David Hunt: 0:00

Welcome to Tell Me, David, Queer Stories, Past and Present. This story originally aired on This Way Out, the international LGBTQ radio magazine. You probably remember the first gay bar you ever visited, especially if you came out in the days before dating apps like Grindr, Scruff and Her. Perhaps it was the Odyssey Disco in West Hollywood in the late 1970s, or the Eagle, a leather bar in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood in the 1980s, or my Sister's Room, a lesbian bar in Midtown Atlanta in the 1990s.

David Hunt: 0:47

Whatever the era, gay bars have been central to the queer experience for generations, as sites of both protests and parties. In the United States, the modern gay liberation movement traces its origins in the 1960s to demonstrations at several clubs, notably the Stonewall Inn in New York's Greenwich Village. South London's Royal Vauxhall Tavern attracted a gay clientele as early as the 1940s, when it hosted drag shows that were popular with soldiers returning from World War II. In the late 80s, the tavern lived up to its royal moniker when rocker Freddie Mercury smuggled Princess Diana into the club disguised as a man. I'm David Hunt. Every gay bar, it seems, from gritty dives to glitzy hotspots, has its stories to tell.

David Hunt: 1:55

One man has made it his mission to collect them and share them online. Welcome to another episode of the Gay Barc hives Show, where we explore gay history one bar at a time. I'm your host, Art Smith, and our guest today is author Daniel M Jaffe, who will be telling us about his favorite bars from Boston's colorful gay past.

David Hunt: 2:18

I'll play an excerpt from Art Smith's interview with Daniel Jaffe in a bit, but first a little background. Smith's gay history project, Gay Barchives, is exactly what it sounds like an online archive that preserves the memory of scores of gay bars. Gay plus bar plus archives equals Gay Barchives. The project, which Smith launched during the COVID pandemic, has a number of moving parts. There's the YouTube channel, where Smith posts hour-long interviews with people like Jaffe, including bar owners, bar patrons, bar employees and even the occasional academic researcher, All related to gay bars. The Gayb a rchives Facebook page has 10,000 followers and counting, who share their personal stories and connect or reconnect in some cases with other gay bar veterans, and the Gayb ar chives. com website includes an e-commerce shop that sells T-shirts and other merch emblazoned with the logos of popular gay bars of the past and present. I sat down with Smith and asked him about the enduring role of the gay bar scene in the LGBTQ plus experience.

Art Smith: 3:28

You know, I've kind of compared them to community centers, churches, meeting halls all rolled up into one, because so much of our history is wrapped around the bar scene and it's not just about drinking, it's about socializing. I remember back, as you were saying, in the late 70s, into the 80s, I would go out seven or eight nights a week. It didn't matter if it was a school night or not. After you went to dinner with a friend, you would go to the bar just to see somebody that was like you and have a common experience. Whether or not you were going to drink, it was. You know, it's the place that we organized all of our nonprofit organizations that fight for us, the, you know whether it's GLAAD or HRC or Equality all of these groups kind of have their roots in the gay bar scene, kind of have their roots in the gay bar scene. Of course, all of the uprisings Stonewall, black Knight, black Cat they all happened in bars. So the bars are really kind of the foundation of our community back then.

David Hunt: 4:33

There are still plenty of gay bars around an estimated 800 in the United States alone but that number was about twice as high in the early 1980s, the good old days before the internet, dating apps and the AIDS epidemic. For those too young to remember the decadent decade after Stonewall, I asked Smith to take us back in time. Turns out it wasn't all that inclusive.

Art Smith: 4:58

They were very specialized. Let's say back in the 70s what I was seeing back then, a lot of the bars had a very specific concept, a very specific flavor and those bars would enforce the rules so that they could maintain that identity. So there were bars that would only allow white men with leather harnesses or leather pants or whatever. Women were not allowed in, guys in polo shirts were not allowed in. Guys wearing cologne were not allowed in. It was a very specific market. They were targeting A lot of the Eagle bars. They did not allow women, they did not allow drag queens, they did not allow eff leather bar or a disco. They had specific identities and you did not see as much crossover, even with lesbians in the bars that were for men. It was very segmented. I didn't even think about it until I got into this project.

David Hunt: 6:21

Now let's listen to an excerpt of author Daniel Jaffe's Barch ives interview in which he remembers the first gay bar he frequented, Sporters in Boston in the late 1970s. The first time he went with a friend, the second time well, that's where the story gets interesting.

Daniel Jaffe: 6:37

I was still very nervous about it. I'd never been to a gay bar on my own. So a few weeks went by and I think it was a Friday night. I decided I'm going to go and no matter what happens, it just happens I'm going to experience gay life. So gradually the bar filled up and then at some point probably around 10, the bartender brings me another beer, which I hadn't ordered because I still hadn't finished my first one after about two hours and he said somebody down at the end of the bar sent you this beer. And I thought, oh my gosh, it's like being in one of those romantic movies, those rom-com things. And so I looked at the end of the bar and there was a guy a bit older than me and maybe 10 years older, and he raised his beer bottle to me. I raised to him the one that had been sent to me and I knew from the movies, when someone does that, you're supposed to go over. So I went over to him and thanked him. We started chatting and then the next thing it just shows how naive I was. So while I'm chatting with him, a friend of his comes over and sticks his tongue in my ear. So I didn't know what to do so I just ignored it. So this guy kept his tongue in my ear while I'm talking to his friend. It was very strange.

