Published on April 14, 2026, at FOX31
An attempt to save Denver’s only lesbian bar has failed only days after the community raised more than $80,000 in donations to keep it open as infighting among owners and staff led to the business’s immediate dissolution.
The Pearl, one of just a few dozen lesbian bars in the U.S., on Saturday announced it would close at the end of the month after falling behind on paying staff and performers as well as building costs to maintain its location in the historic Mercury Cafe. The Pearl had only been open for a year and had more than a couple past problems during its existence.
Hours later, The Pearl’s Instagram account posted a GoFundMe to try and save the bar, saying the funds would go to payroll to keep the bar open through Pride, and in less than 24 hours, it racked up $83,271 before it closed Sunday night.
On Tuesday morning, however, a group of the Pearl’s staff posted a lengthy statement on Instagram accusing an unnamed bar co-owner of going rogue and posting the GoFundMe without talking to anyone else before the rest of the team came up with a possible plan forward. The staff cited “lack of accountability as well as the mismanagement of finances” in the statement, which said paychecks for the last week had bounced, and said they all had reported the GoFundMe as fraud, while also encouraging other people to do so as well.
"The vagueness of the allocation of funds as well as lack of an actual plan to get us through Pride were the exact reasons that we wanted to hold off until we knew where we stood as a business. The staff came together and decided unanimously that we could not in good conscience accept these GoFundMe funds with the likely chance of ending up in the exact same position in three months. It is not fair to our staff nor is it fair to anyone who donated the money, and it is especially not fair to anyone in the community in need of mutual aid. We have reported the fundraiser as fraudulent and encourage you all to do so as well. We cannot emphasize enough what everyone’s support means to us and we want to reiterate that the decision we came to was made as a team."
The staff said they had made the group decision to close at the end of April as originally planned.
“We want to formally apologize to the community for how this was handled and how everyone was taken advantage of,” the staff wrote. “Losing this space not only means 30+ employees will be losing their jobs, but its also our gogos, DJs, drag performers, sound engineers and event producers are losing an incredibly valuable space.”
Hours later, a statement saying it was from the co-owner who had started the GoFundMe, Dom Garcia, appeared on The Pearl’s Instagram story explaining the reasoning for starting it to keep The Pearl open, but relenting to the staff and saying she requested GoFundMe to refund all the donations.
"I was overwhelmed by the support from our patrons so I started a go fund me for my business, the staff and other owners were upset with me for that, and I quickly learned the staff had found out from the other owner the blame of the bar closing was all placed on myself, with no explanation other than I’m “shady” With the go fund me I learned a lot about the bar while I was I was away, the bar turned into the opposite of my vision. I heard from my transmase community that they didn’t feel safe, I heard about abusers in my staff. I heard about truly disheartening things from my other business owners, that I trusted. This isn’t the space I created and it’s not fair to my community to keep it going when it’s falling into something so different than I imagined. I have requested the gofundme be refunded back to all of our donors." - Dom Garcia, via The Pearl’s Instagram story
After that statement was posted, Garcia appeared to post screenshots requesting the GoFundMe donations be refunded. A GoFundMe spokesperson confirmed to FOX31 Garcia had requested the refund and that the money was safe.
“All of the money is being safely held by our payment processor in the meantime,” the spokesperson said in an email.
Less than an hour later, another Instagram story popped up showing a screenshot of articles of dissolution documents with the Colorado Secretary of State and “Pearl Divers LLC” filled in on the form.
The screenshot also came with the message saying, “The owners had a meeting this morning and we all collectively decided to close the business. Staff leads rallied everyone to say the gofundme was fraudulent. It was not. It was to save the business for the community. The LLC is dissolved. If it continues to operate it is operating ILLEGALLY.”
The Secretary of State’s website database and a spokesperson for the department confirmed the business voluntarily dissolved on Tuesday.
FOX31 has reached out to the other bar co-owner, Ashlee Cassity, as well the now-former The Pearl employee who posted the staff statement on Instagram to learn more about the situation.
