Home Is Where the Rainbow Is: Celebrating Pride at Trax in the Finery

How WeHo’s neighborhood gay bar became a gathering place for everyone — and why that mattered more than ever

June was Pride Month, and in Wedgewood-Houston, there was no better place to mark it than Trax — the neighborhood bar that refused to disappear.

The story of Trax is, in many ways, the story of what makes a community worth belonging to. This year marked the 20th anniversary of Trax, which opened in 2005 and until last year operated in the same South Nashville location for two decades. Then, in a move that stunned its regulars, the landlord forced it out — at the end of June, which is Pride Month. Owner Steven Kiss put it plainly at the time: “I’m like, ‘So you’re really going to kick a gay bar out on June 1?’”

The bar closed. And then it came back.

After several months without a home, Trax set up in a new space in Wedgewood-Houston — located in the mixed-use building called Six10 Merritt at The Finery, right next to Diskin Cider. The community that had packed the old bar for two decades followed without hesitation. Kiss noted the bar did a soft opening with very minimal advertising and “the response has been amazing… It’s a different location, different look, but with everybody back together it’s still the same feel as the old bar.”

What Made Trax, Trax

There were flashier gay bars in Nashville. There were bigger dance floors, more elaborate drag productions, louder sound systems. Trax never competed on those terms, and that was exactly the point.

Kiss wanted to run the little neighborhood bar that could — a place where people could play darts and pool, sit down and talk. Many of the bar’s regular patrons lived in the Wedgewood-Houston neighborhood, and they packed out the new location even before it was officially open.

In a city where new bars opened and closed every month, Trax endured through sheer community love. The drinks were cheap, the jukebox was good, and the crowd was a mix of regulars who had been coming for years and newcomers who stumbled in and never left. It wasn’t a place you went for craft cocktails or Instagram moments. It was a place you went to feel the history of Nashville’s queer community in a bar that never tried to be anything other than exactly what it was.

That authenticity was increasingly rare — and increasingly precious.

A Bar for the Whole Neighborhood

What was notable about the new Trax at The Finery wasn’t just that it survived. It was that the move seemed to have deepened its connection to the broader community around it. The new Trax had big windows looking out onto the street, and Kiss described the feeling: “It feels like we’re more of the community at-large — not just the gay community, the Wedgewood-Houston community.”

That integration mattered. Kiss was deliberate about extending Trax’s reach beyond its core audience — hosting events like a dog benefit for Friends of MACC, which supported fostering abused animals and rescues. “We try to do some positive things within the whole community,” he said, “not just within the LGBTQ+ community.”

This is what the best neighborhood spaces do. They hold a particular community at their center — in Trax’s case, Nashville’s LGBTQ+ community — while keeping the door wide open. Friends, family members, coworkers, neighbors who had never been to a gay bar in their lives and found themselves immediately at home. That was the bar at its best, and it was what made celebrating Pride there feel different from a big ticketed event.

Pride Month in WeHo — and Beyond

The 2026 Nashville Pride Festival took place Saturday, June 27 from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. at Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park, with the free Nashville Pride Parade kicking off at 10 a.m. from Broadway and 8th Avenue. The parade featured more than 140 entries, including marchers, floats, vehicles and marching bands.

The festival included a new HOTHAUS area with DJs, dancing, and more than 50 drag performances throughout the day, with Nashville-born country-pop artist Fancy Hagood closing out the night on the Equality Main Stage.

It was worth noting the context Pride sat in this year. Tennessee had passed some of the most restrictive LGBTQ+ legislation in the United States in recent years, and Nashville Pride took place explicitly in resistance to that political context — the festival was one of the largest political demonstrations in the state as well as a community celebration. In 2025, several major corporate sponsors pulled support amid national anti-DEI backlash, creating a significant shortfall. The community rallied with a benefit concert, and the event proceeded. Nashville Pride 2026 continued with a more community-driven funding model — which meant supporting it, by attending, donating, or simply showing up, was more impactful than ever.

Against that backdrop, a neighborhood bar that had weathered a forced closure, found a new home, and kept its lights on for 20 years wasn’t just a place to have a drink. It was a small act of persistence that the community enacted together, one regular at a time.

An Invitation

Pride Month was for everyone — for the LGBTQ+ community whose history and resilience it honored, and for the neighbors, friends, and family members who showed up to stand alongside them. For those who had never been to Trax, it was an ideal month to change that. Go on a Tuesday. Order something off the jukebox. Talk to whoever was sitting next to you.

As Kiss put it ahead of Pride Month: “I want everyone in the community to come out, celebrate themselves, enjoy a safe space, as safe as any space can be.”

That invitation was open to all of us.

Trax is located at Six10 Merritt at The Finery, Wedgewood-Houston. Open seven days a week, noon to 3 a.m. Happy hour noon to 8 p.m. with two-for-one well drinks.

No matter how you celebrated, or if you did, you belong in Wedgewood Houston.