What happened to Eugene’s up-and-coming queer bar?

Dan Valdivia was working in his home office when he got the text.

It was a photo of a notice that read, in all caps, “Due to compliance and licensing issues: We are requiring you to remove your food cart from the property at 255 Madison indefinitely by March 5th, 2026.”

The notice was taped to all four food trucks parked at 255 Madison, a Whiteaker wine bar that opened in 2021 and was slowly becoming one of Eugene’s only dedicated LGBTQ+ venues. 

Valdivia, a bar manager at 255 Madison, kept reading, distraught: “Sorry for the inconvenience, we will no longer be offering any on premise consumption and sales of alcohol products. This includes food service.”

The notice was signed by the property owners, Bruce and Beverly Biehl, with a number to contact for questions. Bruce Biehl is the founder of Eugene Wine Cellars, an urban winery that has produced and bottled wine for nearly 30 years. After two of Biehl’s longtime employees took over the tasting room inside his Whiteaker facility, he leased the space for them to open their own wine bar, 255 Madison.

It was around 10 a.m., Feb. 17, when Valdivia first saw the notice. A food truck owner had sent the photo to a group chat that included Valdivia, four food vendors on the property and 255 Madison’s three owners, Jason Downing and Greg and Hickory Sothras. 

“I stood up immediately and texted the bar owners, asking what was going on,” Valdivia said. “It was shocking.” 

No one, not even the bar’s owners, seemed to know at first why Bruce Biehl had posted the notices asking the food vendors to vacate. 

Biehl spoke with Lookout Eugene-Springfield about his background in the wine industry, but he declined to comment about the abrupt closing of 255 Madison. 

Valdivia was told to open the wine bar that evening. He was halfway through his shift when Greg Sothras called him. It was about 6:30 p.m.

“I just got off the phone with Bruce,” Valdivia remembered Sothras telling him. “We’re not going to be open after today.”

While the food trucks initially had just over two weeks to vacate, 255 Madison was ordered to close its doors that night for good. That evening, Valdivia broke the news on the wine bar’s Instagram account.

“For now,” he added, “if you want to drink with us one last time we will be open late. Stop on by.”

A wine bar is born

Greg Sothras got into the wine business when he was a teenager. In high school, he worked at a family friend’s vineyard that sold grapes to King Estate and helped plant another vineyard in Oakland. In 2000, Bruce Biehl hired him as a winemaker at Eugene Wine Cellars. 

Eugene Wine Cellars has been a driving force in Oregon’s wine industry for more than two decades. According to a 2023 story from The Oregonian/OregonLive, the facility produced 30,000 cases of wine annually.

Sothras worked for Biehl for about 20 years when he got the idea to open 255 Madison. During that time, he also launched a canned wine business, SoDown Wine Co., with his business partner, Jason Downing, another Eugene Wine Cellars employee.

“We had a product we were developing, and I thought it would be a good idea to open up a retail space,” Sothras said.

Eugene Wine Cellars had a tasting room, “but they weren’t doing a whole lot with it,” Sothras said. Biehl leased the space to Sothras and Downing to open their wine bar, which they eventually named 255 Madison, after Eugene Wine Cellars’ address. 

Hickory Sothras, Sothras’ wife and a local teacher, was also an owner. Greg Sothras said his wife was “gifted” at running the bar and called her “a people person who knows how to make things happen.”

“I had never wanted to be a bar owner,” Greg Sothras said. “But when I started thinking about it, what I wanted the place to be, and this might sound corny, but I wanted it to be like ‘Cheers.’ It took a village to create it.” 

They opened their wine bar in 2021. One of their first customers was Valdivia.

A loss with ripple effects 

The sudden closure of 255 Madison last month left scores of people, including bar employees, food cart vendors, event hosts, musicians and drag artists, scrambling to make up for lost wages and reestablish their businesses elsewhere. 

“I wish the employees at the bar had been given more time to make arrangements,” Valdivia said of 255’s staff members. “To put that on people who rely on 255 Madison as a source of income, for me that was another source of anger and sadness.”

Valdivia, who works full-time in project management, had been a regular at 255 Madison since it opened. He started bartending there in 2023 to make extra cash after he bought a home in Eugene.

But 255 Madison quickly became Valdivia’s passion. He was promoted to manager and in the last six months, he saw a growing customer base and sense of community. The wine bar’s calendar was booked with events every day through April, he said.

