Annette Hatton has lived in Athens for 32 years, the last 15 spent as an open member and leader in the city’s lesbian community.

Though never a regular on the Athens bar scene, Hatton joined the city’s gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders in heralding the opening of Boneshakers, Athens’ only gay bar, 12 years ago.

Last month, she joined them in mourning its departure, not for the loss of drinks and dancing but for a symbolic common space for the gay community.

“Boneshakers really did fill a place when it came out — a place for people to be there, know each other and not worry,” said Hatton, the managing editor of the “Georgia Review” and founder of GLOBES, Gay, Lesbian Or Bisexual Employees and Supporters.

However, the bar’s doors closed for the last time on a different Athens than the one that witnessed its opening 12 years ago.

Boneshakers’ original co-owner, Greg Martin, said with several bars to a street block today, it is difficult for current students to imagine Athens with only the handful of downtown hotspots available back in 1993.

During the ’90s, Boneshakers defied expectations and surpassed the average five-year club lifespan. While traveling through Europe and Canada, Martin said he met people familiar with the club.

Since that time, the last owner, Mark Bell, said there has been a change in attitudes towards homosexuality, which contributed to the bar no longer being profitable.

“Sometimes I began to feel I was in the public service business by staying open because people weren’t coming,” Bell said.

But behind the dwindling support that doomed Boneshakers — which Bell reopened Thursday as Kultur Lounge, hosting a gay night on Saturdays — Bell said there was a sign of progress for the community.

Bell often sees his regulars drinking in other bars downtown, something he said members of the gay community would not have felt comfortable doing before Boneshakers opened.

Members of the gay community, however, were more reserved than Bell — who is not gay — in speaking about the changes in attitude.

“The town may be more welcoming in some ways,” Hatton said, before adding, “I say that cautiously.”

Summer graduate and former Boneshakers regular Kyle Bailey was less positive about the progress he had witnessed in Athens’ attitude toward gays. In two-and-a-half years, Bailey said he had been attacked downtown twice for being gay.

“The climate of Athens is very progressive, but when you take into account the students, it is much more closed-minded,” Bailey said.

Sophomore Heather Danaceau, who is straight, agreed with Bailey, although she said when considering other southern cities, such as her hometown of Marietta, Athens was more open in receiving the gay community.

But talk of integrating Athens’ gays into mainstream culture might be the wrong approach, said Nick McClellan, a recent graduate and former board member of the Lambda Alliance, a gay student group.

Before moving from Athens, McClellan took one last tour around town and was surprised by how much he enjoyed hanging out with friends in the “straight” clubs he had largely ignored for years. Whereas an enjoyable experience in an unfamiliar setting might have repudiated the need for a gay bar in Athens, for McClellan it reinforced the need for one.

“I think in an ideal world there would be a gay club,” he said. “But everyone would go.”