Book chronicl 1973 arson at gay club that barely ma to the papers, or even to the nscns of the muny
Contents:
- FORTY FIVE YEARS AGO A FIRE NEW ORLEANS GAY BAR TOOK 32 LIV – AND WAS MET WH APATHY
- BOOK REMEMBERS VASTATG 1973 FIRE AT GAY NEW ORLEANS BAR
- WATCH: ARSONIST SETS FIRE NYC GAY BAR
FORTY FIVE YEARS AGO A FIRE NEW ORLEANS GAY BAR TOOK 32 LIV – AND WAS MET WH APATHY
* gay club set on fire *
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.
BOOK REMEMBERS VASTATG 1973 FIRE AT GAY NEW ORLEANS BAR
”But the UpStairs wasn’t jt a space for the New Orleans gay muny to e together and socialize. 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.
“It took a good five or six years before I would fally walk to a gay bar, ” he said. ” 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.
WATCH: ARSONIST SETS FIRE NYC GAY BAR
Photograph: Marie Le Ble/Zuma Wire/Rex/ShutterstockThis week, New York Cy’s mayor, Eric Adams, posned the cy as a welg place for queer people ntrast to plac like Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis jt signed a “don’t say gay” law. New York Cy’s most well-known cint is the police raid at Stonewall Inn that sparked the 1969 Stonewall Uprisg – and helped lnch the morn gay rights movement. 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.