LGBTQ+ History Month: Memories from our loved and lost spaces

Freida Slaves performs at The Chateau

Queers in food and beverages is all about highlighting the experiences of those working in our hospitality industry - LGBTQ+ people who are putting good food, drinks and fun out into the world. Not least those who are creating queer nightlife! As LGBTQ+ history month comes to an end, we thought it was important to reflect on some history from queer spaces, past and present, loved and lost.

The recent losses of queer owned spaces are deeply felt within the community. So many of us have memories of amazing places, which have been lost to gentrification, development and time. These were often the first places we were able glimpse the full potential our queer lives could reach, and the wonders and diversity of our community. As well as spaces to meet like minded people, and a definite upgrade to the boring hetero bars we might have had to endure in our hometowns. 

In recent years it has been well documented that many LGBTQI+ venues have been struggling to keep their doors open across the UK. Research a few years ago found that London had lost almost 60% of it’s LGBTQ+ venues in the past ten years (since 2017), a percentage that seems likely to be even higher now. 

Rising rents which are affecting small businesses across our industry are partly to blame, as well as now the knock on effects of the pandemic. However, in light of these circumstances, a beacon of light for the community is the boom in pop up queer nights or festivals led by a new generation of organisers and DJs.

Events like Big Dyke Energy, Body Movements, and Adonis have filled the shoes of more traditional bricks and mortar venues, taking up space in various places to bring together increasingly diverse parts of our community. These events have learnt from the past, and increasingly work harder to be more inclusive and ensure their attendees are safe and looked after. 

While we have loved dancing the night away in these newer spaces, we cannot help but feel nostalgic for the places we have lost. And it turns off we are not alone as, in honor of LGBTQ+ history month, QFAB followers shared their memories and personal histories. Some of these venues are still standing (long may they reign!) and some have met a far more grizzly end. 

Thank you to all those who shared their stories below. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have. Please keep sending in your own stories via the form.

“These were often the first places we were able glimpse the full potential our queer lives could reach, and the wonders and diversity of our community.”

Hugh Smithson-Wright: Kazbar, SW4, London (closed)

In nearly three decades – I know! – on the scene, I’ve loved, and lost, many queer venues. Few though hold quite such a special place in my heart as Kazbar, the Clapham High Street bar which closed after almost 20 years in 2016. It was the first gay bar I took my mother to; I met my first proper long-term boyfriend there; I celebrated birthdays and drowned my sorrows over break-ups there. 

It started as a ‘video-bar’, playing camp pop on screens embedded in the walls, and evolved into the kind of stylish-but-welcoming venue that became the norm but wasn’t quite so prevalent in the early 00s. The staff were almost always cute guys, although my friend Kate did a stint there, and the crowd was diverse in terms of age, race and ‘tribes’ – ahead of its time when many queer venues could be very cliquey. 

After it closed – due to a massive rent-hike – the site was empty for a few years before reopening as a smart gastropub, which happens to be gay-owned. My friends and I agree that it’s kept some of the spirit of the Kazbar, despite changing completely cosmetically. I like to think its history is embedded in the walls, like the TV screens we once watched flickering Whitney Houston videos on while necking pints.

Jenny Greenhalgh: First Out, WC2, London (Closed)

Growing up in a tiny Northern town I didn't have the chance to be myself and discover who I was going to be until moved to London aged 19 in 1999.

I've never been into clubs or drugs so I sought out smaller quieter places and only a few days after arriving in London I discovered First Out via Time Out magazine. I have to confess the £1 spirit and mixer happy hour in the downstairs bar helped draw me in the first time but I stayed for the people and the atmosphere. I'd never seen so many queers in one place. 

I remember enviously eyeing the style of the masc bartender in her braces and boots. I still hadn't found my confidence and it fed my growing spirit to be there. I found a flat by pulling a number off a handwritten note on the wall and using the pay phone by the toilets.I had first and last dates. I grew. I fell in love and was consoled by drunken mates. 

Most of all I remember the warm feeling of the upstairs cafe, where I read books quietly. The cosy community of it. I met straight and queer friends alike there. Gathered over delicious veggie food and smoothies, looking out at the bustle outside from the window. It was the very first gay venue with a daytime space and I still yearn for it. No other space has ever quite captured its magic. First and always the best.

“ It was the first gay bar I took my mother to; I met my first proper long-term boyfriend there; I celebrated birthdays and drowned my sorrows over break-ups there. ”

Gurd Loyal: Vogue Fabrics, E8, London

It’s hard to describe exactly what Vogue Fabrics was. In essence it was an underground DIY basement night-club underneath a Turkish Grocery store on Kingsland Road in Dalston - that had a few fridges full of Red Stripe behind the ‘bar’, sweat dripping from the ceilings, and toilets with shower curtains instead of doors. But to me it was a fairy twinkling Narnia of gay night life in my late twenties… a left-field paradise of outlandish fashion kids, queer punks, indie queens, drag kings, muscle boys, beary daddies and even the occasional nudist. 

