Hoton, Texas is the 4th largt cy the untry and is a diverse area brimmg wh gay-iendly nightlife, dg, hotels, events, ftivals, bars and shoppg. Fd out what's happeng now, learn about Hoton's LGBTQ muny and let help plan your vatn today.
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THE PAST AND FUTURE OF ONE OF HOTON’S MOST HISTORIC GAY BARS
The Gulf Coast Archive and Mm of Gay, Lbian, Bisexual and Transgenr History timat that was the se of more than three hundred funeral servic and remas the fal rtg place of an unknown number of people’s 1970 to 2009, this space was part of the legendary Hoton gay bar Mary’s…Naturally!, which fostered such a close muny that some regulars chose to have their funerals there. “We are terted how the disappearance or ‘revelopment’ of the spac to bnch spots and ffee ho might mirror the overall trajectory of gay liberatn, om s earlier ialism to late-palist intarian pfalls like rabow-packaged Oreos.
But one uld argue that Mary’s, too, was a gentrifier—one former patron remds me that gay men the seventi phed Montrose’s heavily Hispanic populatn out of the area to claim a space for themselv. In one vio piece, for example, Penagos manvers his body to rg a bell agast a brick, which symboliz the mythologized “first brick of the gay rights movement” thrown by gay activists at the 1969 Stonewall uprisg.
”The exhib celebrat the full breadth of Mary’s, which— the way that only a historic gay gatherg place n—served as a hookup spot, a muny anizg hub, and the se of many, many funerals. And although wispread gay acceptance, cemented by the legalizatn of same-sex marriage 2015, has phed society forward, this exhib is a remr that the need for queer spac like Mary’s is as important as ever—specifilly for brown and black queers and trans dividuals. After experiencg workplace bullyg and discrimatn based on his sexualy, he said, Workman eventually found his inty as Jumper up wh beg harassed for beg gay, Workman said he knew was time for a signifint change.