Ramrod

About this place Ramrod

Ramrod shares the 1254 Boylston Street address with Machine but operates as a separate bar with its own entrance, its own identity, and its own crowd. Where Machine is the nightclub, Ramrod is the leather bar: a neighbourhood pub-style space that serves the bear, leather, and masculine-presenting gay communities that have made Boylston Street their home since the neighbourhood's gay bars appeared in the 1970s. The atmosphere is deliberately unspectacular — pool table, bar stools, video screens, and the general feel of a bar that does not need to impress anyone. The crowd is older on average than Machine's, locally rooted, and made up of men who have been regulars for years or decades. Ramrod is part of the Eagle Bar network's extended family of leather venues, though independently owned. For leather-identified visitors to Boston, Ramrod and the Eagle Boston in the South End together represent the city's leather infrastructure.