Brandi666/Flickr

A typical night of leather and music at the Eagle, from 2006

The public meeting was called on Monday night at 7 p.m. as a way for the community of people —from leather daddies to noise rockers — to figure out how to fight the closure of the iconic Eagle Tavern, set for the end of April.

But, as the few hundred or so gathered learned, the bar's fate appears to be a done deal.

As late as this fall, the bar was slated to change hands from current bar owners Joe Banks and John Gardiner to a duo with appropriate credentials for the historic queer spot —   Lila Thirkield, owner of the Lexington Club in the Mission and Ron Hennis, a manager of the Eagle for the past nine years. Thirkield said that they had been working out the details of the transaction for the bulk of 2010.

But when the current landlord refused to negotiate with them, seemingly seeking to manage the bar on his own, the plan fell through. The offer to lease the bar had gone as far as being in escrow.

"It blew up right before the holidays," said Thirkield.

Instead, as the crowd learned, the liquor license had been sold outright to the owner of Skylark, a straight bar in the Mission.

WorldfamousinSF/Flickr

John Dwyer, playing at the Eagle

Although a rallying cry was given to march to Skylark, the mood of the bar was decidely downkey. John Dwyer, of the band The Oh Sees (and many others), said that as soon as he heard the owner say the liquor license was sold, he figured the fight was finished.

"I thought the crowd was going to get violent for a minute," he said. As a musician who has performed at the Eagle regularly since around 2003, Dwyer said that he had spent "probably the best years of my life" playing to the diverse crowd of straight kids, punks, leather daddies and whoever else happened to wander up to the SoMa bar.

Others mourned the loss of a space that has been very hospitable to non-profits seeking to drum up money — perhaps as notable as the place's reputation as a cruising spot on many a Sunday beer bust. "This place has raised millions in the past 30 years," said Ray Middling. As a former Mr. San Francisco Leather Daddy 26 (crowned in 2008), Middling said that he remembered hosting his first fundraiser for a children of color youth group at the Eagle and getting over $2,300. He lives in Vallejo, but he said he still comes back on weekends. "It's a neighborhood bar and a destination bar," he said.

When is a bar not just a bar? That seemed to be on the minds of many, who lingered over drinks as the crowd thinned. Will Brenner, who moved to SF in 1989, led this reporter by the arm to a wall of plaques partially obscured by a door. Sparking his lighter to illuminate the hidden awards, he pointed to a few of his favorites — all were community honors of one kind or another, many related to the non-profits who had thrown benefit events in the outdoor patio.

"It's a community gathering space," he said, "We've lost so much. As a gay man, where can we go? The internet killed the damned thing."

But while the impact of dating websites on the leather community was frequently brought up, others disputed that the Eagle's demise was a sign of the times — that it was another victim of an economic cycle or an outdated business model or the shifting nature of the gay community's identity. "This is not about the money," said  Thirkield, noting that it was not that the business model of the bar that spiked the deal.  "There were people from the community in contract. That's not the situation here."What, exactly, the constitutes the situation remains a bit murky, but it seems clear that the Eagle's future will be very different from its past.