Bulldogs: Atlanta's ltle gay bar that uld - Atlanta Magaze

Contents:

• BULLDOGS: ATLANTA’S LTLE GAY BAR THAT ULD
• LEGENDARY GAY BAR ATLANTA EAGLE IS REOPENG MIDTOWN
• ONCE UPON A TIME ATLANTA: STAGG REVOLUTN OM THE GAY BAR
• THE 5 BEST ATLANTA GAY CLUBS & BARSSEE ALL THGS TO DOGAY CLUBS & BARS ATLANTA
• ATLANTA GAY BARS
• GAY BAR THREATENED BY MARTA PLAN, HISTORIL PRERVATNISTS SAY
• MOVG TO LGBT ATLANTA, GEIA? HOW TO FD YOUR PERFECT GAY NEIGHBORHOOD!
• GAY CLUBS
• ATLANTA GAY MAP

BULLDOGS: ATLANTA’S LTLE GAY BAR THAT ULD

Two patrons at BulldogsPhotograph by Rs Bowen-YoungbloodJt one story tall and tucked between 7th and 8th streets on Peachtree, a ty gay bar has built a reputatn that towers over many of the skyscrapers that surround . Although Bulldogs is known for a mature crowd, beme Thompson’s favore bar, and he nsirs a guipost for Black gay Atlanta, lkg generatns throughout s of dynamic change—although served a predomantly whe clientele until the late 1980s.

“I thk we would kd of be lost when to nightlife whout Bulldogs, ” Thompson says of the bar that has been the only nstant a Black gay party scene which often feels transnal, wh promoters rentg venu across the cy rather than hostg at a nsistent lotn.

LEGENDARY GAY BAR ATLANTA EAGLE IS REOPENG MIDTOWN

From young men drsed for the nway and others buff enough to be a UGA nng back to olr profsnals who look like they jt left the boardroom, the regulars at Bulldogs provi a snapshot of why Atlanta is nsired a Black gay a few years of Cochran startg to work as a doorman at Bulldogs 1998, high-rise buildgs were replacg gay bars and no-tell motels Midtown, and the stud apartments and triplex that attracted young queer people for s were beg phased out for sgle-fay hog and ndos. Bulldogs has outlasted other legendary gay clubs like Backstreet and the Armory, and has stood s ground amid persistent threats om new neighbors and velopers.

ONCE UPON A TIME ATLANTA: STAGG REVOLUTN OM THE GAY BAR

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“Certaly, ” Jim Auchmutey of the Atlanta Journal-Constutn wr, Atlanta is “the gay oasis of the South—the place wh the most gay bars and the most gay church” of any cy the southeastern Uned Stat.

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Published a 1987 seri tled “The Shapg of Atlanta, ” Auchmutey’s article scrib the “fluenc” and numero ntributns of gay and lbian Atlantans om their power as a votg bloc to their “renovatn of town neighborhoods. ”2 Further, Auchmutey’s article picts a tensn among Atlanta’s gay-and-lbian-intifyg cizens between those who sire more out, overt, and direct polil actn and those who do not see a need for such activist anizatn. Powell repeated siar beliefs var stanc across his long reer as the “proment, ” “gay as a goose” Atlanta bs-owner of such bars as the Cove, the Conference Room, Ms.

Powell’s lack of polil actn and personal beliefs on the tactics of gay and lbian activists mak all-the-more ironic that one of the first book-length histori of “Atlanta’s gay revolutn” centers around this send bar he owned, The Sweet Gum Head. Like Auchmutey’s brief survey of gay Atlanta the late 1980s, Mart Padgett’s 2021 history, A Night at the Sweet Gum Head: Drag, Dgs, Dis, and Atlanta’s Gay Revolutn, v rears to trace the velopment, promence, and fluence of Atlanta’s gay muny through Padgett’s refully curated st of important cultural, bs, and polil figur across the 1970s. Unlike Auchmutey’s article, Padgett’s study both intifi and ntu terviews wh numero “proment” gay Atlantans that shaped Atlanta’s gay muny, some who rried signs the streets and some who flnted the bars.

In his anizatnal choice to follow Smh, Greenwell/Wells, and other “st” members, Padgett is perhaps spired by the work of Mart Duberman, whose 1993 Stonewall siarly traced a handful of historic actors volved the 1960s-1970s “gay revolutn” that encircled the events at the Stonewall Inn and bar New York Cy’s Greenwich Village. Wh ANATSGH Padgett tentnally sts Atlanta as a central se of lol queer worldmakg, placg the cy the pany of the more often celebrated hubs of 1970s gay liberatn like New York Cy and San Francis.

