{"slug": "club-owner-keeps-historic-lgbtq-space-alive-in-contra-costa-county", "title": "Club owner keeps historic LGBTQ space alive in Contra Costa County", "summary": "Holotta Tyme, who bought Club 1220 in 2020, keeps the only LGBTQ bar in Contra Costa County alive in Walnut Creek, preserving a historic safe space that opened in 1976. The bar has survived discrimination, epidemics, and economic downturns, but faces challenges from online dating apps and broader LGBTQ acceptance.", "body_md": "**Getting your**\n\n[Trinity Audio](//trinityaudio.ai)player ready...WALNUT CREEK — Tucked behind a 7-Eleven, down an unsuspecting street in Walnut Creek is the “only LGBTQ bar in Contra Costa County,” a decades old institution with a story of resilience.\n\nOpened Dec. 16, 1976, by siblings John and Steve Crovo as The Hub, Club 1220 at 1220 Pine St. has changed with the times. Where same-sex dancing, DJs and drag queens were once prohibited by the city at the club’s inception, a brightly lit dance floor, thrumming music and lively programming of performances and events now take place daily.\n\nWhat hasn’t changed over Club 1220’s 50 years is the need for community spaces where lesbian, gay, transgender and queer identifying people can feel at home, said Holotta Tyme, who began working at the bar in the 1990s and bought the space in 2020 with her husband, Robert, with financial support from friends.\n\nClub 1220 has been a mainstay through attempts to ban lesbians and gay men from teaching in schools, the HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 epidemics, the fight for marriage equality and LGBTQ rights, and economic downturns.\n\n“Although the community has changed, this bar was really instrumental in the queer movement and everything surrounding our community for many years,” Tyme said. “I have always felt like 1220 was home. It’s unlike any other queer space that I have spent a lot of time in. It’s really just home.”\n\nRunning a bar, especially one catering to a smaller portion of the population, still isn’t easy, Tyme said. Rocks and slushies may no longer fly through Club 1220’s windows and door, but they still field bigoted online reviews. And competition for customers have only intensified with the creation of online dating apps and the broader acceptance of the LGBTQ community, Tyme said.\n\nThe Bay Area News Group recently spoke with Tyme about the ups and downs of running Club 1220, the storied history of the venue and the lasting importance of queer spaces. The following has been edited for length and clarity.\n\n**Q:** Why did the original owners want to open a queer bar?\n\n**A:** John and Steve are queer. And they have other family members that are queer as well. It was a tough time to meet people and John just really wanted to have a safe space where people were able to get together as a community to figure out a path forward for that community.\n\n**Q:** Running a small business in and of itself is already challenging, we know that. Are there elements to running a small business that are either easier or more challenging with it being specifically a queer space?\n\n**A:** It is definitely more challenging. I own another small business that I’ve had for 27 years, so I already was familiar with how difficult running a small business is. A queer space is definitely harder. We make up roughly, depending on who you talk to, about 8-9% of the population. So, we have that as a dedicated clientele and then we probably maybe have another 10% of people who are just going in because it’s a nice space or they’re an ally.\n\nA bar in our area would have 100% of the population because they would have all the straight identifying people, but also queer people who would go into there because in the Bay Area, queer people are comfortable in a lot of spaces.\n\nI’m glad that we have spaces that are queer friendly. But it’s difficult to make people understand there’s a big difference between being a queer space where it’s advertised, and being a queer-friendly space where we’re welcoming your queer dollars into a straight environment.\n\nThat is an uphill battle and it’s getting better. Everybody should have a variety of places to go or things to do. If you only went to one space, it would be boring. That’s not how life works. You don’t eat McDonald’s every night. But trying to make sure that we do keep that clientele has not really been the easiest.\n\n**Q:** What does fighting that battle for clientele look like?\n\n**A:** I’m very vocal about the fact that when you spend your queer dollars in a queer space that goes right back into the queer community. So fighting for it is just trying to make sure that we are supporting the queer community as they’re supporting us and that that money is reflected in where and what we do.\n\n**Q:** Do you remember what it was like the first time you went into Club 1220 and discovered it? What was the vibe like?\n\n**A:** Well, that was the 90s. It was much more busy than it is now. I went in on a happy hour on a Friday. And happy hours were pretty busy then, and although I had been around in other gay bars for a number of years, I walked in and it was very much like walking into a gay “Cheers.” Everybody was friendly. I remember meeting people, some that I’m still friends with, that I’ve been friends with for more than 30 years.\n\nIt was a friendly atmosphere, people hanging out and drinking and having a nice time and nice conversation.\n\n**Q:** So was it an easy decision for you to buy the club? What was that dilemma like for you?\n\n**A:** It was expensive. And it wasn’t something that was really on my radar. I already own another small business that I work way too much in, but we started hearing that there were offers. John was always very frank with staff on where things sat. John would always say the bar was up for sale, but I would never take it seriously. But when it looked serious, John had been in town and he and I were sitting in what we call the Happy Hour corner and he told me that it would mean the world to him if I bought the bar.