Trouble Bar to close, making way for new community-centered venture

Shelby Park’s beloved hub for queer activism and Bourbon-centered community gathering is preparing to close its doors—but don’t worry! The business owners are launching a new venture in the same location. While it won’t be a whiskey-serving bar, it promises to continue serving the community in a fresh way.

Trouble Bar, located at 1149 S. Shelby St., will close its doors at the end of 2024, co-owners Nicole Stipp and Kaitlyn Soligan-Owens announced Wednesday in an Instagram video. The bar’s final day of operation will be New Year’s Eve, Dec. 31.

Although the owners are not disclosing the details of the new business, they tell Queer Kentucky that it’s been in the works for a long time.

“It feels like exactly what our community wants and what we want to give them, bringing everything all of us love about Trouble Bar forward into a newly realized space that can also provide more,” Soligan-Owens said. “It’s also right for us and for the team we love so much.”

In addition to following a business dream, the Trouble team said losing a team member of their own last year put life and goals into perspective more.

“We’ve needed a change; as many folks in our community know, Trouble lost our dear friend and beverage director Felicia Corbett last year and we miss her every day,” Soligan-Owens said. “I only say that to say that these big huge losses do bring us to look at our lives with fresh eyes and think about what we really want and how we can feel hopeful and excited about the future, and for everyone going through it right now, we completely understand and we’re with you.” 

Community connection has been at the core of Trouble Bar since its inaugural whiskey pour in 2019. Over the years, the bar has hosted a variety of events celebrating and supporting marginalized communities, such as Queer Proms, benefits for Trans Day of Remembrance, Black Lives Matter rallies, and book launches, including the debut of Minda Honey’s memoir, The Heartbreak Years.

With iconic images of activists like Hannah Drake and Marsha P. Johnson displayed on their “wall of trouble,” Trouble Bar has long celebrated the spirit of queer community activism. The owners plan to carry this mission forward in their new venture, ensuring the legacy of advocacy and inclusivity lives on.

“Every space we have ever built and will ever build is a queer space; queer in the sense of questioning what we consider normal and why we’re so insistent on doing things the way that we do,” Soligan-Owens said. “Gay is amazing – clearly we love being gay and many of us on our team are and have been – but a queer lens offers so much more than even this glorious rainbow. As bell hooks said, ‘”queer not as being about who you’re having sex with (that can be a dimension of it); but queer as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.’”

The bar’s final day of serving drinks will be Wednesday, Dec. 31, on New Year’s Eve and they’re asking for everyone to come drink up their liquor!