Eureka Sprgs is the Gay Capal of the Ozarks
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EUREKA SPRGS: SO GAY, THEY HAVE THREE PRI CELEBRATNS
Serly Gayly rears; ’s as if ’s always Pri Eureka Sprgs! Every day the bs all over town fly their rabow flags, gay upl n stroll down the streets of Eureka holdg hands and not be judged, discrimated agast or, for that matter, thrown out of town. * pride week eureka springs *
Gray had done all, or close to , his 60-pl years – the ary veteran has been a hairdrser, puter programmer, award-wng AIDS advote, and drag queen (he performed as Patti Le Plae Safe, a Miss Gay Ameri wner). Now he mans the ont sk at a motel-turned-LGBTQ-iendly rort, the Wanroo Lodge, owned by a gay uple who recently settled Eureka themselv. A nearly 70-foot-tall J statue gaz over a place once lled the “gayt small town Ameri.
Among the mm’s artifacts are vtage photos of a gay uple holdg hands and a woman drsed men’s cloth, he said.
GAY EUREKA SPRGS TRAVEL GUI
Out gay men and women started nng lucrative bs – Gary Eagen’s Sprg Street Pottery stud still stands. Soon, straight and gay upl were drsg drag as sultry saloon performers or macho wboys, pos that were “happily enuraged and monplace, ” Danos said. What better place, they thought, to ri out the crazit days of their liv than a gay small town?
But ’s a divi that s rints have mostly been able to bridge wh kdns, said David Avanzo, who speaks fondly of a Wanroo regular – “your typil Ozark man” – who once told Avanzo that he’d never met gay men before patronizg the lodge.
The days, Taylor said he don’t even “thk about beg gay bee seems so normal here as a uple to go out among straight upl. A iend and former mayor was at the urthoe, too, and he married the uple on the spot – they beme the first male gay uple to legally marry Arkansas.