Under a bright yellow sign and through a purple-painted door on Monroe Avenue sits an unassuming neighborhood bar: The Avenue Pub. The pub celebrated 50 years in September, making it one of Rochester’s oldest gay bars. It has stood strong since the 1970s alongside the 52-year-old Bachelor Forum on University Avenue; a pair of stalwart anchors for the LGBTQIA+ community.
Once upon a time, these two spots were among a dozen or so gay bars in and around downtown Rochester, and now find themselves in a company of just three, along with ROAR, which opened its doors on Culver Road in 2019. The Avenue Pub and Bachelor Forum, both owned by Peter Mohr, are living, breathing evidence of Rochester’s history as a haven for those who identify as LGBTQIA+, and continue to be a warm, hospitable space for everyone.
While the shuttering of so many gay bars across the city could be interpreted as a canary’s fatal warning in a slowly suffocating community, it seems to signify the opposite. With so many people and places being so open and welcoming to all people, the need for explicitly queer spaces has waned over the decades.
Again and again, Rochester has been recognized as one of the most welcoming and safest LGBTQIA+ cities in the United States. For multiple years, the Human Rights Campaign has given perfect 100 scores to the local government and a handful of local institutions, including Eastman Kodak and Trillium Health, which was established in 1989 during the AIDS crisis and now specializes in LGBTQIA+ specific health care.
“Rochester has a long history of standing up for social justice and championing the rights of underserved communities,” said Jason Barnecut-Kearns, president and CEO of Trillium Health. “From Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass to our modern-day leaders, Rochester has consistently been a beacon of progressive values.”
In August, amid the regressive political push to roll back LGBTQIA+ rights and protections under the Trump administration, the City of Rochester further solidified its status as a Sanctuary City, codifying protections for LGBTQIA+ communities and other targeted groups.
In every Rochester neighborhood there are pride flags, pro-LGBTQIA+ yard signs and messages of support and inclusion sitting in windows. Businesses like Equal Grounds Coffee House on South Avenue specifically advertise as queer friendly. The Pride Parade and storied ImageOut film festival draw massive crowds annually to celebrate Rochester and beyond. Behind the Memorial Art Gallery in the Neighborhood of the Arts, the Rochester Rainbow Union is a community space for LGBTQIA+ people, housing a sizable stash of clothing for newly transitioning people and the largest queer library collection in New York State, the Lilac Library.
“We have books that literally survived Nazi book burnings, which is quite relevant right now,” said Andrew Moran, president of the Rochester Rainbow Union.
Moran volunteers his time maintaining the space, coordinating with all kinds of groups that utilize their resources and applying for grants to keep the ship afloat, among other tasks. His day job on top of all that, he said, involves working in HIV vaccine trials. And while Moran, 36, has only been a part of the Rochester Rainbow Union since 2022, he already sees the importance of avoiding stagnation, of stepping aside to let fresher perspectives take charge.
“You have to keep freshening up, and I want to give each generation a chance at leadership,” he said. “People in their 20s look at things differently, and I want to give them a chance to have a say in what the organization looks like.”
That’s the staple of progress. The goalposts keep moving forward — it’s iterative and iterative and iterative.
Decades before purchasing Bachelor Forum and The Avenue Pub, Mohr, 60, was finding his home and community in Rochester, visiting gone-but-not-forgotten gay bars like Club Muther’s and The Liberty in the ‘80s. He grew up in Phelps, a self-described country boy and son of a German father who, back then, thought being gay was a curse. But shortly before he passed at 96, Mohr said his father came to an enlightenment in 2022.
“When I bought The Avenue Pub and he came to the grand opening he said, ‘I didn’t realize you had a family here,’” Mohr said. “It is family, you know? The pub is known as the gay Cheers, where you walk in and everybody knows your name.”
There’s a tremendous amount of effort that goes into that kind of hospitality: nurturing of people and space, a mindset of constant care and love. This doesn’t happen organically. It takes work. It takes the attention and action of countless people to create not just a bar that feels like a safe space, but a city. The history of places like The Avenue Pub is intertwined with the history of Rochester, and its continued existence amidst the changing landscape is vital.
“It’s a reminder that our community has always been here, and will continue to be here, especially at this time when our communities are under attack from the legislative side and from right-wing activists,” Moran said. “Our community has always fought for itself. We have always existed.”
