Pasadena's Last Gay Bar Pours Its Last Round After 45 Years

Owner Steven Terradot, 69, is retiring and says he'll wait until mid-November for a buyer to reopen The Boulevard.

The first time Steven Terradot walked into The Boulevard, he was in his mid-20s, and he checked the street in both directions to make sure nobody saw him. "I looked both ways to see if anybody saw me come in," he told LAist. Back then, being seen there carried shame and guilt.

Terradot is 69 now and owns the place, and he's retiring. After 45 years, Pasadena's last gay bar is shutting down with a drag-and-karaoke send-off Saturday night, LAist reported Friday. The bar is up for sale.

"I'm old and I'm tired," he told Colorado Boulevard, a Pasadena community paper, on Oct. 12. Then he said he'd leave if no deal was settled by Oct. 31. By the end of the month he'd given himself a little more time, telling LAist he'll wait until mid-November for an offer from somebody willing to reopen it.

He's been there almost from the beginning. The Boulevard opened in 1981, Terradot told LAist, after its first owners, Randy Biggs and his partner, Carl, bought a gay beer-and-wine bar called The Office and got a liquor license. Terradot started bartending in 1985, Colorado Boulevard reported, and he bought the business in 1999.

Pasadena had several queer bars back then, he told LAist, including The Vermie's, also on Foothill Boulevard, and Nardi's, which later became Copa. The Boulevard outlasted every one of them. Many of its customers didn't make it.

Most of the afternoon regulars were older gay men, and Terradot said AIDS cut through them quickly. Funerals at the bar became routine. Regulars set up a fund to cover medicine, food and rent for men who had lost their jobs and their health insurance. "I lost 11 friends during the AIDS epidemic," he said.

That loss is why he took on a struggling bar in 1999, three years after the so-called AIDS cocktail turned HIV into something people could live with. Business was thin. The internet had made meeting people easy, and regulars looking for new faces were heading to West Hollywood or Silver Lake. His first Friday night as owner brought in $200, he told LAist.

He added karaoke first, then a weekly drag night. More recently the bar started trans nights on Tuesdays, hosted by drag performer Honey B. Hive. She told LAist that much of the San Gabriel Valley turns out for them. Colorado Boulevard reported regulars driving in from Ontario, Temple City and Rosemead.

Since the closing was announced, business has more than tripled, Terradot told LAist. That's the kind of crowd the 1999 register could have used. The farewell, called Last Call at the Boo-levard, starts at 7 p.m. Saturday at 3199 E. Foothill Blvd. It's 21 and over, and costumes are encouraged.

What he wants in a buyer, he told LAist, is somebody who gets what a neighborhood gay bar is for. "You still have kids that are lost that come in here, OK? You need to stick a hand out to them," he said.

Source: LAist, retrieved October 31, 2026. Other sources: coloradoboulevard.net.