![black gay bars new orleans black gay bars new orleans](https://img.thedailybeast.com/image/upload/v1557611336/190-512-fieseler-upstairs-lounge-fire-hero_o0jlrc.jpg)
By the early 1970s, the Safari crowd had transitioned from mostly straight or bi-curious swinger couples, who dabbled in alternative sexualities, to mostly gay men. Clearly, she beat the rap, as the party kept on rolling. Subsequently, the owner Helen Williams faced petitions to suspend the Safari Lounge’s liquor license. In 1968, the New Orleans vice squad raided the bar and arrested a 21-year-old white male for wearing clothes of the opposite gender, as well as a black couple for dancing lewdly. Police regularly found armed robbery suspects in the establishment. Ken Mitchell, a black gay New Orleanian, remembers its vibe as being “kind of seedy.” A proprietor named Helen Williams hosted jazz acts featuring local greats like saxophonist Alvin Tyler and pianist Ellis Marsalis, as well as then-controversial drag performances.īut the all-hours company could be rough and attract the authorities. When it opened in 1965, the Safari Lounge boasted a wild and freewheeling reputation. But the Safari hadn’t always been a gay bar. Hickerson recalled seeing a group of whites at the Safari once, for example, when you’d never see more than one or two black patrons at the UpStairs Lounge. There would be the occasional boldfaced “snow” gay seeking “dinge,” as the terminology went, as white gays could cross certain boundaries that black gays couldn’t. “I remember a T-shaped stage and gorgeous black drag queens, queens you never saw elsewhere,” recalled Regina Adams, a white New Orleans nightclub performer who, in 1973, had a black lover. Patrons of the Safari would flirt beneath the blare of live music and dance almost lip-to-lip.
#Black gay bars new orleans plus#
Within the Safari Lounge in 1973, men like Hickerson found a saloon teeming with black men, plus black managers named Priscilla and Roosevelt Porter. Safari was up stairs, and I ventured up there very afraid.” You sense that ‘it’ is out there, but you don’t have anyone to show or tell you. “You’re trying to find out where ‘it’ is. “Coming out as gay in the black community, you’re struggling to explore,” recalled Hickerson. Black gays, by contrast, mostly frequented the few black gay bars in town like Charlie’s Corner or the Safari Lounge, a second-floor saloon on the corner of Iberville Street and Royal Street. There were black gays around, obviously, but it was very difficult for us to get in.”ĭiscreet white homosexuals enjoyed the virtual run of the French Quarter, with more than 20 gay bars in close proximity. “The majority of the bars were predominantly, if not entirely, white gay bars. “The racial politics, for lack of a better word, were terrible,” recalled Michael Hickerson, a lifelong New Orleanian who is black as well as gay. None of the gay Mardi Gras krewes, or fraternal orders that hosted theatrical masque balls during Carnival season, had black membership in the early 1970s.
![black gay bars new orleans black gay bars new orleans](https://offloadmedia.feverup.com/secretneworleans.co/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/15144941/1200px-Café_Lafitte_in_Exile_New_Orleans_27704081016-1024x691.jpg)
In keeping with Damron code, to protect gay travelers from criminal exposure, the UpStairs Lounge received “(*)” status to signify “Very Popular.” In fact, the Up Stairs Lounge was so popular that summer that it attracted a black visitor from Atlanta named Reginald Tubbs. The UpStairs Lounge culture had proven so attractive to open-minded gays, such a queer change of pace for New Orleans, that it received special mention in Bob Damron’s Address Book, an annual travel guide for the discreet gay vacationer. The crew of the UpStairs Lounge had an anthem they liked to sing at the piano that summed up their unique outlook: “United we stand, divided we fall.” So went the chorus.
#Black gay bars new orleans skin#
Such terminology had been appropriated from national gay culture-appearing throughout queer literature such as Andrew Holleran’s Dancer from the Dance and Larry Kramer's Faggots-but given new context in the racial dynamics of the Creole South.įor example, two black longshoremen who crossed racial lines to frequent the UpStairs Lounge, which served mostly working-class white patrons on the border of the French Quarter, went by the nicknames Smokie and Cocoa as reference to their skin tones.īuddy Rasmussen, the white bartender and manager of the UpStairs Lounge, was known to be especially friendly to all comers, even letting women into the bar at a time when gays and lesbians were strictly separated. “Snow,” by contrast, meant white and referenced antiquated notions of pureness in an era that eroticized race. “Dinge” was slang for black homosexuals, reference to dirt-language now pejorative and offensive but then considered to be street-speak, a crude but commonplace descriptor.
![black gay bars new orleans black gay bars new orleans](https://assets.simpleviewinc.com/simpleview/image/upload/c_fill,h_500,q_75,w_1400/v1/clients/neworleans/NOTMC_43607_6461a42e-f849-436b-a54a-548996b50ba1.jpg)
That was unspoken law in the gay subterranean of New Orleans in the 1970s. “Dinge” did not mix with “snow” openly, especially not on Bourbon Street.