The Boiler Room

New York magazine called it a friendly, unobtrusive, post-gay gay bar that helped put the queer East Village bar scene on the map¹. It opened on Fourth Street in 1989 and kept to the bare-bones basics: a jukebox, a pool table and super cheap drink specials¹. Our listing added a young crowd and, believe it or not, Bass on tap.

Management said the landlord had kept the bar in court for more than two years over back rent from the pandemic, and in June 2023 it said it would likely close². A judge ruled for the landlord, who wanted current and future rent in one lump sum with no negotiating, and the Boiler Room closed in April 2024³.

In January 2024 Jon Neidich's Golden Age Hospitality, the company behind Le Dive on Canal, applied for a new liquor license for 86 E. Fourth St.⁴. Monsieur opened there in January 2025, reportedly owned and run by the filmmaker Baz Luhrmann, and in its first week Madonna endorsed it on Instagram⁵.

The Boiler Room, meanwhile, planned to take its bar with it: by June 2024 its name was lettered on the windows at 45 Second Ave., between Second and Third Streets, and the new room was to include the well-worn bar from Fourth Street⁶. It opened there that summer, and in April 2026 it hung an exhibit of photographs by the artist-activist Steven Love Menendez^{7, 8}.