Tarangela Bassett “did the thing”—she disappeared.
When Trade’s beloved giant spider suddenly vanished from atop the bar late last month, rumors quickly spread that the LGBTQ+ nightlife icon had been stolen. Missing flyers appeared around 14th Street, while a local news crew gathered outside the bar hoping to catch a glimpse of her return. But when Tarangela Bassett reemerged just in time for Pride Month sporting a new Madonna-inspired look, it became clear the truth was a little less dramatic. The bar had faked the whole thing.
The mastermind behind Tarangela’s disappearance was Bumper, a Trade performer and member of the bar’s production team who asked to be identified only by his chosen name. Believing the spider was due for a Pride makeover, Bumper and several staff members climbed onto the roof around 3 AM during Memorial Day weekend to quietly remove Tarangela before anyone noticed she was gone. Only after the spider was down did Bumper realize the makeover presented another opportunity.
“I knew this would be the talk of the town,” he says.
Over the next few days, Bumper plastered 14th Street with “missing” posters featuring Tarangela’s photo and a plea for anyone with information about her whereabouts to contact the bar.
“It was truly like, this is either going to crack people up or take a glaring turn,” says Bumper. “I had no idea something like this would happen. It grew beyond my dreams, for sure.”
What neither Bumper nor Trade anticipated was just how invested people would become in solving the mystery. After someone shared one of the flyers with the Instagram account Washingtonian Problems, nearly a hundred commenters demanded Tarangela’s safe return. Soon after, a reporter from the Washington Post stopped by the bar to inquire about the disappearance (no story ultimately ran), followed by a segment on ABC7 dedicated to the spider’s disappearance. One patron even emailed the bar claiming they had seen Tarangela being stolen after returning home from a late-night flight through DCA. What they didn’t know was that the alleged culprits were Trade employees themselves.
Despite the growing attention, Trade’s staff remained committed to the bit.
“I told everybody in Slack, ‘If you want to run with this joke, it’d be really fun,'” says Bumper. “Everybody was so down. People gave us jokes and so much content and ideas, and every day was a new bit leading up to her return.”
Meanwhile, Bumper raced to complete Tarangela’s transformation in time for Pride Month. The giant spider, originally purchased by the bar’s owner at Home Depot for Halloween 2024, was completely reimagined. Its body was deconstructed and converted into a speaker, with its legs extending from either side. The redesign was largely inspired by Bumper’s love of Madonna’s 2005 album, Confessions on a Dance Floor. That Madonna is set to release Confessions II next month, he notes, is simply the cherry on top.
Bumper adds that this debacle was meant to add “some whimsy and joy to the news cycle amongst the sea of not so great news.” Still, he’s “relieved” to know that if there was a real-life theft, people would take it seriously.
“We began to realize how much of a fixture that the tarantula had become, and it made it even more exciting to bring her back in a new way with even more meaning,” says Bumper.
Meanwhile, the spider’s rainbow-themed web is expected to expand into the bar’s back patio for DC’s Pride weekend, with the possibility of additional eight-legged offspring appearing around the venue.
When I asked Bumper if he had a favorite Madonna song to describe the past few weeks, he didn’t hesitate.
“Hung Up.”
Tristan Espinoza joined Washingtonian as an Editorial Fellow in 2026. A proud Osage Native from Dallas, Texas, he is pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (Nonfiction) at American University. He is a graduate of Columbia University and the London School of Economics. He lives in Mount Pleasant.
