San Francisco's dwindling LGBT community took another hit this week. Lila Thirkield, owner of The Lexington Club, announced that her popular lesbian bar in the heart of the egregiously-changing Mission District will close. 

"Eighteen years ago I opened The Lex to create a space for the dykes, queers, artists, musicians, and neighborhood folks who made up the community that surrounded it," Thirkield writes via a statement on Facebook. "Eighteen years later, I find myself struggling to run a neighborhood dyke bar in a neighborhood that has dramatically changed."

But the tiny bar in the inner Mission was more than just a place where ladies could play pinball in between rounds of flirting and PBRs. It was also a community center of sorts. 

Mark B., writing for 48 Hills Online, notes, "It was situated as a queer outpost in the Mission, then the city’s lesbian neighborhood, that acted as a hub for sex-positive and women’s rights activists, longtime cruisers and fresh-faced newbies, butches and femmes, the emerging transman community, and all manner of beautiful freaks who stretched the city’s queer boundaries beyond the Castro and SoMa."

Although Thirkield has a buyer (she won't disclose any names), she will keep the bar open until early 2015. Until then, be sure to stop by and pay your respects.