'Fantastic Experience' For Oceanside Bar Owner, Closed Due To Pandemic

OCEANSIDE, NY — "It was a fantastic experience," Gina Wuestmann told Patch.

Her LGBTQ bar BTW in Oceanside, co-owned with her husband David, closed last weekend after two years.

Their bar delayed opening due to the pandemic and economic issues never eased.

"Our luck, everything went up in price," she said.

What should have taken a year to get the bar prepared, took up to two years. Making it worse, "during that whole time we had to pay the rent, the insurance [and] the electric," Wuestmann said.

Ultimately, they got the bar ready for the public Nov. 12. But more bad timing ensued.

"[On] Nov. 11, [Gov.] Cuomo announces the 10 p.m. shutdown on bars and restaurants," she recalled.

She got one night with patrons until 3 a.m. before the "curfew" took effect.

"It was rough and we couldn't recover from it," Wuestmann said, knowing that it wasn't a salvageable business by the one-year mark.

However, COVID-19 didn't impact Gina Wuestmann's North Village Tavern in Rockville Centre. She has owned that for 14 years.

"It has an original base of people," she said. "We were opening a place that never existed before. We spent all this money to build and we were coming into crickets."

Despite the inability of the bar to survive, it was definitely a positive for the Wuestmanns.

"We met terrific people. We helped a lot of agencies," she said about the experience.

They have the property up for sale and Wuestmann hopes the next buyer will keep it as an LGBTQ night spot.

"We picked the [closing] date months ago," she said. "We can't keep feeding the business."

Gina and David Wuestmann, who got married in 2020 at BTW, held a celebratory final weekend with their regulars.

Wuestmann said she'll miss what the BTW (named for Born This Way) brought them, but plans to focus on the North Village Tavern.

"I think this industry is suffering immensely," she said. "The reality is, things are expensive right now. We are a luxury."