When The Woodward, Detro's olst-nng gay bar, burned a massive fire last week, spurred a nversatn about the history of the bar self and how to remember and celebrate s signifince the gay muny while lookg toward the future.
Contents:
- CHASG ‘PHANTOMS OF THE PAST’: 8 GAY AND LBIAN BAR ARCHIVISTS ON PRERVG LGBTQ+ NIGHTLIFE HISTORY
- THE HISTORY OF HOW GAY BARS BEME THE BATTLEGROUND FOR LGBTQ+ RIGHTS
- GAY BARS AREN’T DISAPPEARG; THEY’RE CHANGG
- WH THE WOODWARD’S FUTURE UNCERTA, TAKG STOCK OF DETRO'S DISAPPEARG GAY BARS
- LGBTQ MEMORABILIA DIGNER HONORS DEFUNCT FLORIDA GAY BARS
- WHY GAY BARS ARE DISAPPEARG ACROSS AMERI
CHASG ‘PHANTOMS OF THE PAST’: 8 GAY AND LBIAN BAR ARCHIVISTS ON PRERVG LGBTQ+ NIGHTLIFE HISTORY
VePair terviewed eight LGBTQ+ archivers around the untry about documentg Ameri’s gay and lbian bars while they still n. * past gay bars *
Turng barfli’ memori of the cy’s shuttered gay and lbian bars to publishable reports posed challeng, and la Croix often found himself tryg to rencile nflictg ntributns. The mob may have relquished Chigo’s gay and lbian bars om the vise-like grip tablished on those bs (and their New York Cy unterparts, too) durg Prohibn. “It’s been a strange time to try to do this rearch, ” says Lus Hilrbrand, a profsor of film and media studi at the Universy of California-Irve who is workg on a book about gay bar history.
For Pri Month, VePair terviewed eight gay and lbian bar archivers around the untry about the challeng and urgency they’re currently facg documentg Ameri’s gay and lbian bars while they still n.
THE HISTORY OF HOW GAY BARS BEME THE BATTLEGROUND FOR LGBTQ+ RIGHTS
In honor of Pri Month, take a ep dive to 200+ years of gay bar history and how they paved the way for the LGBTQ rights movement. * past gay bars *
“I don’t know if there’s gog to be, 30 years om now, a tegory that we ll gay bar or the lbian bar, ” m Frank Perez, thor and -founr and print of the LGBT+ Archiv Project of Louisiana. After a brief uptick the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, the total number of gay and lbian bars the Uned Stat crted around 2, 000 lotns, acrdg to rearch published by Oberl associate profsor of soclogy Greggor Mattson based on listgs the Damron Guis, a proment LGBTQ+ nightlife guibook seri published annually throughout the back half of the 20th century.
The soclogist’s figur dite the untry has lost 45 percent of gay and lbian waterg hol sce 1977 — and those were only the lotns well tablished enough to be xed the first place. “The biggt obstacle is gettg the rmatn about the bars, gettg the teractns, gettg people to say, ‘Yeah, I lived D Mo, Iowa 1968 and there was this bar there, and here’s the rmatn, ’” says Art Smh, the amatr archivist behd, a gay and lbian bar logo xg project.
“The primary place the bars were advertised and that the scen were documented was the gay prs, and many of those were lol and were often very short-lived, ” says Hilrbrand. “We’re talkg about years when people were prtg unrground publitns that may some s [have] only lasted a year or two, and certaly were never snned or archived onle, ” says Smh, who himself ran a gay nightlife publitn Atlanta for a few years the ‘80s. The two tell me that they’re aware of no centralized archive for gay and lbian bar vio footage, and that relevant clips were srce the databas of major archivg ho.
GAY BARS AREN’T DISAPPEARG; THEY’RE CHANGG
* past gay bars *
To nduct rearch for his upg book, Hilrbrand has relied on the Universy of Southern California’s ONE Natnal Gay & Lbian Archiv, the largt reposory of LBGTQ+ materials the world, as well as viss to smaller, regnal archivg projects and historil societi across the untry.
The project’s goal is to scrape the rmatn om each physil Damron volume to populate an easy-to-e natnal database of gay and lbian bars om years past. In April 2021, MGG received a three-year grant om the Natnal Endowment for the Humani to archive another 100, 000 gay and lbian bar lotns listed Addrs Books published om 1981 to 2000. When to gay and lbian bar archivg, another more emotnally ght barrier looms: The people who own the materials that would help them pat a fuller picture of Ameri’s LGBTQ+ nightlife landspe of yore aren’t always forthg wh them.
WH THE WOODWARD’S FUTURE UNCERTA, TAKG STOCK OF DETRO'S DISAPPEARG GAY BARS
“In archivg our history, one of the biggt challeng is the bar owners, ” says Perez, who addn to his tourg and archival work, has thored a half-dozen books about New Orleans, cludg a history about the cy’s — some say the untry’s — olst gay bar, Cafe Lafte Exile.
” In his work wh the LGBT+ Archiv Project of Louisiana, Perez has ntemplated the strategy of askg owners at New Orleans’ still-open gay bars to sign letters of tent to earmark their fil for archivg if or when they close.
LGBTQ MEMORABILIA DIGNER HONORS DEFUNCT FLORIDA GAY BARS
If a gay or lbian bar owner “backs out through the ex” (to e Mattson’s analogy) whout such an agreement place, those materials may jt wd up the trash.
” Ephemera and memori about the experienc and relatnships formed there are “so prec, ” she ntu, but bee pub culture don’t feature as heavily broar Amerin drkg culture, “we tend not to see the bar as what is for gay people.
) He qu drkg 2008, but his profsnal nnectn to the gay bars and their history remas tact: He’s currently workg on an encyclopedia of Chigo gay bars wh a -thor, Chigo LGBTQ+ prs veteran Rick Karl. “I jt want to document what’s never been documented so that 100 years, when there are no gay bars around and people n’t even grasp the ncept of a gay bar, at least there’s a book that tells them what happened — and all the fun thgs that happened bars.
WHY GAY BARS ARE DISAPPEARG ACROSS AMERI
Macias, at UCLA, wonrs if the post-panmic surge might brg about renewed tert those gay and lbian bars that rema for drkers who spent the last year oped up and readg about their mise.
As for those gay and lbian bars that are still bs, and reopeng after the panmic, the hope is that storytellg about their past will keep them tact the future. ” Unfortunately, police reports and mastream media verage of a gay bar 1880 proved to be extremely unreliable and hyperbolic, fueled mostly by pearl-clutchg and fear-mongerg rather than actual rmatn.