Forty five years ago a fire New Orleans gay bar took 32 liv – and was met wh apathy | New Orleans | The Guardian

Contents:

• FORTY FIVE YEARS AGO A FIRE NEW ORLEANS GAY BAR TOOK 32 LIV – AND WAS MET WH APATHY
• THE GAY BATHHOE FIRE OF 1977
• ORLANDO NIGHTCLUB SHOOTG: MASS CASUALTI AFTER GUNMAN OPENS FIRE GAY CLUB
• SAT PETERSBURG GAY BARS & CLUBS
• GAY ST PETERSBURG

FORTY FIVE YEARS AGO A FIRE NEW ORLEANS GAY BAR TOOK 32 LIV – AND WAS MET WH APATHY

Sunday marks the 45th anniversary of the UpStairs Lounge arson, a flash fire that killed 32 people the New Orleans gay bar on June 24, 1973. Some of those who were intified went unclaimed by fai who were too ashamed to llect the remas of their gay sons and brothers. Bettmann via Getty ImagWhat happened the aftermath of the fire mak clear the pervadg homophobia at the time.

” Click below to see more pictur of the UpStairs Lounge before the earlier versn of this article was published June You GoGay Pri Around The World. Colorado Sprgs, the state’s send-most populo cy wh jt unr 500, 000 rints, is home to a number of ary bas and is the headquarters for Foc on the Fay, the nservative Christian group that says homosexualy and same-sex marriage are ss.

He and his bs partner toured other succsful LGBTQ spac and noted a mon theme: “They were gay as hell, ” Grzecka told the outlet. Jared Polis, a Democrat and the natn’s first openly gay ernor, issued a statement Sunday llg the attack “horrific, sickeng and vastatg” and offered state rourc to lol law enforcement.

THE GAY BATHHOE FIRE OF 1977

Polis told CNN’s Jim Asta there are only two gay bars Colorado Sprgs, and Club Q was one of the ma venu. Sillen Glenn, who moved to New York om Florida 2015, said the fire had ma them thk of the mass shootg at Pulse, a gay nightclub Orlando, Fla., where a gunman wh an asslt rifle and a pistol killed 50 people and wound 53 more 2016. In a culturally nservative muny, where gog to church and buildg a fay were heavily emphasized, Ahn felt his gay inty kept him “om beg able to participate Korean culture.

” Then, he started equentg GAMeBoi, a weekly Asian Amerin gay party at Wt Hollywood’s Rage Nightclub. He learned to embrace beg both Korean and gay, so much so that he directed “Fire Island, ” a groundbreakg queer Asian Amerin rom- released last year.

ORLANDO NIGHTCLUB SHOOTG: MASS CASUALTI AFTER GUNMAN OPENS FIRE GAY CLUB

Beg Asian Amerin and LGBTQ+ n feel lonely, wh stutns such as ethnic church often disavowg non-heterosexual relatnships while tradnal LGBTQ+ spac such as gay bars n be unwelg to people of lor. “Fdg plac like GAMeBoi, where beg queer and Asian do -exist … It’s not like a 1, 000-year-old Korean cultural rual, but I uld create a new rual, ” said Ahn, a recent Friday, hundreds packed QT Nightlife’s monthly K-Pop Night at Micky’s, a Wt Hollywood gay club a block or so east om the old GAMeBoi posed for selfi a pk Barbie box wh dis balls hangg overhead.

” (Michael Owen Baker / For The Tim) Even historilly gay neighborhoods like Wt Hollywood or San Francis’s Castro district, Asian Amerins have long been ignored or fetishized, seen as feme and weak. In 2019, then-Wt Hollywood Mayor John Duran argued that he did not appropriately touch a member of the Gay Men’s Chos of Los Angel bee “he’s a skny Korean kid wh pimpl on his cheek. ” Asian Amerin advocy groups cricized Duran’s remark, wh API Equaly-LA potg to the long history of discrimatn agast Asian men gay muni such as Wt Hollywood, whose clubs “ed to require three forms of photo intifitn om anyone they perceived as Asian.

