A gay leather bar in Phoenix finally got the permission it needed to open, after months of objections, hearings and delays that turned a neighborhood affair into a mini-battle over who has the right to queer night.
Barracks Phoenix is planned to open in the Melrose neighborhood, an area considered rising LGBTI+ point of the city. Behind the venture is Matthew Moody, an organizer and nightlife man, who wants to bring to Phoenix something of the history of leather bars that have marked queer nightlife in the US.
The name Barracks is not accidental. Like Eagle and Anvil, it belongs to a whole tradition of venues associated with the leather community, gay male sexuality, the bar scene and an aesthetic that for decades straddled subculture, desire and social suspicion.
Moody had previously DJed at the eponymous Barracks in Palm Springs before it closed in 2024. The new Phoenix space has already brought artwork and artifacts from the bar’s old vibe, including retro motorcycle imagery and large leather figures of men that harken back to his iconography. Tom of Finland.
The problem started with the neighbor. Adjacent to the proposed bar site is Stuart Shoen’s property, billionaire heir to the U-Haul fortune. According to Moody, Shoen bought the property after he had already purchased the space where he planned to open the bar. However, earlier this year he officially opposed the alcohol license application.
The appeal opened a long cycle of hearings, legal documents, subpoenas and delays. For Moody, the denial of the permit would effectively mean the end of the venture.
The case was not simple, because the Barracks already carried a heavy past from Palm Springs. The bar there had been shut down following an operation by the authorities, who claimed it was operating as an unlicensed venue for sexual encounters. The new Phoenix venture’s original ownership tie to Richard “Scott” Murchison, owner of the old Barracks, gave opponents of the new bar a key argument.
Shoen’s lawyer argued that the problem was not a leather bar per se, but that the Barracks in California, he said, was not simply operating as a bar. On the other hand, Moody insisted that his neighbor didn’t have a problem with the bar next door, but with the fact that it was a gay leather bar.
Shoen denied, through his lawyer, that his objections were related to the LGBTQI+ audience or the theme of his site. But the confrontation quickly got away from the narrow question of the license. In the hearings and public reporting surrounding the case, leather culture was presented almost as if it had to prove that it is not itself an illegal activity.
Shoen’s attorney tried to connect the planned bar to the Barracks’ past in Palm Springs, but also more broadly to leather and cruising culture. At one point, he even presented promotional material from an unrelated leather event in Chicago, attempting to show that such venues are associated with illegal sexual activity.
There lies the real interest of the story. The Barracks case isn’t just about a bar that wanted a liquor license. It’s about how queer night, and especially its more sexually charged subcultures, is still treated as something that needs to be explained, apologized for, and proven not to be a threat to the neighborhood.
Finally, on July 10, the Arizona State Liquor Board approved Barracks Phoenix’s license, with one condition: within 90 days Murchison must completely remove himself from the bar’s ownership structure. Shoen’s objections did not block the permit, despite his side’s persistent effort to restore the reputation and history of the old Palm Springs Barracks.
Moody, after months of pressure, responded almost ironically to one of the other side’s most characteristic arguments: the humorous door-hanging notices that Shoen’s attorney had presented as a sign of the culture that supposedly threatened the neighborhood.
“It wasn’t for you,” he said. “You don’t understand.”
The phrase sums up the whole case. Because what was discussed in Phoenix wasn’t just a bar license. It was about who has the right to understand, control or fear a culture that is not their own.
Source: Lifo
