Award-Winning Downtown Boise Bar Will Close For Good After 6 Years

Bad Irish. Mainstreet Bistro. Fatty’s. Mack & Charlie’s. Catacomb. The Ice Bouquet. With as much as Boise has grown over the past few years, there’s probably a great deal of people who don’t recognize those names. Do you know what they all have in common?

They’re all bars that have shut their doors in Downtown Boise within the last 15 years, and another concept is about to join that list. Water Bear Bar, which opened in 2019, posted this message on their Facebook Page on September 26:

We make this announcement with a heavy heart, the bar is for sale. It’s been a long time coming and we tried everything we possibly could to keep this special little place around for y’all. It’s just not feasible. We’d love to see you for one more round though! The bar (as you know it) will be closing, our last day of weekly operations is Saturday October 4th.

The message goes on to explain the current owners will still have access to the space through the end of the year or until the bar is sold, so they plan on hosting some one-off events like a Halloween Party, Tequila with the Dead, Home for the Holidays, and Last Christmas event to try to earn what they need to pay back rent.

While the bar had a welcoming mountain-tropical theme, the cocktail menu itself was on the pricey side. However, they made a splash with the community in the six(ish) years Water Bear Bar has been around. In 2020, it won “Best Bar” in the Boise Weekly’s “Best of Boise” and then followed that up with being a nominee for “Best Cocktails” in the same competition in 2022 and 2023.

As a queer-woman-owned establishment, they really did go the extra mile to make anyone that walked through their doors feel welcome. Laura Keeler and her team also supported some really great local organizations like the Boise Bicycle Project, the Boise Period Project (which really deserves more attention for the work they do), and the Women’s and Children’s Alliance.

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After an extended closure during the COVID-19 pandemic and some other factors, the bar briefly turned to crowdfunding. It raised a little over $11,000 but was searching for funding up to $100,000.

Water Bear Bar joins Zee’s Rooftop Cafe, Kichii Sushi and Spirits, and P.F. Chang’s on the list of establishments that announced they’d be closing in Downtown Boise over the last two weeks.