now, is to hold on to those subscribers. The Globe, like most newspapers, offers steeply discounted promotional rates to new subscribers — $1 for the first six months. After that, a digital subscription is around $30 a month.
Nonetheless, the Globe would rather be in this position than not. “Great article!” one commenter wrote. “It reads almost like a visit to another planet, which it kind of is.” Conveniently, that other planet is in driving distance of Globe headquarters.
