Final 12 months’s Satisfaction Month was a bit somber for the staff and patrons of Trax: The Nashville homosexual bar’s landlord needed the bar moved out of its location at 1501 Ensley Blvd. in June.
“I’m like, ‘So that you’re actually going to kick a homosexual bar out on June 1?’” proprietor and founder Steven Kiss tells the Scene.
It was sudden. Kiss had signed a five-year lease in January 2024, however the landlord exercised one of many lease’s fine-print clauses to terminate it. (The constructing now homes a veterinary enterprise.) So all through June, patrons got here out to have a good time what they thought is perhaps their final hurrah at Trax.
It was a time shrouded in uncertainty, however Kiss was decided to maintain Trax alive. After a number of close to misses with constructing leases, he signed on at 1249 Martin St. with Marcus Capehart, the proprietor of pH Nashville cocktail bar (which later turned The Tea Room). Trax workers started operating The Tea Room in November, Capehart signed on as half proprietor, and the location formally turned Trax simply in time for this 12 months’s Satisfaction Month.
“I simply hope we are able to proceed doing what we’re doing,” Kiss says. “To be a spot for folks to return collectively as a group to socialize. Buddies, allies, LGBTQ+ group, everybody. However at the start, we’re unapologetically a homosexual bar. That’s the roots of it. Everyone seems to be welcome, so long as you behave.”
This 12 months marks the twentieth anniversary for Trax, which opened in 2005 and, till final 12 months, operated in the identical South Nashville location since. In distinction with the homosexual dance bars within the metropolis, Kiss needed to run the little neighborhood bar that might — a spot the place folks might play darts and pool, sit down and speak. And “regulars” is a key phrase for Trax. Most of the bar’s common patrons dwell within the Wedgewood-Houston neighborhood, they usually packed out the brand new location even earlier than it was formally open.
Trax
Whereas the outdated Trax was tucked away, quiet and had an enviable patio, the brand new Trax is extra built-in into the rising WeHo space.
“We’ve gained the massive home windows,” Kiss says. “It looks like we’re extra of the group at-large — not simply the homosexual group, the Wedgwood-Houston group.”
Trax is open seven days every week from midday to three a.m., with blissful hour — that includes two-for-one nicely drinks and a greenback off home beers — from midday to eight p.m. Wednesday is karaoke and Thursday is bingo, with different occasions introduced sporadically.
With six years beneath his belt, bartender Sean Stafford is definitely one in every of Trax’s newer staff.
“We’ve dedicated people who come right here as a result of they benefit from the personalities and the individuals who do work right here,” Stafford says. “ We’ve been a household for a very long time, you understand. That does repay.”
Additionally a part of the “household,” as Trax staff check with themselves, is Janice Blue, who cooks for patrons. They provide Taco Tuesday and meat-and-three specials along with a typical bar menu of pizza, wings and fried pickles.
“I really like that individuals can come right here, straight or homosexual, and really feel very assured and simply, like, badass bitches,” Stafford says.
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