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09-24-2007, 04:20 PM
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Gay or Straight, if there is beer I am there.
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Why have a signature when no one can read my handwriting? "We painted the town red in our 1979 winnobego, ( PURPLE ) with maggie hanging her wooden leg out the window." OLD 4 SQ 
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09-24-2007, 04:26 PM
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I actually just got back from a weekend in Montreal and was amazed at the size and energy of the gay village there. One club, Unity, was a pretty good comparison to Babylon in Queer as Folk and there are so many other bars and dance clubs to choose from. (OTOH, we went to two male strip clubs and were pretty disappointed - we had a better time watching naked women at Club Super Sexe.)
I agree with EastChestnut that hookup sites and chatrooms have pulled a lot of people out of the bars and clubs, for better and worse. But I'd have to disagree that New York's gay scene is lacking. Barracuda and G are both busier on a Tuesday night than Bump is on a Saturday, and I also like that there are several gay nodes spread across the city, rather than having everything lumped together. I do think Philly's gay nightlife is a little disappointing for a city of our size, and I think there are several reasons... First of all, and probably most important: the complacency of local gays means that venue owners have little incentive to spend money on renovations, since business is good (due to the limited choices) regardless. Second, it's difficult and expensive to get a liquor license in Pennsylvania, making it harder for new bars to open and shake up the scene. Third, the Phila metro area is very spread out compared other older cities but the gayborhood and downtown in general is not auto-accommodating ... think of the thousands of gays in their 20s and 30s living out in the burbs, close to their suburban jobs, who might otherwise be living in the city and partaking in gay nightlife. Fourth, being between New York and DC means that Philly loses the possibility of being a regional center like Seattle, Atlanta, or Chicago. However, it looks like some changes are already happening. Knock has already opened. And as someone else has mentioned, the owners of Triumph (a very nice Old City bar) are planning on opening a huge gay bar/club in the space of the former Signatures at 13th and Locust. I believe it will be called Evolve. There's also supposed to be another lounge-y type place opening on Locust, but I'm not sure of the details.
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09-24-2007, 04:30 PM
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woody's is hardly a bad looking venue. I'm not even gay and i prefer to go there to most of the bars in center city.
now, if only i could get a gig there. :sigh:
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09-24-2007, 06:10 PM
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I agree SF can have an annoying smugness factor, but the fact is that most people, black or white, cannot afford to live anywhere near the Castro. However, there are a lot of black people in a lot of neighborhoods in San Francisco. They are not all in Oakland. The western addition is a very diverse mix of black and white. The Mission is a diverse mix of latino and everything else. The Sunset and Richmond are a diverse mix of white and asian. I'm not gay, nor have I been to Seattle, but I have spent a lot of time in the Castro, and it is definitely the gayest place I've ever seen.
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09-24-2007, 07:45 PM
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I’ve been away from the Philadelphia Gay Scene since I moved to South Florida in 1984 but I return to the city frequently and get out on occasion and must agree that the “gayborhood” is quite compartmentalized compared to what the Philadelphia Gay nightlife use to be in the 70s and 80s.
