Downtown Portland Will Get New Gay Dance Club Former Embers Space

Contents:

• JT TIME FOR PRI, A POPULAR PORTLAND GAY BAR REOPENS
• DOWNTOWN PORTLAND WILL GET NEW GAY DANCE CLUB FORMER EMBERS SPACE
• NEW DOCUMENTARY RELLS IMPORTANCE OF PORTLAND’S LONG-GONE GAY BARS
• DO WE HAVE GAY BARS MAE?

JT TIME FOR PRI, A POPULAR PORTLAND GAY BAR REOPENS

But this lotn has a unique flavor: Nearly everyone here is gay, lbian, or transgenr. Bee, at that time I hired on, they uld have fired me for beg gay.

Karabaic [narratn]: But Rose is sred wh the recent uptick vlence agast the LGBTQ+ I live fear that somebody, well, we’ve seen [people] go to the gay bars and shoot them up, you know? So if somebody asks, ‘When did you know you were gay?

And the gay newspaper down there is the Bay Area Reporter. Karabaic [narratn]: But Taylor se that thgs have been Jt alg wh this backlash of agast gay people recently. It’s jt sort of weird, and prottg drag showsWe gaed so much, the past s, people unrstandg who gay people are and people beg more fortable.

DOWNTOWN PORTLAND WILL GET NEW GAY DANCE CLUB FORMER EMBERS SPACE

And now ’s kd of turng were aware of of beg gay and beg different, but aga, that was not somethg that was really talked about among other people.

And nowadays ’s somethg that you n talk about openly wh other people and not beg embarrassed about , or not have a fear of beg rejected or beg discrimated gay people that are out now have been out for a long time and they’re not gog to be gog back . And so there’s gog to have to be some reckong wh the people who don’t want to see gay people.

In 2021, Lol Lounge—the inic (if nonscript) gay bar at Northeast Mart Luther Kg and Fremont known for regular karaoke, drag shows, and dance parti—shut s doors, jog the growg list of beloved queer spac Portland that have closed recent years (Embers, Rebel Rebel, and the Roxy, to name a few).

NEW DOCUMENTARY RELLS IMPORTANCE OF PORTLAND’S LONG-GONE GAY BARS

However, jt the nick of time for Pri Month ftivi, the new gay bar is set to open on Friday June 30, unr the new name of Back 2 Earth. However, more Portland queer spac have opened outsi the tradnal “gay club” format — plac like the transparently queer Mexin rtrant Taqueria Los Puñal, or the swanky cktail bar Santé.

• Portland’s Wilst Gay Bars That Are Still Open [EPDX]. After years of seeg bars close, downtown Portland's gay scene will get a big new nightclub as soon as this November, Portlanrs mourned when nightclub Embers announced would close after 48 years as a bastn of gay culture at the edge of Old Town—an unually sudn end that me about after the owner suffered what the club lled a "massive stroke.

"But the new bs owner the space, TJ Bce, says he plans to "rry on the tradn" the former Embers space at 110 NW Broadway by openg a new gay dance club lled Badlands, as soon as this summer—although timg will pend heavily on the level of renovatns is a 20-year veteran openg bars, wh another spot lled Badlands Sacramento, pl three different nightclubs lled Splash Frno, San Jose and Reno. His two-story, vio-screen-packed San Jose lotn was apparently the most popular Lyft lotn the Bay Area, potential good news for a Portland gay bar scene that hasn't seen a high-profile openg says was his lol ti that led to him takg over the former Embers space. “Joan Rivers said ‘I wish I had a gay son I uld phone at midnight and discs whatever movie was on TCM, ’” he relled.

DO WE HAVE GAY BARS MAE?

Bch would have loved to have been Rivers’s “gay son. He knew, as a boy, that he was gay and hated gog to school where a movie-and-theater-lovg kid who liked to draw wasn’t one of the ol kids. PORTLAND, Mae — Artist and bookbr Stt Mullenberg remembers the first time he vised a gay bar.

“I wanted some gay experience, ” he said. At the time, gay bars were one of the snt number of safe plac for those terted the same sex to meet each other. “In the midst of the terviews, I heard them talk a lot about all the Portland gay bars that don’t exist anymore, ” Chapkis said.