CALL IT WHAT IT IS: FASCISM AND THE RAID ON P TOWN BAR

Written and reported by Dezz, Just Dezz, with interviews conducted by Dezz and Zelda Kollins

On Friday, May 2nd, 2025, PA state police raided P Town Bar during Another Party: Amanda Lepore.

Multiple undercover cops entered the bar before and during the show. We were subsequently asked to all exit the bar for a “head count” under the guise of a concern with the location’s “capacity.” For about 45 minutes, patrons, staff, and performers were sat outside in the rain while officers surrounded the entire building and alley ways and the bar was intensely inspected from the inside. While we were displaced with no current information spoken to as of to why, multiple cops were seen inside taking photos with Amanda Lepore.

The rest of show’s cast still had to join us outside with the crowd of confused patrons, Indica even offering a sidewalk performance to both tide the audience and subvert the police’s intentions of intimidation. I’d personally like to commend Indica, as well as the entirety of the P Town Bar and Another Party staff, for handling these events with such grace and authority. Drag entertainers and especially those who identify under the trans umbrella have been a consistent face in terms of protesting against the country’s destruction of civil rights. We must continue to honor those who fought before us, and who are fighting for us now. The location is secondary. The humanity is what not only creates community itself, but has allowed it to thrive.

There has been miscommunication in terms of what, if any, other bars have been effected by these raids, but members of the staff at P Town were confirmed to have been warned about the cops’ arrival. According to a Facebook comment shared by Sean Meloy, a member of the Govenor’s LGBTQ+ Commission, “Allegheny County has a nuisance bar task force led by officials from District Attorney and Mayor’s Offices. Pittsburgh Fire and PSP Liquor Control Enforcement are also members of this city-led task force.” However, he also shares that P Town bar does not have the necessary history or number of violations “to be on the nuisance bar list in the first place,” and that the city of Pittsburgh “has said they did not initiate the request,” but they forwarded the act to the state police. It’s incredibly important that I reiterate, as many times as it needs to be read, these were Pennsylvania state police. They were vested and armed.

The decision made by the cops was to reopen the show with a legal capacity of 70 people. Multiple ticket holders were denied reentry. 70 people, in a bar with multiple rooms, multiple shows that have occurred with a much higher capacity, and nothing brought to those events. Onya Nerve, a week prior, sold out. It has also been alleged that their arrival at Friday’s show was brought upon by an anonymous tip by a neighboring apartment to the bar, but whether or not limits were being pushed, that does not dismiss the fact that action of this nature was entirely unnecessary, and the amount of people present was barely reflective of their supposed complaints. An official report on the incident has not yet been published, nor made available to us or the entertainers, however, there have been talks of a hefty fine and multiple structural issues that the bar will be required to fix.

The time frame for these “fixes” is still uncertain, but the cost is much more than any dollar amount. If it is as easy as a “raid” to potentially destroy one of the most significant queer safe spaces in the city, who is to say that these incidents won't occur at other locations in the city? Who is to say that this won’t, or already hasn’t, spread throughout all of the queer spaces in the entire country?

Let’s just call it what it is, right here, right now: fascism!

This belief, though, is certainly not individualistic or unique to myself as a self proclaimed “critic.” It’s hardly even an opinion. Zelda Kollins and I conducted multiple interviews during and following the raid with attendees, performers, and bar staff. The first of which was from a woman called Mz Judy, a long time friend of cast member and Pittsburgh drag icon, Cherri Baum.

“I was blessed to meet, in 2010…Cherri Baum. Long story short, I decided I wanted to do a children’s show. I started hanging out with this community…but I also saw at the same time what it was like as a struggle going out in society. Now, we have a society, [where] there is a voice at the tippy top…saying ‘hate this person, hate that person,’ but it’s not about policy. It’s not about helping each other. It’s not about love. It’s not about anything other than hatred. This is a direct effect from those [voices.]” Mz Judy, while not being queer identifying herself, comes from a background in political science, earning her degree through multiple universities, and her mother grew up in Guatemala, but even with such an understanding of this kind of level of stress, she shared with me, “this is something I’ve never seen before.” Mz Judy grew up with the creation of works like Cabaret, and as we’ve seen through online trends, Cabaret has made a brutal and swift return to relevancy. Media plays a major impact on not only how we view ourselves, but how we view our surroundings. Mz Judy specializes in children’s media, her own kids having been babysat and socialized with transgender and queer friends, “and they are exceptional human beings.” For the casual consumer though, It’s become increasingly difficult to approach these topics. “…What’s going on is brain washing the adults we couldn’t get to. I went to a lot of protests…over the years. This is a different thing. This is targeting. It has come back, it’s a different creature.”

When being forced to exit a drag show without promise of return, many attendees were discussing the question of, “Will I be refunded?” It is easy to put blame on this statement and to think that there is a privilege in that being such a primary concern, and to be frank, there is! But to make their inherent privilege our primary concern breeds misguided anger much alike the situation already.

For the members of the community who rely on shows such as Another Party as a means of business, managing crisis on top of established labor is no easy task. It’s even more troubling when they only know just as much as you or I do. “Even the people who are working the event…aren’t able to get an answer as of to what’s going on. We’ve got patrons very upset, understandably, and that leads to a space where there are arguments and confusion…all because from the beginning we didn’t have clear communication,” one source shared with me. Though this act of communication, or rather, lack thereof, is exactly what the system thrives on. Or at least they **attempt to.

