Gui to Gay-iendly Ann Arbor Lotns - THE MICHIGAN GAYLY

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For as gay as Ann Arbor touts self as beg, where is the cy’s physil evince for this claim?

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In my send semter at the Universy of Michigan, I ma a iend whom I, as a transfer who was sperately lookg for other Queer people Ann Arbor, latched onto as somethg of a gay mentor. She gave me two remendatns for where to fd gay culture: the -ops and Aut Bar — the latter beg the cy’s only gay bar. After I regnized Aut Bar’s absence, I realized how disnnected and sparse Ann Arbor’s gay scene really was.

It was te that Ann Arbor felt like had a larger, lour gay populatn than East Lansg, where I had spent two years prevly as a stunt at Michigan State Universy, and certaly had more of one than where I grew up.

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I knew firsthand that Ann Arbor lived up to s reputatn for beg gay-iendly. But what, really, did the cy of Ann Arbor have to show for s gay muny other than what I n only ll the “vib?

” For as gay as Ann Arbor touted self as beg, where was the cy’s physil evince for this claim?

A iend asked me to e along to a discsn group at the Jim Toy Communy Center — an LGBTQ+ rource center named after the pneerg Ann Arbor gay-rights activist who found the Human Sexualy Office, now the Universy’s Spectm Center — that they found onle, supposedly two doors down om the empty Aut Bar space. The skeletons of Aut Bar, the Jim Toy Communy Center and Common Language — the LGBTQ+ bookstore between them — pated a picture of the ltle urtyard as a former center of gay muny Ann Arbor.

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Wh my regret at havg jt missed the tail end of Aut Bar’s n revived, and a new cursy about not only Brn Court’s gay history but Ann Arbor’s, I rolved to do a ltle rearch of my own.

Keh Orr and Mart Contreras, Aut Bar’s owners of 25 years, uld wre the book on the gay history of Ann Arbor.

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Dpe their amiable, open meanors and excement to talk wh me about Ann Arbor’s gay muny — somethg they were clearly so passnate about — I was nervo to meet them. I asked them about their time as unrgraduat and, wh the precisn of seasoned storytellers wh steel-trap memori who have been asked to tell certa stori multiple tim over, both said that they knew they were gay at a young age but were havg trouble g out their early days at the Universy.

Although not gay-owned, beme the cy’s facto gay bar the ’60s.

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Gui to Gay-iendly Ann Arbor Lotns - THE MICHIGAN GAYLY .

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