The Wildrose is a lesbian bar in Seattle, Washington.[1] It is located in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, and opened in 1985.[2] It is the city's only lesbian bar.[3] Business partners Shelley Brothers and Martha Manning, the current owners of The Wildrose, took over from the original founders in the early 2000s.[4]
In the early 1980s, a collective of five women decided to open a lesbian bar that was "light, served good food, and was a place where women would feel comfortable bringing friends and family, straight and gay."[7]
After scouting locations for the bar, the group decided on 1021 E Pine Street, the location of a former sports bar. The founders liked the location because it had big, street-facing windows. During a time when most LGBT spaces were hidden, accessed through secret entrances, and advertised by word-of-mouth, these features of light and visibility were important to the founders.[8]
The Wildrose opened on New Years Eve, 1985 with a line around the block.[8]
"From the start, the Wild Rose [sic] drew a diverse crowd. Tradeswomen, professional women, artists, leather women, musicians, radical and not-so-radical political organizations made it their home. The Wild Rose [sic] became a gathering space for the lesbian community and a focus of community organizing."[7]
Despite its early successes, the business could not support all five of the original founders, and soon, Bryher Herak, the remaining founder, was running the bar on her own.[7] Herak sold the business to Joann Panayiotou, who eventually sold it to Karin Finn, Martha Manning, Janice Oakley.[7]
As of 2023, Martha Manning and Shelley Brothers own the bar. When they took over in the early 2000s after working at the bar for years, one of the first things they did was to take out the jukebox. They were tired of patrons putting on cliche lesbian music like Indigo Girls, Melissa Etheridge, and ABBA "17 times a night."[9]
Impact of COVID-19
In early 2020, owners Brothers and Manning started a GoFundMecampaign to raise money to help keep their doors open during the COVID-19 pandemic.[8] They raised more than $88,000 but did not meet their $100,000 goal.[citation needed] In 2022, the Wildrose retired its long-running taco Tuesday offering and introduced a new chef, who brought a new menu that includes traditional bar bites like cheese and meat trays, nuts and olives, and sloppy joes.[10] The Wildrose owners made these changes because they wanted the bar to "have more reasons for people to stay, offer more things for people, and be more well rounded."[10]