“Intimidation is always a tactic used. We don’t feel like we have the information to counteract it. It’s very confusing. They show up, but there’s already people standing around, there’s like 30 of them. I don’t know how many [cops] it takes to effectively solve a crisis, but they almost out numbered the entire patrons in the bar!” This method that is actively being used against us and the bar is also their same complaint about ourselves. The number of persecutors had almost been equal to the number of the persecuted, and especially taking into account the number of undercover officers, can they not be considered patrons too? Should they not be considered “fans” if they too are engaging with the show, so much so that they are taking photos with Amanda Lepore, and with us, left out in the rain? What kind of “crisis” is there to call on anyways? We ultimately agree, with a bittersweet laugh, “I guess gay people are a crisis. [But] we will continue to be a crisis until the end of time.”

The provided reasoning behind the raid is so ridiculous that the concept extends itself into the total experience. Zelda Kollins and I found ourselves in the bathroom with the aforementioned legend, Cherri Baum, as well as Another Party’s production sweetheart, Lexi Slav. We take a minute with each other to laugh at the casualness of “potty talk” having become something so honestly serious, and really, what else in this moment can we do? The entire experience had been intensely disorienting, and we had also begun taking into account finances, not only our own or even the bars, but the state of Pennsylvania. Where are our taxpayer dollars really going? How much do they want to take from us or will they take from us under the guise of a fine?

Last week, a major storm hit the city of Pittsburgh and surrounding counties that damaged multiple homes, created dangerous road closures, of course, in addition to the supposedly much more important blockages to conduct the marathon, and left at least three dead. While It would be deeply contradictory of me to specifically criticize the charity behind “Run for a Reason,” it would also feel inappropriate to ignore our government’s own hypocrisy. This Friday, May 2nd, 2025, the state of Pennsylvania and the city of Pittsburgh actively chose that they would rather attack passive nightlife instead of tending to the thousands of people residing here who have been affected by the conditions in question. “I want to wake it up!” Lexi responds. “I think it’s absolutely crazy. We’re not the last to get raided, and there’s been people without power for days!” In this city, and especially this country, “protection” has lost its meaning. The cops are supposed to protect the peace, but what peace is there to be had when the people are what's under attack over the actual problem(s) at hand?

“I got kicked out right before they came in. I saw police everywhere. I walked up to the front, and they [told me] ‘you’re not getting in here.’” Lexi says. But how could any of us be any safer outside in the rain compared to the physical space we formed to be comfortable? For Cherri Baum, as well as the other performers in the cast, this openness is poses even more of a threat. “…There were a bunch of [cops,] standing back outside the dressing room. They were like, ‘okay, everyone leave,’ and it’s just a bunch of trans women and drag queens in lingerie.” This position is intentionally vulnerable. They leave us exposed, dangling our own safety over our heads with Amanda Lepore’s, a figure significant to us, but also to them for all of the wrong reasons.

As discussed, Amanda was able to stay in the building, and perhaps to a bit of her own displeasure after sharing her excitement having never been involved in a bar raid before, but the trauma of marginalization continues to prove itself to be generational.

A lot of the guests at the show are experiencing something like this for the very first time, Zelda Kollins and I included. After having to walk in the street to cross multiple officers “auditing” the infamous hotdog truck by standing around behind it with their hands in their pockets and subsequently heckling me for “running into traffic,” I find Zelda with a group of four Another Party ticket holders who share a very similar sentiment. All four of them agree that the situation made them feel targeted and unsafe. Amidst the density of the chaos, one of the individuals states her disbelief in the validity of the act. “If it was a protocol thing, and they needed to get a number, I don’t think they needed that many cops on the scene. There could have been a better way to handle the situation. I just don’t like it. I don’t feel good.”

For her friend, the sudden appearance is an even deeper threat. “As a queer latina, [the cops] don’t have space here, and with all of the ICE raids going on, it’s fucking terrifying. I have my documentation, but not everybody does, and I don’t have all of my documentation on me, so it might get weird,” she says. There seems to be a level of discomfort in acknowledging the intersectionality of this kind of hatred. The fear, but also the reality, is that under a deeply oppressive administration, the only problem that they’d truly like to solve is the lack of uniformity to their ideals. “The thing is, is civil disobedience. It can only go on so long. Politically, it’s been a very lukewarm climate, on the liberal end, and I think from the community, we’ve, for the most part, tried to be the good guy every single time, and unfortunately it’s hard. It’s finding the boundary. You can only be nice for so long.”

History seems to be cycling itself at a disturbing progressive rate. We’ve been analyzing trends online, in things like fashion or pop culture, but the reality for many of us is that it is all happening directly to us. “We’re fighting for our lives. As younger queer people, we didn’t live through the aids epidemic. There are so many big queer events that we didn’t live through. We’ve had a different struggle, so we’re learning collectively…that fight. It was so much more driven, that wide spread effort, and we need to bring it back.”

After a night like that, we will. We have to.

Their motive is to split us and displace us. There has never been a time quite like right now for our community to fully join together. Put aside drama. Put aside bias. Put aside the want to be passive.

There’s no space to hate each other if there’s no space for us love.

If you have any information you would like to share, please reach out to me, Dezz, Just Dezz, by either instagram DM (@justdezzie) or by email, dezzjustdezz@gmail.com. I hope to be able to update accordingly as we move into the next stages of what this may mean for all of us.