The bt gay-rated hotels, gay snas, cise clubs and more Bremen. Exclive reviews, maps & disunts.
Contents:
WHAT HAPPENED TO COLUMBIA’S GAY CLUBS?
He lik to tell younger people about The Capal Club’s early days, a very different — and ght — time to be a gay bar South Carola. The Capal Club, or simply “Capal, ” as patrons ll , is the olst operatg gay bar Columbia, and acrdg to s webse, the Southeast. Jt around the rner is PT’s 1109, the cy’s other gay bar, which opened 2000.
Through discsns wh bar owners and patrons and analyzg rerds om Historic Columbia, The Carola News and Reporter unvered a strange statistic: Columbia, 2022, has only those two gay bars, the lowt number the cy sce 1960. Like a lot of gay bars at the time, Rumors started as a private club wh a guard list of members. “I was still playg what was typilly lled ‘gay mic.
A sign by the door said the membership clud gay, straight, Black and whe, and anyone who ed trouble would be asked to leave. A DIVISION OF THE RAINBOW — GAY CLUBS SELF-SEGREGATE.
GAY BREMEN
On Two Notch Road, The Candy Shop was known as Columbia’s only Black gay bar. “That was the only Black gay club for around, ” she said. You had gays there, straights there, you had everybody at The Candy Shop.
It was also a place to get away om racism at other gay clubs, cludg for Snrs, a Black trans woman. Lane remembers Traxx as a rary even among the few gay bars town, beg targeted towards women. Even today, lbian bars are ls mon than male gay bars.
Many of them were straight wh gay iends, but some were closeted, Skipper, the print, said. Before he me to Columbia, someone shot through the wdows of a gay bar Wilmgton, N. Straight people “me (to The Candy Shop) bee their iends were gay and they were jt hangg out, ” she said.
GAY BAR
A GAY MAN’S DISEASE. In 1983, Tony Price, a regular patron of the clubs and a gay rights activist on USC’s mp, was a play at the school’s Longstreet Theater. The first s were seen California and New York 1981, acrdg to In 1982, South Carola’s first se of what was dubbed the “gay ncer, ” bee disproportnately affected gay men, was diagnosed Charlton.
The cy’s gay clubs soon were on the ont l of the epimic. He said young men who had been diagnosed wh the disease would e to him the bathrooms of gay bars cryg and askg for help. After the ial wave of fear and silence, natnal AIDS activists forced discsn of the disease – and other issu the gay muny – to the mastream.
Columbia hadn’t had a gay rights movement the 1970s like bigger ci, so the activism that spng om the clubs durg the AIDS movement was the first time gay liberatn had e to the cy and state.