The gay scene was not always predominantly east of Broad Street, it stretched west and south and into South Jersey as well with many clubs and diversity. I remember a lot of them: Allegro was on Spruce Street between Broad and 15th on the south side. The Westbury use to be in the Westbury building on 15th street and was a very active place where such notables as Richard Deacon (Mel from Dick Van Dyke Show) would congregate. Then there was the Mystique which was a great bar that burned down. And who can forget the wonderful Steps, located on Delancey Place off 16th Street between Spruce and Pine. Further up on 17th Street just south of Locust on the East side of the street was the 247. There was a gay club in South Philly I believe it was called the RAR which was a fun place to visit. When you got east of Broad Street the nightlife continued with Equus (currently 12th Air Command) which in its day was the place to go and be seen. It is said that Karen Young kick started her career there with her hit single “Hot Shot.” I worked at Equus in those days when Karen use to play piano and sing during happy hour downstairs. The upstairs bar was always packed and their T-Dance was a huge success on Sundays. After Equus closed people would flock to the DCA (currently Pure and formerly 2-4 Club after DCA) and dance the night away. Another club on Walnut Street Rainbows was immensely popular in those days and also after hours like the DCA and The Catacombs below Second Story. Not only has the internet but health concerns have also taken away a lot of the glitz of days gone by as well as the overall atmosphere of the world and the seemingly great numbers of bizarre and dangerous people walking the streets. Folks use to trick out and go home with total strangers more so than today. Across the Ben Franklin Bridge was a small gay club called The Lamplighter which was located off the lobby of one of the high rise apartments that stands to the left of the toll both when you enter NJ which still stands today. It was at that bar that I met my lover in 1976 and I am happy to say that 31 years later we are still together. Nothing is forever and the gay night life in South Florida, specifically Fort Lauderdale has also diminished. Clubs like The Copa, Marlin Beach, Backstreet, Lefty’s, 826, Tacky’s and The Colliseum are all a thing of the past. Thanks for letting me share. I am sure I left out some clubs and if some of you out there from that era would share it would be a hoot to hear from you.
__________________
"Love your neighbor; yet don't pull down your hedge." -Benjamin Franklin
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09-24-2007, 08:59 PM
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Ooo I wish there was a copy of club Parking here in Philly. That place was so much fun.
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09-24-2007, 11:05 PM
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Although, I must say if we count gay-friendly establishments (like North 3rd, M room, etc.) then the current number is pretty close to that of three decades ago.
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09-24-2007, 11:36 PM
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I have a friend (ex-West Chesterite who I met when he was a grad student at Penn and I was working there; we've been friends ever since he lost all the ones he had when he was diagnosed with HIV and I stayed in touch with him) who lives near 18th and Valencia. It's not that long a walk to the Castro from there -- about 10 minutes or so to the west -- but it's another 10 minutes to the east from there to Mission Street, and from Mission to Castro, it's uphill. Walking distances in San Francisco have a vertical dimension to them as well, and what might be a short walk here becomes a trek there, at least in one direction. I rode the F-Market streetcar its entire length. Yeah, there is some gay presence along that street between Castro and Church (the next stop down on the MUNI Metro, about 8 blocks away), but it didn't look like I was in the gay district along that stretch. Are San Franciscans that indefatigable as walkers? Downtown is at least 3 miles from the Castro. (The entire city is roughly a 7-mile square; its total land area is 49 square miles.) Hate to break this to you, but blacks make up only 6 percent of San Francisco's population -- down from 13 percent in 2000. There was a front-page story in the Chronicle the Monday I spent gallivanting around town that contained this statistic and talked about how worried city officials were trying to stem this tide. Stranger still is this: the blacks who are leaving are the ones with the money. Everything about San Francisco is more dense than comparable areas of Philadelphia. It is a very compact city. It's also got a spectacular location -- I can't think of any other city so gorgeously situated. One other big difference: In San Fran, you're still more likely to run into people who moved there from elsewhere than you are in Philadelphia, even with the influx of outsiders to Center City and its immediate environs. Transplants -- especially those who move to a city by choice -- tend to be more outgoing and enthusiastic about their adopted homes than the natives are (though this is far from universal).