Up until the day it permanently closed, Valdivia planned to make 255 Madison his sole career focus. 

“It felt like having the rug pulled out from under us,” he said. “It really felt like we had all this momentum, and just as quick — maybe quicker — as we got it, we lost it.”

Llewyn St. Clair drove traffic to 255 Madison through their inclusive events company, Nearly Normal Events. They hosted and booked burlesque and drag shows, community organizing workshops and a live Dungeons & Dragons puppet show. 

As Nearly Normal partnered with 255 Madison on events, St. Clair invested $1,000 into decorations and rebranding for the wine bar, they said. They were also given permission to store event equipment on the property.

“(Nearly Normal) started hosting drag shows and events and decorating the space in these really elaborate, vibrant ways,” said Nat Kameleokalani Makemaekekukui Lee Douglass, a full-time cartographer who often hosted and performed at 255 Madison as the drag artist Judy Jitsu.

Douglass called the ongoing collaboration between her, Nearly Normal Events and 255 Madison’s owners, managers and bartenders a “dream team.”

“This is another, like, really tragic thing,” Douglass said. “We all kind of instantly realized we have something really magical here. We have the potential to do some really awesome, queer-centered and just radical events.”

By February, St. Clair said they were starting to gain back their investment when 255 Madison shut down.

“I lost my storage unit, venue, bartending job and money-making events in less than 24 hours,” St. Clair said.

The shutdown struck a chord with Eugene’s queer community, which lost its only dedicated LGBTQ+ bar and nightclub, Spectrum, in 2024. Douglass, St. Clair and other queer folks were building momentum at 255 Madison to bring that space back.

“You started telling people it was safe to come out, and now this,” St. Clair said.

‘It’s hard not to be bitter’ – Food trucks reel from loss

Dorene Williams launched Grateful Gringos with her husband, Marc Williams, at 255 Madison. It was the first food truck the couple owned and operated, serving up tacos and other Southwest treats.

“It’s like a family,” she said of 255 Madison. “My daughter loves the bartenders. It really sucks, and for it to happen so suddenly, it feels like a rug being pulled out from under you.”

She was shopping at Costco when she saw the photo of Biehl’s notice to vacate.

“No one had answers,” Dorene Williams said. “It was really weird. No one at the bar even knew.”

For Kieran Greaney, owner of Willamette Artisan Pizza and the longest-standing food vendor of the 255 Madison pod, the notice to vacate came at the end of the slow season for food trucks, he said, when winter gives way to outdoor events and warmer, more profitable days. 

“It’s hard not to be bitter,” said Greaney, who’s served vegan and vegetarian pies there for almost four years. “You’re uprooting yourself after getting established in the neighborhood.”

As events picked up, the food truck pod at 255 Madison collaborated with bartenders and performers. Grateful Gringos would run brunch specials for shows and events hosted by Judy Jitsu. The food vendors also wanted to start an international night market, showcasing the Ethiopian, Southwest, Italian and Filipino cuisines of their pod.

Rosamoon “Jing-Jing” Advincula, owner of the food truck Jing-Jing’s Filipino Cuisine, was planning to buy outdoor games for 255 Madison’s patio area when the weather warmed.

“We were shocked,” she said of the closure. The business “was the most successful it’s been. We all worked together.”

The pod was unusual in allowing Advincula to bring her business to events and other pop-ups across Oregon, introducing more people to crispy lumpia, a fried pork belly dish called lechon kawali and other Filipino food, all while maintaining a permanent commercial space.

“My food truck is on the go,” Advincula said. “Most pods require you to stay because they want to build their own space.”

The four food vendors at the 255 Madison pod were allowed to stay past the March 5 deadline while they searched for a new location. As of March 23, Willamette Artisan Pizza and Makeda’s Cuisine had not announced new locations.

Grateful Gringos moved its food truck in mid-March to Ninkasi Brewing Co.’s tasting room on Van Buren Street. In early March, Advincula moved Jing-Jing’s from 255 Madison to a few dispensaries in Eugene: Sorority House and Grasslands. She’s still doing special events and party bookings in between. 

“My love language is cooking and feeding people,” Advincula said. “A food truck provided that opportunity.” 

Compliance complications

Biehl, the Eugene Wine Cellars owner, put up notices for the food trucks at 255 Madison to cease operations after he was informed of compliance issues regarding the businesses operating on his property.

