“Tremont Lounge is everything that small business should be. Another bartender, Jeff Grimm, is going on nine years with the bar as well. Crater has been with the business for nine years. But when employees come to Tremont, they tend to stay. Other than Crater and Halford (plus his husband Matt Goldner), the Tremont Lounge only keeps a small staff-three in total not counting ownership. “We wanted to keep the feel of the place the same, that way it’s still the same Tremont to so many of our customers.” “It became a gay bar first in 1987, but we have record that has the building going all the back to the year 1900,” Crater said. While Tremont has received new hardwood floors and even sleek wood countertops, the original vintage bar’s black and white ceramic tiles have remained the same. We actually had a few complaints at first,” Halford said with a laugh.īut Halford did make sure to keep around some of the bar’s old interior decor to retain its abundant historical charm. It did take a while for some people to get used to it, though.
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The biggest project I did was put in a set of nice accordion windows along that wall. It was all brick, so people sat around in the dark. “Again in ‘04, when I first got here there were no windows in the front of the building. Photo by Ally SchnaidtĪnd that work is especially apparent in its facade. “It’s like Cheers in here.”Īnd while a lot has remained the same since Halford took over a decade ago-particularly in terms of the bar’s sense of community and warm atmosphere-if you were a patron back in the early days (or even before that), you’d likely notice that the bar has actually undergone quite the physical transformation from its previous (in Halford’s words) “dive” status.
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“We call it a home bar,” said Aaron Crater, who has tended bar at Tremont since 2012. They also know everybody’s business too, but that’s part of it as well,” he said with a laugh. We have so many regulars that come here that know each other. One of the reasons for this, according to Halford, is the atmosphere he and his small group of loyal staff work hard to cultivate. Founded in 1987, Tremont Lounge quickly established itself as one of the city’s cornerstone gay bars, becoming a spot for friends to mingle and a haven for the LGBTQ community.