Scratch anyone who’s lived in an American gay mecca long enough, and this fact becomes almost a melancholy point of pride, of the I’ve-seen-it-all-kid variety. Yet gay bars, once central to both a city’s gay community and to the liberation movement itself, are in decline.
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The drag scene has exploded in the wake of RuPaul’s Drag Race, hip-hop is now full of allies, lesbians can get married in Utah and the LGBT community has never been more affluent, politically engaged and-anecdotally, at least-still inclined to party as hard as ever. Over the last ten years, giant leaps in queer visibility have given way to a general decline in homophobia. To any LGBT American under 40, that could very well be life under a Stalinist client state, or a story set in some distant galaxy. when we weren’t legal, it was more fun.” We used to go to all these underground bars with signs saying, ‘You are subject to a raid at any time’. “Edith Piaf’s songs were real big at that time. That was the first gay bar I’d ever been in,” Nieves, who is now 78 years old, recalls. In the 1950s, it was the Embarcadero, then something of a sailor’s haunt. Herman Nieves’ memory stretches back to when the epicenter of San Francisco’s gay scene wasn’t the tony Castro, or the leather-and-Levi’s bars South of Market or even the hustler hangouts in Polk Gulch. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.I thought you might like this article. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at for further information. (SOUNDBITE OF PATRICK COWLEY SONG, "DO YOU WANNA FUNK?")Ĭopyright © 2020 NPR. It's had many incarnations over its 50-plus year history, so owners and patrons alike are hoping someday after the pandemic passes, The Stud may be able to come back to life.
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Owners say they'll try to keep the idea of The Stud alive through virtual parties even after it ceases to exist as a physical space. MCDEDE: The Stud Collective plans to host a virtual drag funeral to honor what the owners call an end of the era for the city's LGBT nightlife. It has survived - it survived the AIDS epidemic, and now it's the COVID pandemic that's forcing us to close. VIVYANNE FOREVERMORE: Beautiful things have happened there. The numbers just didn't add up, and so drag queen Vivyanne ForeverMore and other co-owners broke the news over Zoom. But then in March, the pandemic forced all bars in California to close. In 2016, Mahogany and over a dozen other supporters bought it collectively in an effort to save the bar. MCDEDE: The Stud bar and the community it built had been operating on razor-thin margins for years. MAHOGANY: It really has been a place where I have felt an incredible amount of community. But Mahogany simply knew The Stud as home. Stars like disco queen Sylvester, electronic music pioneer Patrick Cowley and Lady Gaga all found their way to the scrappy bar. MCDEDE: It became known as a space to experiment, and that anything-goes attitude helped shape the city's drag culture. Hair fairies, leather daddies - everyone was there on the dance floor. HONEY MAHOGANY: It was a place where, really, everyone was welcome. She says that at a time when women, gender-nonconforming people and drag queens weren't allowed in most gay bars, The Stud stood out. Drag queen and activist Honey Mahogany is one of the bar's co-owners. MCDEDE: The Stud opened in 1966, when San Francisco's LGBT nightlife was booming.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: A lot of times, the beginning of a song will have a real pop where it'll make people scream on the dance floor. HOLLY J MCDEDE, BYLINE: For 55 years, The Stud bar has been a safe haven where radicals and outsiders could perform, sing karaoke and pack dance floors, like in this footage on YouTube from 1982. From member station KQED in San Francisco, Holly J. The Stud, the city's oldest LGBT community bar, could not survive the financial blow from the COVID-19 shutdown. A San Francisco institution is calling it quits.