Their ‘night’s’ always felt more like house-parties where you knew everyone, even if you knew no one. Every single person there was on the pull - and in turn pulling every single other person. The music was unashamedly trashy and random – from Britney to Whitney, emo anthems to Ibiza trance, kids TV theme tunes to Christmas songs on loop all year round. What I loved most about it was that it took no shame in being exactly what it was – brilliantly bizarre, joyful, carefree, and above all, really really wonderfully fucking queer!

“ It was the very first gay venue with a daytime space and I still yearn for it. No other space has ever quite captured its magic. First and always the best.”

Sebastian Pasinetti: The Glory, E2, London 

The Glory was imperative to forming my identity as a queer person in London. Having arrived from Melbourne three years ago as a angsty millennial queer, I had an incredibly monolithic view of what queer identity looked like. 

I stepped foot into The Glory on my 2nd day in London, and I was instantly met with an array of queer people that broke down all my pre conceived ideas of what a queer person should look like. I fell in love with the venue's aesthetic, giving a nostalgia of bars I had only ever imagined, having grown up as one of the only Queer People of Colour in a very white straight suburb. 

I screamed “It’s Raining Men” at full volume and drank my weight in cocktails. I arranged a date there the very next day. The Glory hosted that date smashingly and became the site of the first kiss that I had ever had with another man in a public space. The guests and staff applauded when we kissed and it is now cemented in my own queer history.

“I fell in love with the venue’s aesthetic, giving a nostalgia of bars I had only ever imagined, having grown up as one of the only Queer People of Colour in a very white straight suburb. ”

Bryn Timmis: The Eagle, London, SE11

The first queer venue to impact me was The Eagle in Vauxhall. I was 19 and the team from the restaurant I was doing work experience at loved a Horse Meat Disco Sunday night and wanted to show me what I had been missing out on being underage back home. My little gay mind was blown. 

I’d never seen so many queer people in one space, or felt so free and comfortable to let loose and have fun. “I Feel Love” still brings me back to that dance floor in a very coming of age movie flashback kind of way, and my music taste was forever changed after being introduced to Horse Meat Disco. Those nights always led to some interesting stories, but the part that stuck with me the most was that it felt like a very warm welcome into the LGBTQ+ community, right when I needed the reassurance that it was okay to start exploring my identity in new ways.

Andrew Clements: Ninth Avenue Bistro, Hells Kitchen, New York (closed)

I’ve never been able to find any photographic evidence of the Ninth Avenue Bistro. It closed well over a decade ago, before the ubiquity of quality cameras on cellphones. The only trace I’ve found of it online is an old Yelp listing with a couple of snarky reviews from gentrifying wannabe chorus boys who clearly did not have an appreciation for the 70’s back room bar aesthetic and mores that lay beyond that threshold. 

To most people, it would have blended in with any other dive bar that you would have found in the Hell’s Kitchen of the early aughts of this century, to be honest. There was a bar on the left and a bar-height counter on the right, both lined with stools whose upholstery was at least 50% duct tape, a room in the back with a pool table and a coins only jukebox with selections that hadn’t been updated since the first Bush administration, and, off of that room, a pair of bathrooms that wouldn’t look out of place in a 50’s US propaganda film about living conditions in a Soviet dissidents prison. 

It was a revelation.

The drinks were cheap and strong, and some nights there were a few aluminum chafing dishes over votive candles set up on the counter. All you had to do was buy (or be bought) a drink and you’d get a styrofoam plate to pile with chicken fingers, crinkle fries, and other reheated frozen bar foods bought in bulk. At the time I was working at an inbound call center for 10 dollars an hour, so I’d frequent bars where I could drink away the memory of being yelled at by entitled rich people for 8 hours while also getting in my one meal for the day.

As a sheltered kid from upstate who’d only recently moved to New York City, at this point my gay bar experiences were limited to a few trips to a dance club in Buffalo when I was in college. I was (and remain) too self-conscious to feel totally comfortable in that environment, and now I’d been presented with a place that essentially reminded me of the straight dive bars I’d frequented in college. The regulars were a melange of fey variations on Damon Runyon characters; a classic mix of stereotypical New York types, with an occasional slip into slightly predatory territory if a particularly stunning specimen sauntered in. It finally took a conversation with one such individual for me to realise there was a certain transactional nature to some of these interactions. 

On the whole though, they were mostly just ornery and desperate types, sometimes singing along to whatever was playing on the jukebox, or waving me over to share a bit of gossip they’d heard from one of the bartenders. They shared stories of their coming out. As the night wore on and the emptied martini glasses lined up in front of them, their carefully constructed masks started to crack; I’d hear stories about friends taken down not just by a virus, but also survivor’s guilt. These men had seen a society unwilling to do anything while their contemporaries- artists, doctors, scientists- bright shining possibilities all, wasting away into empty shells. 

And now it’s a Dunkin’ Donuts. The gentrifying chorus boys still come in waves, now with their iced coffees in hand. 

Thanks for everyone for contributing. If you would like to share some memories of queer venues just fill out the form here.