Lulu’s suing Long Island landlord for the right to become a gay bar

You would think that owning a bar that gives out free pizza is basically a license to print money, but it turns out that Lulu’s in Greenpoint is struggling to the point where they want to do a big rebranding. Normally such a thing just happens, but they’d like to become a gay bar, which is something that their lease specifically prevents. So, they’re suing their landlord to get out from that very strangely specific language that doesn’t allow them to operate the premises as a gay bar according to the Post. This, of course, is what you get for doing business with “those people.” By which we mean people from Manhasset.

The Post has the story of Lulu’s owner John McGillion and his struggle with his landlord, Janet Berger. McGillion says that he’s been losing money since opening the bar in 2005, and that he feels like he could make “40 to 50 percent” more if he opened a bar that catered to Greenpoint’s growing gay and lesbian population. The problem is the language in his lease that states that the space “shall not be operated as a gay or lesbian bar and/or restaurant.” So much for renaming it “Harvey Milk’s Funtime Family Eatery.”

Not that McGillion doesn’t have his own weird ideas about gay clientele, telling the paper that gays don’t fight, don’t want food at their bars and that they’re wonderful to deal with. Clearly he’s unfamiliar with the disappointing gay best friends of the world. Beyond the fact that yes, Berger certainly seems like a throwback bigot and shouldn’t be putting lease terms like that in contracts where everyone can see them, we don’t see why McGillion can’t just start holding gay-friendly events without screaming that his bar is a gay bar. It’s not like Metropolitan or One Last Shag advertise themselves as Metropolitan Gay Bar or One Last Shag (The Shag is the Gay Kind). Just an idea.

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