The Past and Future of One of Hoton's Most Historic Gay Bars – Texas Monthly

Contents:

• AT’S OLST GAY BAR SET TO BE MOLISHED
• THE PAST AND FUTURE OF ONE OF HOTON’S MOST HISTORIC GAY BARS
• THE “GAYBORHOODS” OF TEXAS
• AN INPLETE COMPILATN OF THE GAY BARS AT HAS LOVED AND LOST
• WHERE DID FORT WORTH GAY BARS GO?
• AT VELOPER PROMIS AL TO SAVE CY’S OLST GAY BAR
• THE 10 BEST TEXAS GAY CLUBS & BARSGAY CLUBS & BARS TEXAS

AT’S OLST GAY BAR SET TO BE MOLISHED

The project was postponed on May 3, then on Wednday, At’s Historic Landmark Commissn elected not to remend historic zong for the block, cludg s tenant Oiln Harry’s—the cy’s olst gay bar wh 32 years at the se. Though Neon Grotto and The Conut Club will be permanently removed, Hanover said will spl up s ground-floor mercial space to clu both a 4, 500-square-foot, gay-owned eatery and a 1, 500-square-foot gay bar—a new addn sce last month.

THE PAST AND FUTURE OF ONE OF HOTON’S MOST HISTORIC GAY BARS

Historilly known among lols as the Gayborhood, Montrose ed to be where the weirdos were.

THE “GAYBORHOODS” OF TEXAS

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. Mary’s, as wrer Ed Martez put a sprg 1983 issue of Out Texas, was “the mother hoe of all the gay bars Hoton. ” When origal owner Joe Anthony opened Mary’s, was primarily a leather bar where gay bikers would ngregate.

AN INPLETE COMPILATN OF THE GAY BARS AT HAS LOVED AND LOST

But quickly beme known as a place where anyone was wele: gays, lbians, punk micians, wrers, hippi, and bohemians all termgled.

“The Gayborhood is marked as much, if not more, by absenc as by the visible markers of s past, ” says curator Junr Fernanz, who anized the event along wh S Rodriguez.

“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.

WHERE DID FORT WORTH GAY BARS GO?

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.

AT VELOPER PROMIS AL TO SAVE CY’S OLST GAY BAR

After Stonewall and the ceptn of the the AIDS crisis, the bar beme a place for gays to meet, anize, and prott.

Acrdg to one archive of Hoton LGBT history, the group that beme the Hoton GLBT Polil Cc, which bills self as the olst gay-rights anizatn the South, began at Mary’s.

Don Gill, a “fundraiser supreme” at Mary’s, rells s shift om grty gay hookup spot to the go-to venue where LGBT social anizatns uld munite wh the muny. In a 2002 Hoton Prs article, bartenr and part-owner Gaye Yancey said “wasn’t unmon for three Mary’s ctomers to die each month.

THE 10 BEST TEXAS GAY CLUBS & BARSGAY CLUBS & BARS TEXAS

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.