Operating and ensuring compliance for both 255 Madison and Eugene Wine Cellars — including distinct liquor licenses, tax filings, accounting and other legal requirements — under one roof had grown complicated. 

According to interviews with employees, the nonconsumption liquor license — the legal permit required to produce, bottle, store and sell wine but which doesn’t allow consumption on site — for Eugene Wine Cellars had lapsed. The full on-premises commercial license for 255 Madison was current when it ceased operations, allowing it to sell alcoholic beverages on the property.

Both Eugene Wine Cellars and 255 Madison had other compliance issues in recent years, according to interviews with employees and business records on the Oregon Secretary of State’s Corporate Division website.

The food and beverage industry is already fraught with economic pressures, low net profit margins and high overhead costs. Add to that a licensing lapse and other violations, which can lead to fines, production halts, contractual issues and regulatory backlogs, and businesses like Eugene Wine Cellars could face disaster. 

Sothras said Biehl was “understandably very frustrated and upset” by the compliance issues and operations at 255 Madison and Eugene Wine Cellars, but he wished they could have worked out a solution to keep the wine bar open, or at least give 255 Madison employees a month’s notice. 

As of Feb. 24, 2026 — one week after 255 Madison permanently closed — Eugene Wine Cellars’ nonconsumption winery license was in effect, according to a license search.

Biehl, 68, has been in the Oregon wine industry for 47 years. He has spent more than half of that time running Eugene Wine Cellars. He founded his family-owned winery in 1998, and although he had a tasting room throughout the years, his main business was always winemaking, not hospitality.

Sothras said he would have fought harder to keep 255 Madison open, but as a Eugene Wine Cellars winemaker for 25 years, his ties with Biehl “complicated” things. 

“His family was my family,” Sothras said of Biehl. “We had a very close relationship. 

“I do wish things would have happened differently,” he added. “We’ve gone through a lot together.”

‘It’s the people’

Douglass just celebrated two years of hosting weekly karaoke nights at 255 Madison when the bar shut down.

She was one of many partner artists invested in growing 255 Madison’s revenue and community. Every week, she filled the wine bar with dancing, singing and bingo nights, hyping up the crowd while making everyone who walked in feel comfortable.

“I haven’t even fully processed it,” Douglass said of the closure. “I’m feeling this intense sense of grief, but also, something that I’ve realized in the past few weeks is that, like, it’s not the space, it’s not the physical location that creates the environment, but it’s the people within it.”

The loss of 255 Madison was a wake-up call for folks like Douglass and St. Clair to launch their own queer-centered and owned space, a safe haven that celebrates LGBTQ+ experiences and provides resources, community-building workshops and fun events.

Douglass said she and others are in talks to open a co-op that would serve as a “hub of queer entertainment that we all have ownership in.”

“It’s my life’s mission to get a gay bar in Eugene,” St. Clair said.

For now, bands and other performers have rebooked their shows. Former 255 Madison employees have gotten jobs elsewhere. Douglass moved her karaoke party and drag show to Ojisan Ramen, a downtown Eugene restaurant that used to be a food truck at 255 Madison.

When Ojisan was parked at the wine bar, chef/owner Seth Fechtman would often cook up ramen, gyoza and other Japanese bites for Douglass’s karaoke shows, watching the crowd grow each week as she built a Judy Jitsu fan base there.

“If you’ve ever seen one of her events, you can kind of fall in love with the magic of it,” Fechtman said.

After a couple years, Fechtman got an opportunity to open a brick-and-mortar location for Ojisan at 150 W. Broadway — the former home of Spectrum.

“It’s been a natural progression,” Fechtman said. “Spectrum shut down a couple years ago, 255 was building momentum and then it was shut down. We’re trying to bring back some of that magic from Spectrum.”

After 255 closed, Fechtman started working with St. Clair of Nearly Normal Events to bring a gaming night, a community story hour and other fun happenings to his family-owned restaurant. When Fechtman decided to bring more nightlife to Ojisan Ramen, Douglass was his first call. 

Her first karaoke show at Ojisan was March 5, and she brought a crowd.

“The body of the space can change, but the heart and the love and the generosity will always remain in this town,” Douglass said. “While I feel sad that things are over (at 255 Madison), I know that it’ll live on.”