Three die Berl gay bathhoe fire - Queerty

Contents:

• FIRE AT GAY SNA BERL KILLS 3 MEN, JUR 1
• FIRE AT GAY SNA BERL KILLS 3 MEN, JUR 1
• THE GAY BATHHOE FIRE OF 1977
• THREE DIE BERL GAY BATHHOE FIRE

FIRE AT GAY SNA BERL KILLS 3 MEN, JUR 1

BERLIN (AP) — German officials say three men have died and one was serly jured a fire at a gay sna Berl.

FIRE AT GAY SNA BERL KILLS 3 MEN, JUR 1

BERLIN (AP) — German officials say three men have died and one was serly jured a fire at a gay sna fire broke out late Sunday at the Steam Works club the German pal’s Schoeneberg district. M., ne men — trapped si a buildg wh blocked-up wdows and no fire p — would not make out years after Stonewall, the tragedy at the Everard Baths — never vtigated as anythg but an accintal mattrs fire — marked the begng of the end of a brief, exuberant heyday of New York Cy gay life that was able to thrive part bee of cheap real tate and a cy ernment that was willg to look the other way when me to, say, S&M clubs like the Mhaft the Meatpackg District (drs clud no logne).

THE GAY BATHHOE FIRE OF 1977

But even as the '70s New York were a relatively open, excg time to be a gay man New York — pri paras, gay bars and clubs proliferatg, a mastream weekly gay newspaper, a gay rights prott at the 1976 Democratic Natnal Conventn New York — beg openly gay, whether on the street or the workplace, still me wh dangers.

THREE DIE BERL GAY BATHHOE FIRE

The bathhoe had long been an anonymo space where gay men uld be themselv whout shame — but the fire at the Everard rerced the ia for many queer men that the few spac they thought were tly their own weren't always safe. Everard Baths was not jt any gay bathhoe; the wrer Michael Rumaker, his acunt of gog to the baths (A Day and a Night at the Baths) for the first time the wter of 1977, lled Everard "the most venerable, loathed, and affectnately teemed baths all of New York Cy.

" Everard (or "Ever-hard, " as was nicknamed) had opened as a Turkish bath 1888, but by the 1920s had bee a known, and culturally signifint, gatherg place for gay men. Author Gore Vidal met his longtime partner, Howard Aten, at Everard 1950; over the years Everard was reportedly vised by the wrer Tman Capote, theater director Aled Lunt, the ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev, and gay rights activist and wrer Larry his memoir Cy Boy: My Life New York Durg the 1960s and 1970s, Edmund Whe remembers the Everard as "filthy...

If anythg, he looked aaid of gettg beaten up, or murred — not unmon fears the backs of the mds of most gay mal.