The Slide “also tells the story of oppression and harassment,” says Lustbader. The struggles by police and reformers to shut it down “helped to define the construction of what homosexuality would be.”Īt the turn of the century, the New York State Legislation went on a campaign to rout out corruption. These bars, according to Chauncey, were able to exist because of bribes and “they became targets,” he says.īut it wasn’t long before another legislative initiative, Prohibition, provided the environment for a new wave of bars to open up. The Roaring Twenties saw a huge number of speakeasies open in Harlem and Greenwich Village that catered to gay men and lesbian women. The 1890s and the 1920s were “incredibly open periods in New York history,” says Chauncey. Once drinking became legal again, that openness unfortunately began to dissipate. Sleziest gay bars new york citt series#.Mississippi Center For Investigative ReportingĪ fireball rushed inside the Up Stairs Lounge and raced through the bar, and the flammable decor and patrons’ polyester clothing. Those trapped inside desperately tried to squeeze through the iron bars on the floor-to-ceiling windows. Firefighters found grisly spectacles: a dead man hanging from one window with horror seared on his face and, upstairs, piles of charred bodies, some melted together. The smell of burnt flesh was overwhelming.īy the time the flames were extinguished, 32 people were dead. It had been the worst fire in New Orleans’ history. But because the Up Stairs Lounge was a gay bar and all but one of the dead were gay men, the police investigation of the arson was casual and incomplete. The death toll from that June 24, 1973, arson - the deadliest crime against gays in the U.S.
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Was a piece of history forgotten on June 12, 2016. That’s when, during national Gay Pride week, the death toll was surpassed at Pulse, a gay bar in Orlando, Florida. A Sunday “beer bust” always marks the week’s end and the close of the day of worship. Working class people - including some straight and some female - gather from 5 p.m. and drink as much beer as they want for just a dollar. Before police fatally shot him, the gunman had killed 49 Pulse patrons and injured 53.īut the Up Stairs Lounge arson in 1973 occurred before there was a national gay pride day, week or month, and when homosexual activity was a crime. Today, a brass plaque with the names of the 32 dead is embedded in the sidewalk in front of what used to be the entrance from Iberville Street to the staircase leading to the second-floor lounge. According to New Orleans author and tour guide Frank Perez, the staircase remains charred from the blaze. The evening of June 24, 1973, began like any other Sunday night at the Up Stairs Lounge, at the edge of the French Quarter a couple of blocks from Canal Street. This friendly, neighborhood gay community bar hesitated to live or socialize openly. The Up Stairs Lounge was a place they could relax. The camaraderie was bolstered by the weekly attendance of at least a few members of the nearby Metropolitan Community Church - a local branch of a national church that ministers to gays.
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Until the church found other space, it held services in the theater in the back of the Up Stairs Lounge.
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The bar had a piano and sing-alongs, usually of Broadway tunes, and church goers often led the bar patrons in a series of hymns.Īt 7 p.m., toward the end of the beer bust, remnants of the bar crowd gathered around the piano, held hands in a circle, and sang the Brotherhood of Man’s hit, United We Stand. The 1969 Stonewall riots in New York’s Greenwich Village had launched the national gay pride movement, but it had yet to reach New Orleans.
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Singing United We Stand was the closest any regular at Up Stairs Lounge got to gay solidarity.īy 7:56 p.m., the beer bust crowd had thinned to around 60 people. When patron Luther Boggs opened the heavy metal fire door at the bar’s entrance, he found the staircase engulfed in flames.