[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.As time went on, two airline stewardessesmoved into the middle unit and a young married couple in the front.I feltsecure behind the succession of locked doors the alley gate, the stairwelldoor, and my own door at the top of the stairs.Three days after I moved in, our Neighborhood Watch had a block party,featuring wine, a three-piece band, and the inevitable Lucky Dog wagon.Mixing with my new neighbors, I realized that I was one of the poorer peopleon the block; but that fact arrived casually and without any snootiness or 1978 1994: the long slide down 161exclusion.Indeed, my wealthy neighbors across the street invited me to takepictures in the garden of their award-winning property.40 Another insightcame after Mayor Dutch Morial stopped by to address us, just at sunset.Hespoke of supporting Neighborhood Watch and Lower Quarter Crime Watch,and then after polite applause, got in his limousine.As his car made the turnat Bourbon, some of my neighbors chuckled derisively at the contrast betweenthe mayor s little pep talk and his more public pronouncements.It was not merely one s apartment that made the experience.As part ofthe last cadre of the sixties and seventies counterculture, I shared that group slonging to experience something truthful and unique, something not pre-planned and prepackaged by corporate manipulation.Here was the feeling ofbeing part of a genuinely unique society.It was the feeling that the Quarterwas a huge outdoor living room, with way stations the bars, the restaurants,and the houses of friends.In an afternoon s stroll, one might visit the cheapestflat imaginable and an elegant townhouse on Royal.Elbows could be rubbedwith mainstays of the arts at one watering hole and cast-up merchant sea-men, hustlers, and small-time dope dealers at another.All were met with anextended sense of communal familiarity. Degrees of separation was not aphrase in public use then; we said friend of a friend in the same way thatancestors, no matter the antiquity, are reduced to great-grandpa. And therewere many friends of friends.What alienation might there be was felt in thetourist thoroughfares of upper Bourbon, Royal, and especially Decatur Street.The latter had become, even at that time, primarily a tourist strip, offeringfamily-friendly fleecing of every description.Once we were acclimated, therounds we had to make outside the Quarter were disconcerting.These excur-sions were usually to larger grocery stores or movie theaters within the cityor shopping in places like Metairie.For Quarter and Marigny denizens whothought nothing of twelve-block journeys on foot, Metairie and the othersuburbs looked far away, even with an automobile.They were foreign enoughto require different behavior, to remind ourselves that we were no longerin the Quarter and induce a feeling of relief when we were back within thebounds of the sacred precinct.The Founding of Boys Town In January 1980, there were at least nineteen gay and lesbian bars in the Quar-ter.41 Some were long-time hangouts and some were relatively new, occupying 162 1978 1994: the long slide downbars once straight.The openness of gay life in the Quarter would have aston-ished both perverts and their persecutors of a mere twenty years before.Lafitte s Blacksmith Shop, at the lakeside upper corner of Bourbon andSt.Philip, was the legendary front of the pirate Jean Lafitte and his brother.The little building, forever looking to be on the verge of collapse, had beena gay-friendly watering hole for decades.In 1953, its ownership changed andgays were no longer welcomed.The displaced staff then went up the block to900 Bourbon, and founded Café Lafitte In Exile, which would become thepivot point of the gay neighborhood.Between that shift and the early 1980s,there were many independent bars that welcomed gays and lesbians.Theseplaces did not identify themselves as exclusively gay taverns, and people ofmany groups and cultures partied together.42 The Seven Seas, at 515 St.Philip,and Johnny Matassa s, behind the family grocery at Dauphine and St.Philip,were two such bars.43In 1981, Café Lafitte s In Exile came into the possession of Tom Wood.Over the early and mid-1980s, Wood Enterprises opened or bought other gaybars and gay-supportive businesses.44 One of the first was the Great AmericanRefuge at the upper lakeside corner of Ursulines and Royal.The Refuge wasunlike any gay bar the Quarter had yet seen.The typical Quarter gay spotof the era was simply an existing bar, renamed, and decorated with a mix ofbeverage industry paraphernalia, a few suggestive posters, and the ubiqui-tous Carnival leftovers.The Refuge was modeled after a classic men s clubwith leather easy chairs, sofas, and coordinated design.Whoever consideredthemselves A list a contemporary fantasy among social climbers gravi-tated there.Others, perhaps not looking to pose and network, now realizedthat gay bars didn t have to be tawdry and leave one feeling soiled
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]