Once Upon a Time Atlanta: Stagg Revolutn om the Gay Bar – Atlanta Studi

Contents:

• LEGENDARY GAY BAR ATLANTA EAGLE IS REOPENG MIDTOWN
• THE 5 BEST ATLANTA GAY CLUBS & BARSGAY CLUBS & BARS ATLANTA
• LOTED THE HEART OF ATLANTA’S MIDTOWN GAYBORHOOD, BLAKE’S ON THE PARK IS A VIO & DANCE BAR WH DJS, DANCERS, DRAG SHOWS AND SO MUCH MORE.
• GAY CLUBS
• ATLANTA NEEDS S GAY BARS NOW MORE THAN EVER
• ONCE UPON A TIME ATLANTA: STAGG REVOLUTN OM THE GAY BAR
• INIC GAY BAR ATLANTA EAGLE REOPENG MIDTOWN
• ATLANTA GAY PRI FTIVAL, INIC GAY BAR RETURN POST-COVID
• 10 GAY FRIENDLY RTRANTS ATLANTA

LEGENDARY GAY BAR ATLANTA EAGLE IS REOPENG MIDTOWN

After closg two years ago, one of Atlanta’s olst and most legendary gay and leather bars is reopeng Midtown, and right before Pri next month. Blake’s on the Park –  Conveniently loted the middle of the Midtown “gayborhood,” this stutn boasts a neighborhood vibe and attracts a mix of Atlanta bachelors, as well as some of the cy’s most legendary drag queens.

Mary’s –  Proudly referred to as East Atlanta’s gay dive bar, Mary’s was named by Logo Channel and Out Magaze as one of the bt gay bars the world. Sister Louisa’s Church of the Livg Room & Pg Pong Emporium –  Church, as ’s monly lled, is a quirky non-smokg spot load wh tongue--cheek (sac)relig art, killer an karaoke every Wednday and super-gay pat parti. Loted the heart of Atlanta’s Midtown Gayborhood, Blake’s on the Park is a Vio & Dance Bar wh DJs, Dancers, Drag Shows and so much more.

THE 5 BEST ATLANTA GAY CLUBS & BARSGAY CLUBS & BARS ATLANTA

Among the most celebrated gay bars Atlanta has to offer, Mary's has been named Atlanta's bt gay bar by "Creative Loafg" and one of the top 50 gay bars the world by "Out" magaze. One of the most unpretent gay clubs Atlanta, the Eagle, a nontradnal leather bar, has been drawg wonrfully diverse and amible crowds for s. A lotn near Piedmont Park, floor-to-ceilg wdows lookg out on 10th Street, and a iendly, sual vibe distguish this neighborhood bar, whose clientele is largely gay.

LOTED THE HEART OF ATLANTA’S MIDTOWN GAYBORHOOD, BLAKE’S ON THE PARK IS A VIO & DANCE BAR WH DJS, DANCERS, DRAG SHOWS AND SO MUCH MORE.

Revelers at leather bar the Eagle 2015, six years after an famo police raidPhotograph by Alli Royce SobleArt Smh’s first Atlanta gay bar experience was when he danced the new year at Backstreet durg a weekend getaway at the end of 1982. “We were so overwhelmed by the feelg of cln and energy the gay scene, ” says Smh, who lived wh his boyiend Nashville at the time.

They cid the next day to move to Smh first disvered Atlanta’s gay nightlife, the scene was boomg wh dozens of plac to drk, dance, and watch drag. ” Doug Craft, a bartenr at Blake’s on the Park for 30 years, says the purpose of a gay bar transcends mere socializg: “I’ve felt like a unselor who helped others make the transn to self-acceptance.

“I’m not gog to argue wh the fact was segregated, but Atlanta was and is the gay pal of the South, and so, you went to the bars that tered to what you liked, ” says Reverend Dunn Teague, one of the first Black AIDS outreach workers for AID Atlanta. ”Yet as queer culture has gone mastream enough for the crosswalk near Blake’s to be repated as a rabow, the gay bar scene the cy and natnwi has ntracted.

GAY CLUBS

While the AIDS crisis brought the gay muny and s bars together, COVID is drivg them the height of AIDS, Grooms remembers attendg up to five funerals a week—followed by benefs at the bars. ”The 1990s brought antiretroviral therapy for HIV and a populatn boom to Atlanta, but nothg that era affected the gay bars more than onle datg.

Comedian Kia Barn, who enuntered homophobia at other bars, was grateful to be able to brg her stand-up shows to MSR: “Queer bars provi a safe space and a platform for queer artists to she and for to actually have a muny.

Southern Fried Queer Pri now puts on events across the cy wh the aim of eventually openg a venue of s days, gay bars mt adapt not only to cultural shifts but to the immense challeng posed by the ronavis.

ATLANTA NEEDS S GAY BARS NOW MORE THAN EVER

“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.

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

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. ” As numero and powerful as they may be, Auchmutey not that “no one terviewed for [his] article uld name a sgle proment Atlantan who is openly gay.

”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.

INIC GAY BAR ATLANTA EAGLE REOPENG MIDTOWN

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. ”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.

ATLANTA GAY PRI FTIVAL, INIC GAY BAR RETURN POST-COVID

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.

“AIDS h the cy at a strange time, ” Bill Gripp, a Midtown psychologist and member of the Atlanta Gay Center board, tells Auchmutey 1987. ”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.

10 GAY FRIENDLY RTRANTS 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.

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.