SAT PETERSBURG GAY BARS & CLUBS

On this night, he had brought some female high school iends who wanted to experience the gay clubbg scene. The shootg six years after the 2016 massacre at Pulse, a gay nightclub Orlando, Florida, which left 49 people ad and dozens advot spoke out agast the shootg and support of the victims Sunday.

”Transportatn Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who as a ndidate the 2020 printial electn beme the first openly gay ndidate to n for the natn’s hight office, lled the news of the shootg “sickeng and heartbreakg” and part of a “pattern” a tweet Sunday. Jared Polis, who 2018 was the first openly gay man elected ernor and is currently quarantg wh Covid, lled the shootg "horrific, sickeng, and vastatg" a statement released Sunday morng. An oasis for the cy’s sizeable but, for the most part, strictly closeted gay male populatn, a lack of visibily was many ways s most valuable 1973 when the club was set ablaze an act of arson that st a staggerg 32 liv, that lack of attentn endured, the news barely makg to the papers or, seemed, even to the nscns of the lol muny.

“An ordary reactn New Orleans society would have been effive sympathi and a large outpourg, ” said Robert Fieler, whose new book Trbox: The Untold Story of the UpStairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberatn, chronicl the blaze and s aftermath. “Homosexualy was not supposed to be talked about openly, and when was thst to the open ma a lot of people panic, ” he told the Guardian an the time, New Orleans was a place of strange dualy for LGBT people. Acrdg to Fieler, unrver police would regularly nduct stg operatns to tch gay men solicg for sex public spac, and if ught and arrted on a dread “crim agast nature” charge, the ramifitns the wir world were absolute.

GAY ST PETERSBURG

You’d lose your job, your home, everythg, ” Fieler the time, a rince occupied by two spected gay men (or two “spsters”) uld be clared a hoe of ill-repute and seized wh ltle to no due the relatively safe space of the UpStairs lounge, a quietly well-known place where gay men (Fieler not that durg this era, the lbian scene was polilly and socially isolated om the gay scene) uld openly be themselv.

“It almost highlights even more the gree of opprsn that many homosexuals lived this time perd.

” Fieler were reports 2016 that, like Nunez, the Pulse shooter was a sexually nflicted man who may have been engaged gay relatnships prr to his rampage. Image source, Getty ImagImage ptn, Details ntue to emerge about the gunman's motiveA gunman opened fire at a gay nightclub Orlando, Florida, killg at least 49 people and jurg dozens before beg shot ad by police.

She told the FBI her hband said he was gog to see iends, though she thought he was gog to rry out an attack at the night club, officials have told the US are also media reports that she said she was wh him when he bought ammunn and a holster, and drove him to Pulse once to spe ptn, Jim Van Horn, Pulse nightclub ctomer: "He (Omar Mateen) was a homosexual and he was tryg to pick up men"Mateen appears to have been a regular at the club and he ntacted men on gay datg apps, raisg the possibily that he was nflicted about beg gay and lashed out. M., ne men — trapped si a buildg wh blocked-up wdows and no fire p — would not make out years after Stonewall, the tragedy at the Everard Baths — never vtigated as anythg but an accintal mattrs fire — marked the begng of the end of a brief, exuberant heyday of New York Cy gay life that was able to thrive part bee of cheap real tate and a cy ernment that was willg to look the other way when me to, say, S&M clubs like the Mhaft the Meatpackg District (drs clud no logne). But even as the '70s New York were a relatively open, excg time to be a gay man New York — pri paras, gay bars and clubs proliferatg, a mastream weekly gay newspaper, a gay rights prott at the 1976 Democratic Natnal Conventn New York — beg openly gay, whether on the street or the workplace, still me wh dangers.

The bathhoe had long been an anonymo space where gay men uld be themselv whout shame — but the fire at the Everard rerced the ia for many queer men that the few spac they thought were tly their own weren't always safe. Everard Baths was not jt any gay bathhoe; the wrer Michael Rumaker, his acunt of gog to the baths (A Day and a Night at the Baths) for the first time the wter of 1977, lled Everard "the most venerable, loathed, and affectnately teemed baths all of New York Cy. " Everard (or "Ever-hard, " as was nicknamed) had opened as a Turkish bath 1888, but by the 1920s had bee a known, and culturally signifint, gatherg place for gay men.