\n\nI had never even remotely thought about it, seriously at least. And I already knew how difficult it was to run a bar. But when I heard that there were offers and I knew that the offers were not necessarily going to keep the bar queer, I thought long and hard about it. So I begged, borrowed and stole from everybody that I possibly could and within a week we came up with enough money.\n\nI asked my husband if he would kill me if I bought the bar and Robert said, “as long as you don’t have a heart attack, I’m good.” So that has been our running joke since we bought it. We literally called all of our friends. One of the other performers at the bar cashed in their retirement to help us out.\n\nI wouldn’t necessarily say that I regret it, but I question what the hell am I doing? But then we have a lot of young, queer people and a lot of the young, non-binary, trans community that come in. And even when I’ve had a horrible day, I go in and someone will come up to me and say, “I’m really happy 1220 is still here,” and for me, that makes up for the amount of headaches and stress.\n\n**Q:** Tell me about why places like Club 1220 are still important.\n\n**A:** We are really lucky in the Bay Area, because the Bay Area is much more accepting, but just because the Bay Area’s accepting doesn’t necessarily mean that family and friends are accepting. I came out of the closet 20 million years ago and I can’t imagine not being able to be myself, but I am seeing the same type of thing happen with our younger generation.\n\nAlthough I think it’s easier to come out as queer or non-binary or trans here, it doesn’t necessarily mean that family is accepting and sometimes we have to choose who our family is. I think Club 1220 has become family to a lot of people who still are not comfortable with their family or comfortable in their skin. It’s allowed people to express themselves in ways that you may not be able to express yourself to your family and your friends. You still want to go into an environment where you don’t have to explain yourself. And I think it gives courage to people to live authentically.\n\n**Q:** Being the “Only Queer Bar in Contra Costa County” is a cool title but it also seems a bit lonely. Do you wish there were more spaces like yours near you?\n\n**A:** 100%. I do wish we had other queer spaces, even if they’re not queer bars. I wish there was more for the community to be a community.\n\nWhen it comes to the political climate out there in the world, not Walnut Creek but out there, it’s tough. Like on social media, you can hide behind a keyboard and say whatever you want to say regardless of how hurtful or hateful it is. Their comments affect people. It puts people back in the closet. It forces people to question their identity, as far as coming out trans or non-binary, when there’s so much hate out there.\n\nSo yeah, I wish in general, and I don’t mean necessarily in Walnut Creek, that there were more safe, queer spaces for our community.\n\nIt’s not an easy thing. I talk to queer bar owners quite regularly and we’re all in the same boat. And I would panic about it if bars in general were not in that same boat. But it just escalates how much more difficult it is for a queer space, having a smaller portion of the population coming into your space.\n\n**Q:** What are some highlights or something uniquely special about running Club 1220?\n\n**A:** I have to say, as generic as this sounds, being able to just walk into the bar and have smiling faces and people genuinely happy to see you, that is probably one of the things that I take in when I come in.\n\nI might have had to do payroll that day or rent or whatever, but literally when I walk in and see the note on the door saying “Welcome home,” or I know that people are genuinely happy to be there or, when we have an event and the event is successful and it is packed, it feels like everything is worth it. I’m not looking at dollars, but I’m looking at the fact that it’s crowded and people genuinely want to be there.\n\n**Holotta Tymes**\n\nPosition: Owner and CEO of Club 1220\n\nHometown: Saginaw, Michigan\n\nArea of Residence: San Francisco Bay Area\n\n**Five things to know about Holotta Tyme**\n\n1. Holotta is an entrepreneur who also runs a local flower shop.\n\n2. She was recognized for her advocacy for the LGBTQ community and entrepreneurship by the Contra Costa Board of Supervisors in 2024.\n\n3. She’s raised more than $500,000 riding 545 miles from San Francisco to Los Angeles as part of the AIDS Life Cycle for the past 13 years straight.\n\n4. Standing at 5’2”, Holotta has been dubbed the “Smallest Drag Queen in Captivity”.\n\n5. She’s worked at beloved queer or queer-friendly venues from Finocchio’s Club and Oasis to the Lookout and the Stud, and has performed in the role of Sophia Petrillo in “The Golden Girls Live!”, a decades long Christmas special in San Francisco.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/club-owner-keeps-historic-lgbtq-space-alive-in-contra-costa-county", "canonical_source": "https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/06/19/club-owner-keeps-historic-lgbtq-space-alive-in-contra-costa-county/", "published_at": "2026-06-19 15:00:44+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-19 15:10:51.141200+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-safety"], "entities": ["Club 1220", "Holotta Tyme", "Robert Tyme", "John Crovo", "Steve Crovo", "Walnut Creek", "Contra Costa County", "Bay Area News Group"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/club-owner-keeps-historic-lgbtq-space-alive-in-contra-costa-county", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/club-owner-keeps-historic-lgbtq-space-alive-in-contra-costa-county.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/club-owner-keeps-historic-lgbtq-space-alive-in-contra-costa-county.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/club-owner-keeps-historic-lgbtq-space-alive-in-contra-costa-county.jsonld"}}