Beloved Columbia Heights dive bar and music venue The Pinch will close down after eight years, the owners announced in a Facebook post on Tuesday.

“Sadly after nearly 8 great years The Pinch will be closing its doors,” the venue wrote in the post. “We’ve enjoyed our time spent here in Columbia Heights and getting to know our neighbors and friends and would love to see you all before we go!” The bar’s last day open will be Tuesday, October 22.

The Pinch opened up in May 2012 on a narrow corner lot that used to belong to El Salvadoreño. Dan Maceda and his co-owners (all of whom had a wealth of experience in the restaurant industry) told Washingtonian shortly after opening that they had wanted to open a neighborhood bar and restaurant partly because they were tired of working for other people.

“This restaurant, bar, and live music venue will feature specialty cocktails, contemporary twists on classic American fare and live music in a comfortable, neighborhood bar setting,” Maceda wrote to Popville shortly before its opening.

The venue has a surprisingly roomy stage in their basement lounge where a roving cast of local and touring bands—particularly metal and hardcore acts—have performed for nearly a decade. Their menu is classic American bar fare like wings and burgers, though sometimes with a twist—the meat lovers burger, for example, is topped with pulled duck and bacon, and they also put duck bacon in their mac and cheese (but only on Mondays). The bar’s fries made our list of 10 best fries in the area in 2014.

Zach Ellwood, The Pinch’s venue booking manager, tells DCist he didn’t know about the closure until Tuesday, around the same time the public found out. He had booked about 30 bands at the venue for the next two months, and is now busy finding new venues for those acts.

Owner Maceda tells DCist that he had expected to be able to keep the bar open longer, but that “looking at the numbers overall, they just weren’t there.” The Pinch has been struggling financially for years now, he says, and he and his partners simply decided they didn’t have a choice except to shut down.

Some of the trouble stems from an explosion of new bars and restaurants across the city in recent years, Maceda says—particularly the ones in Columbia Heights, near The Pinch. “Four or five years ago, we were the only venue our size hosting bands in our genre. Now there are four or five. So things definitely diluted a bit,” he says.

Maceda says he believes more shows at local establishments Atlas Brew Works, Pie Shop at Dangerously Delicious Pies, and Slash Run have contributed to the decline in business at The Pinch. The audience in the D.C. area is large, but not large enough to accommodate three or four shows happening in one night, Maceda says.

Another culprit? The lack of late-night Metro service, which impacts customers who are coming to shows from outside the city, at least according to Maceda. “Now instead of an $8 round trip [on Metro], you’re looking at spending $30 or $40 to get out,” he says. “Now you’re making the decision maybe instead of going to three or four shows a month, you’re only going out to one or two.”

Commenters lamented the bar’s closure on Facebook, detailing memories and people they’d met hanging out at The Pinch.

“Over the years, so much has changed—I got a job I loved after feeling hopelessly unemployed; I met a cool guy and ended up marrying him,” wrote one commenter. “But one thing stayed the same: It always felt like coming home whenever I walked through the door at the Pinch.”

Maceda agrees with that sentiment.

“I’ve had such a great experience. The neighborhood has been so great to us,” he says. “I’m going to miss it. It’s been a great eight years for me.”

This story has been updated with comment from Dan Maceda, the owner of The Pinch.