Gay bars philadelphia pa2/8/2024 ![]() “With us wrapping up the bar, this has absolutely been a godsend,” she said. Toasted Walnut staff put together a GoFundMe campaign to help Cohen pay her medical bills. In 2019, her diabetes caused blindness in one eye. On top of the bar closing, Cohen was diagnosed with stage three uterine cancer in November, which spread to her lymph nodes. “What transpired with them was legal - it is their space to rent.” “I don’t want to do battle with the landlords in a court of public opinion,” Cohen said. “I think we joked around and we figured out we had to sell 3,000 tacos and a beer just to be able to make the rent.”Īlthough the building’s landlords were patient and open to negotiation, Cohen was unable to make the $11,000 monthly rent that they ultimately demanded. “When your concept is a nightclub and you can no longer be that - people weren’t sitting at home going, ‘I’m going to drive into center city and have tacos at Toasted Walnut,’” Cohen said. Even when the bar was able to run at 25% capacity, she was struggling. The bar essentially closed in November, 2020 when indoor dining was temporarily suspended. Denise Cohen has been running lesbian bars in Philly for upwards of 30 years, so losing Toasted Walnut to the pandemic was a particularly harsh blow.
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