The Bt Gay Bar, Boston

Contents:

• THE BEST BOSTON GAY CLUBS & BARSGAY CLUBS & BARS BOSTON
• TOP GAY CLUBS & BARS BAY VILLAGE (BOSTON)GAY CLUBS & BARS BAY VILLAGE
• THE PROUST GAY NEIGHBORHOODS BOSTON

THE BEST BOSTON GAY CLUBS & BARSGAY CLUBS & BARS BOSTON

has this list of former gay bars and hot spots, wrten by someone much younger than I:Do you remember....? Not sure what the name was, but I was told there ed to be a bar or der where gay men equented back the 70s and 80s.

TOP GAY CLUBS & BARS BAY VILLAGE (BOSTON)GAY CLUBS & BARS BAY VILLAGE

Wh the 24-hour ders and Chatown nearby, one would have thought that gay nightlife would thrive... Okay, 's not a bar or club, but was perhaps the most popular, longt-survivg gay bookstore Boston. Another short-lived bar on Washgton Street Downtown Crossg that featured gay night (Wedndays).

Saturday morngs had a mixed crowd, and Sunday morngs were all-gay. The Loft has been closed for almost ten years now, but now RISE has returned (after a fire that closed the club for over a year) as the after-hours hot spot for gay club-goers. Filed unr Gay Issu | permalk | October 17, 2004 at 07:35 PM.

I hear of lot of top 20 om the eighti listed as "Gay Mic". "Not sure what the name was, but I was told there ed to be a bar or der where gay men equented back the 70s and 80s.

THE PROUST GAY NEIGHBORHOODS BOSTON

I remember standg ont of the Commons, lookg left and right for anyone I knew who might see me, then nng across Boylston to enter the gay world. I've done some rearch but am lookg for someone who might be open to talkg to me about their rellectns of gay bars and bath hoe/s Boston (C) 1972. A few gay guys hung out there at night.

The 80s gay bar scene Boston wasGR8. Memori of all the different gay bars Boston to what 2 or 3 left today? All great plac filled wh the after hours gay crowd!

Gay bathhoe fire unr vtigatn. Fire officials yterday had not termed what ed a two-alarm fire at a gay bath hoe the fancial district Monday night. Much ls known was the mass terrogatn and subsequent firgs of thoands of gays and lbians durg this same perd often lled “The Lavenr Sre.

Wh the feral ernment durg the Cold War and extendg to the 1970s, the assumptn was that gays uld be easily blackmailed by foreign agents who threatened to expose them as “sexual viants” unls they provid secret rmatn. Lbians and gay men soon joed spected Communists as the hunted.

Unlike some of the acced movie stars and wrers wh leftist pasts, gays were easy targets bee they uld not retaliate. To pla to a newspaper reporter about forced terrogatns and firgs, meant admtg to beg homosexual, somethg few people were prepared to do. By the end of the 1950s, over 5, 000 feral workers were fired or forced to rign for beg gay.

In the 1950s, the Waldorf Rtrant across om Park Street Statn buzzed wh gay people after the bars closed.

” But was lbians and gays who were sgled out and fired. The young medium of televisn portrayed heterosexual life as noble and natural, drivg gays more unrground then they were a before. Given all of this, you would thk 1950s gay life Boston was a prsg batn of secrecy, lonels, and self-loathg.

But for those who went to bars, nightclubs and rtrants that attracted a gay clientele, Boston gay nightlife was rich, varied and even glamoro. Wh the exceptn of the late 1970s, the variety of gay nightlife durg the McCarthy Era Boston, has never been equaled.

Loted where Government Center is today, the area attracted gays to s bars, burlque ho and theaters.

“There was a group of gay guys my high school who dropped out to move to town. We never said anythg but we all knew they were gay. Gay men and sailors uld meet at one of the bars and take a room at one of the cheap, nearby hotels.

Unlike the Sllay Square bars that were ostensibly straight but equented by gay people, the bars were exprsly for gay people. I asked (my iend) Rodney if everyone here was gay, and he said y. “The first gay bar I went to was probably was the Napoleon Club, ” relled the late Conrad Shumway a 1995 terview wh the History Project.

“It was really a men’s bar for the hotel but the hotel’s bs was fadg away and turned to a gay men’s bar. “The bartenrs were hot as hell, but they didn’t like the gay clientele. Playland even had a few regular black patrons, unual Boston gay bars at this time.

After the bars closed, gay people went to the Waldorf Cafeteria and Childs — all-night eateri on Tremont and Boylston streets. The highlight of the gay social season the 1950s was the Bex Arte Ball. (Courty Kristen Porter/Hurley Event Photography)The se of so much gay history Boston is pretty borg om the outsi, jt a squat gray buildg that stretch a whole block on Boylston near Fenway Park.

But until jt before quarante — when Mache Nightclub and bar Ramrod officially closed — past the ont door and the blacked-out wdows at 1254 Boylston St., si was, the leather and Levis gay bar, moved to the first floor 1981 wh Mache rvg out a separate gay nightclub downstairs 1998. Both spots had that kd of slightly dgy, lived- feel of a well-loved gay hangout, the cigarette smell that seemed to hang the air long after Boston banned smokg doors, the dim rners here and there for makg out.