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

Contents:

• THE PAST AND FUTURE OF ONE OF HOTON’S MOST HISTORIC GAY BARS
• THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THREE OF LA'S HISTORIC BUT THREATENED GAY NIGHTCLUBS
• LONDON'S LANDMARK BUILDG DOTTED WH STRIP CLUBS, GAY VENU TO TURN TO MOSQUE
• THE GAY WAY: HISTORY OF LBIAN BARS SOUTHEAST WASHGTON, D.C.
• THE FACTORY, HISTORIC GAY CLUB WT HOLLYWOOD, TO BE MOLISHED
• IN POWERFUL REBE OF HATE, JAGUARS' KEV MAXEN MAK HISTORY G OUT AS GAY
• 10 UNR-THE-RADAR GAY HISTORY S NYC

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

UPDATE: Oil Can Harry’s, the famed Stud Cy gay bar which closed earlier this year, might soon be signated as a Historic-Cultural Monument. Oil Can Harry’s opened 1968 and was one of the olst gay bars the San Fernando Valley when closed nomatn mt still go before the full Cy Council for article origally appeared , and is shared here as part of a LGBTQ+ muny exchange between Q Voice News and Pri was April 19, Young, Oil Can Harry’s was more than a gay nightclub. Durg his first night at the club, Young was offered as job as a bar back, and eventually, worked his way up to the patrons who equented the 52-year-old historic gay waterg hole, which was renowned for ’s Friday night untry le dancg or Saturday night dis parti, was more than a bar or a dance club.

THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THREE OF LA'S HISTORIC BUT THREATENED GAY NIGHTCLUBS

It also was the days of Donna Summer, Thelma Hoton, and Gloria Gaynor, whose dis hs ed many fanny bumpers on the Can Harry’s (urty Q Voice News) and s owner Bert Charot (urty Jerry Arko)In Los Angel and the Valley, people felt eer and safer to equent gay spac not loted an out-of-the-way dtrial area or down a dark alley and hidn behd a nonscript door. 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.

LONDON'S LANDMARK BUILDG DOTTED WH STRIP CLUBS, GAY VENU TO TURN TO MOSQUE

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.

THE GAY WAY: HISTORY OF LBIAN BARS SOUTHEAST WASHGTON, D.C.

“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 FACTORY, HISTORIC GAY CLUB WT HOLLYWOOD, TO BE MOLISHED

”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. 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.

IN POWERFUL REBE OF HATE, JAGUARS' KEV MAXEN MAK HISTORY G OUT AS GAY

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. 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.

Los Angel is home to many s that have played an important role the cy and untry's LBGT civil rights history—om Huntgton Park to Echo Park and Silver Lake, the LA area has bars, clubs, ho, and stairs that are remrs of the early days of the gay rights movement and a heightened visibily for LGBT Angelenos. ↑ Wt Hollywood's legendary Stud One dis opened 1974 as not jt a safe place for gay people to ngregate, but one that "specifilly tered" to them, says the LA Conservancy.

10 UNR-THE-RADAR GAY HISTORY S NYC

↑ Circ Dis at Santa Moni Boulevard and Las Palmas was born 1975, part bee 's founrs Gene La Pietra and Er Lemos "were tired of beg turned away om whe, gay tablishments, " La Pietra told LA Weekly.

The club grew to have a "primarily Lato patronage"; 1983, famed labor anizer Car Chavez me to Circ Dis to share boytt techniqu and fundraisg ias wh about 100 members of the Project Jt Bs, a gay and lbian group, says the LA Conservancy, which has been volved wh attempts to have the dis saved and prerved, stead of razed as a part of a large mixed-e muny. Opened eher 1972 or 1973 (sourc differ), the club was the first big dis to wele the black gay muny, which often got hassled at other (mostly whe) gay venu of the era.