LIMA — Somewhere…, Lima’s popular LGBTQ bar that survived the AIDS epidemic and has advocated for inclusiveness in Lima for decades, is for sale as owner Tom Ritchie heads into retirement.
The bar has been closed since a brief reopening in May, after which Ritchie decided to wait out the pandemic. He’s since decided to retire but will hold one last party on Saturday.
Somewhere… started as a philosophical statement for Ritchie.
It was the early 1980s, before the AIDS epidemic made its way to the Midwest and before the burgeoning gay nightlife scene of the cities had taken hold in Lima.
Ritchie, who moved to Houston after college, was only in town to sell a house. The brief trip home inspired Ritchie, who wanted to give his community something better than the “sub-standard” and “depressing” atmosphere of gay nightlife in Lima. He opened Somewhere… in 1982.
The bar was immediately popular. The first night, Ritchie recalls, attracted an overflow crowd. Weeks later, Lima’s only other gay bar closed.
But his push for cultural change was met with resistance.
“I called myself a professional witness,” Ritchie said. “Everybody was trying to close us down for no reason other than the fact that we were openly advertising as a gay bar.”
Ritchie remembers the pre-AIDS era fondly; it was a time of parties and freedom and possibility.
But the mood at Somewhere… changed as the AIDS epidemic moved from the coasts into the Midwest, as men who had previously fled Lima for the freedom of the coasts were now coming home to die. The Allen County AIDS Task Force recruited Ritchie, who incorporated AIDS education, memorials and fundraisers into his events at Somewhere… from the late 1980s through the ‘90s.
“We were inundated,” Ritchie recalls.
The epidemic slowly faded as treatment and HIV/AIDS prevention evolved, allowing Ritchie to turn his focus to other subjects.
Today, Somewhere… is so close to mainstream that it regularly attracts a diverse crowd beyond those who identify as LGBTQ, an inclusiveness which Ritchie hopes the club’s next owner will continue.
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