Daniel Jaffe: 7:54

And then a couple of other friends of theirs came in and they decided they were all going back to an apartment. Did I want to join them Now? I had never gone home with anyone from a bar before, but I had said to myself, you know, anything goes tonight. So I said, okay, I'll go with you, not having a clue as to what I might be getting myself into. So we walked a few blocks, they bought beer, we go up to his apartment, we go in and there are these two giant Irish setters that he's house-sitting for who are jumping around. Okay, fine, well, we sit around. For some reason they put I Love Lucy reruns on TV. I mean, I was just looking around this little living room and they're passing a joint and of course, good Jewish boy that I was, I had never smoked, so I just sort of held the joint and didn't smoke it and then passed it and they all noticed and commented on it. So I'm getting increasingly embarrassed. Okay, they're drinking and drinking. And finally the two friends they had brought aboard and they leave the guy who's the Tom guy whose apartment it is. He passes out in the bedroom. So now it's me and the guy who ordered me the beer on his sofa and then he passes out.

Daniel Jaffe: 9:09

Now by this time it's already 2.30 in the morning and by then the T in Boston, the subway has stopped running and I was still new to the city and didn't have a sense of how else to get home. So I figured, well, I'll just wait on the sofa until 5.30 in the morning when the tea runs again. And then the two Irish setters jumped up the sofa and wanted to cuddle on my lap. So I slept with the two dogs, and the way I think of it is my first experience at a gay bar is I slept with two hairy beasts and it went just fine. And actually in the morning when I left, I was thrilled because I thought I can do this, I can handle this. I can handle going home with four men. It's no big deal.

David Hunt: 10:06

You're listening to this Way Out the international LGBTQ radio magazine. I'm David Hunt, continuing my conversation with Art Smith, who spearheads the Gayb ar chives Project. Back in the 1970s, when I came out, bars were a place where older gays would sometimes take younger gays under their wing in terms of telling them about gay history, gay culture, that sort of thing. Have any of your guests talked about that?

Art Smith: 10:37

Yeah, and it's very much true. Especially, you know, as we were talking about, the bars were kind of segmented in the style that they were. So the waters that were more local watering holes, neighborhood bars, holes in the wall, things of that nature that you could actually sit down and have a conversation. Those bars very much had that feeling. I've had people tell me whether it was talking about an experience at Julius in New York or talking about you know something from Atlanta or LA that very often that happened, that they met people and sat there and had conversations with them and learned about, you know, not only the other person but also about gay stuff, because we did not have ready information at our fingertips. So if you are new to an area or new to the, you know being out, you needed other people to guide you because you were not going to find out. There were not rainbow flags flapping in front of the businesses, they were mostly kind of underground and incognito.

David Hunt: 11:40

Of the 150 interviews you've conducted so far, can you think of a guest whose experience really stands out?

Art Smith: 11:46

You probably didn't stumble across it, it was an interview from several years ago a guy named Ted Binkley who I knew personally from Atlanta.

Art Smith: 11:55

He was a partner in both Illusions, which was Atlanta's drag showcase, and also in Crazy Rays, and then later, after he left Atlanta, opened a bar called Zippers in I believe it was Montgomery, Alabama. But when I interviewed him, one of the questions I always used to ask people is what was the first gay bar you went to and what was that experience like for you? You went to and what was that experience like for you? And he responded that it was a little bar in downtown Nashville, Tennessee, and he was not old enough to go in yet. But back at that, in those days they were kind of underground bars anyway and if you looked responsible and gay you weren't going to cause trouble, they let you in anyway. Well, it turns out that experience for him was in 1952. So it was 72 years ago and there are not a lot of people out there that you can find that can talk about going to a gay bar 72 years ago.

David Hunt: 13:00

As I wrapped up my conversation with Art Smith, it seemed only fair to ask him about his first gay bar experience. It happened when he visited a friend, a former boyfriend, actually in 1978.

Art Smith: 13:13

So we went out to dinner. I went down to see him at school in Baltimore and we went out to dinner and after dinner he said hey, I heard there's a cool bar across the street. Let's go over there and check it out. And so he did and ordered a drink and I'm standing there, maybe a foot or two above the dance floor it's a little elevated platform and I'm sipping on my drink and looking at the dance floor and after a couple of minutes I looked at Mark and I said everybody on the dance floor is male. And he said yeah, I know. And I said what's up with that? He said well, my roommate, jim, told me about this place and it's a gay bar.

Art Smith: 13:53

And I was in shock because that was the first time I'd been in a gay bar. It was called the Hippopotamus, one of the most iconic bars from Baltimore. It, I think, lasted until 2015. So it was there for quite a long time. It's now a CVS, if you want to go visit it. And it just changed my perspective completely because all of a sudden, I now knew that there was a gay community. It wasn't just a couple of random people me and Mark and a few others somewhere, but there were actually hundreds and thousands of us all over the place and it kind of opened the door to a new lifestyle.

David Hunt: 14:36

I'd like to thank my guest, Art Smith, who curates the Gayba rchives Project at Gaybarchives. com, and to anyone who remembers my first gay bar, Monroe's in Hawthorne, California. The beat goes on. For This Way Out. I'm David Hunt.