__________________
Sandy Smith, Exile on Market Street, Philadelphia "Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising." --Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
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09-25-2007, 12:06 AM
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The Allegro had already closed, but its building still stood; within five years of moving here, it was gone, replaced by a parking lot that was destined to be, originally, the new Philadelphia Orchestra Hall, now the Kimmel Center. There was a club in the 2000 block of Sansom called the Allegro II that drew a black clientele. Its owner, a scumbag (literally -- he had a colostomy) with alleged Mob connections, reopened this club in a series of different locations, all east of Broad, after the A2 closed; none of these lasted longer than a year in any one spot, for the neighbors always complained, until he finally occupied the building that for decades been the Drury Lane/Cafe Lafitte. The scumbag died about four years ago, and along with him, the last gay club standing on the 1300 block of Drury, which once housed three: the aforementioned Drury Lane/Cafe Lafitte, Seasons, and one whose name escapes me now. One of the A2's interim homes had been home to a fairly elegant gay restaurant, the Monster Inn. This building, just down Quince from the Bike Stop, was converted back into private residences three years ago. When I moved here, the Steps no longer went by that name. It had briefly taken a different name, then, a year later, assumed what would be its terminal identity as a piano bar called Parks Place. Its building was demolished and replaced with a small office building. The old Westbury Bar took its name across Broad to the bar and restaurant located in the Parker Hotel, probably because the owners figured no self-respecting gay man would go into the Parker Bar. The Post -- recently sold to a lesbian couple that has closed it for a makeover, I've heard -- is now the sole gay bar west of Broad. For a brief shining moment in the mid-1980s, Kurt's -- located in the Adelphia House basement -- was THE dance club for gay Philly. I don't know what caused its decline, but when it came, it came quickly. The South Jersey gay bar I remember was Gatsby's, on Route 70 in Cherry Hill. It moved "around the corner", so to speak, to a building on Cuthbert Boulevard in the early 1990s and afterwards gradually went straight. I understand there is a bar somewhere near Lindenwold PATCO that draws a gay crowd now, and there still may be another on US 130 near Deptford. There was also a gay bar/after-hours club right under the El just beyond the city line -- the CR Bar/MSA Club on Market Street in Millbourne. It died about a decade ago, leaving the Lark in Bridgeport as the sole surviving gay bar in the 'burbs until it closed last year. Tavern on Camac was called Raffles when I moved here; it had opened only a short time prior. I had heard tales of another gay bar on this block called the Camp Williamsburg; when I moved here, the late lamented Deux Cheminees occupied its building; the gay-but-not-gay Inn Philadelphia took over the building after a fire nearly gutted it in the early 1990s and turned it into a really nice romantic restaurant -- for a while. (Speaking of gay-but-not-gay, I'd put Sal's on 12th in that category.) There was also Back Stage on 4th just below South, and the Smart Place -- the city's black bar at the time, and a disaster waiting to happen -- on the 900 block of Race Street in Chinatown; Philly has always had at least one black gay bar, either by design or by default, as long as I've lived here; currently, that bar is Key West by default. I guess if there's any point to all this, it's that change is the only constant.
__________________
Sandy Smith, Exile on Market Street, Philadelphia "Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising." --Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
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09-25-2007, 12:51 AM
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After reading your post a few more names came to my memory. If memory serves me correctly there was a women’s gay bar called Sneakers that I believe was somewhere around 2nd or Front and Locust. I was there once. It then moved further west towards the area of the now defined Gayborhood but I can not tell you where it was. There was another club Pal Joey’s on Locust Street on the north side between Camac and 12th and it was in existence while Equus was still open. Equus maintained the same ownership, Alan Kachin who eventually ended up down in South Florida where he owned Hombres on South Beach and now I believe he has an interest in the Eagle Fort Lauderdale. There was another after hour’s club I use to go to the Penrose Club which was on Walnut Street near Broad on the 2nd floor of an office building. You went down a long hallway and up a long flight of stairs to a door with a sliding window in it. The door man was Frankie and inside was a bar and a back room and the bartender Henney was great back in my drinking days when you ordered a Scotch and water you would get almost all Scotch and usually two at a time for the price of one provided you kept the tips coming J And after a long night of partying you couldn’t beat a good breakfast at The Savoy at 11th and Locust. I much preferred that to Hasty Tasty Deli which at the time was on 12th Street next door to Equus across Manning Street. Is Henry David still around? Does he still have his store at Juniper & Pine? 
__________________
"Love your neighbor; yet don't pull down your hedge." -Benjamin Franklin
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