ATLANTA GAY BARS

”6 Padgett views the “shapg of Atlanta” as separable om the “gays and lbians” who “streamed om plac” across the south and “fashned an oasis” the cy, largely begng his view durg the 1970s.

For example, Padgett’s story of Bill Smh, an early pneerg gay activist who died of an overdose 1980, highlights both the promise and llapse of possibily for gay people the cy.

10 Though Atlanta “drew gays and lbians om all over the South, ” Padgett’s acunt such an oasis was by fn fleetg, an Emerald Cy mirage ultimately undone by ternece bar wars, dg culture, broar culture wars, and the advent of the HIV/AIDS crisis. 11 Padgett’s fal chapter, “Midnight at the Oasis” (once a workg tle for the book), scrib the closure of the tular performance “oasis, ” the Sweet Gum Head on Augt 30, 1981, nearly two months to the day followg the publitn of a New York Tim story scribg a “Rare Cancer Seen Homosexuals.

GAY BAR THREATENED BY MARTA PLAN, HISTORIL PRERVATNISTS SAY

”13 Though Padgett clus elements of tragedy, he foc his study before this “strange time, ” more closely followg the pleasur found Atlanta’s gay “bar culture” of the 1970s. Certaly, happy tim at the Sweet Gum Head are central to Padgett’s stagg of Atlanta’s gay revolutn as challenged the nservative mor of greater 1970s Atlanta. In Gay Bar: Why We Went Out, published the same year as Padgett’s ANATSGH, Jeremy Atherton L wr, “A gay bar n be a reposory for all the extra that don’t f to other spac, ” and Padgett’s narrative weav together an ample amount of queer extra, om dis and dg lan nights of bchery to drag fed scen of joy, triumph, and muny buildg.

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15 In Padgett’s study, such untercultural scen exceed Atlanta’s muny of nservative ncerned cizens’ pacy to unrstand and therefore served as cubators of a distctly gay polil revolutn the cy.

L’s Gay Bar highlights his firsthand experienc of a seri of gay bars ci like San Francis, London, and Los Angel ntrast to Padgett’s foc on historic actors. However, the two books mirror one another articulatg what L unrstands “gay” to be: “an inty of longg” that ntas “a wistfulns” “beholdg the form of a buildg, like how the sight of a theater stirs the imagatn. ” Whether L’s The Factory or Padgett’s Sweet Gum Head, the gay bar as a stcture “affords refuge” as a figurative “approximatn of neverland” that “evc a md-set of perennial searchg.

GAY CLUBS

”17 L’s reference to “neverland” and Padgett’s equent reference to the Sweet Gum Head as “Oz” and an “oasis” speak to the ongog sense of gay bars as s of a fantasy promised if not always livered — what Padgett scribed as the “anti-fairy tale.

”18 Such longg, perennial searchg, potentialy, and expectatn encircle fantasy both erotic and polil dimensns: the gay bar, then, both L and Padgett’s past-oriented works remas a se through which to search for queer pasts, to image queer futur, and to build works of queer ristance the prent that exceed the stcture’s central functns as entertag refuge, performative se of inty negotiatn, and cisg ground for timate enunter.

ATLANTA GAY MAP

Though not as explicly a fense of the importance of gay bars or a crique of the rapid disappearance of gay bars today as L’s book, Padgett engag this le of thought, stagg his historil examatn of the velopment of 1970s gay Atlanta om perhaps the cy’s most famo gay “show place, ” a se that has been closed for forty-one years. What would mean for the Sweet Gum Head’s highly theatrilized fantasy to have broken the gay bar’s fourth wall and bee a more-lastg permanent realy for gay and lbian people Atlanta?

”19 Though populated by a st of proment gay Atlantans and featurg Bill Smh and John Greenwell/ Rachel Wells as top-billed performers, the Sweet Gum Head is the central character Padgett’s study through which both the thor and his subjects vent, “act out, ” and “wre” their “scen” of gay Atlanta. Asi om the profsed beliefs of gay bs owners like Frank Powell, Padgett unrstands that nightlife tablishments like the Sweet Gum Head played an important role across the 1970s as s of nnectn and ristance that popularized drag and dis Atlanta, lnched the reers of performers like Rachel Wells (photographed below), and plemented the more direct polil efforts of gay activists like Bill Smh, Kls Smh, Berl Boyk, and Charlie St. S the built environment like the Sweet Gum Head served as safe havens and protected ntaers which gay men and women uld “flnt , ” to rewre Powell, whout the fear of ostracizatn, persecutn, or prosecutn even as they “weled the kd of rebels that Frank Powell hated.