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"If you 'came out' back then, you'd have been beat to death," said Warman, who at the time was married to a woman, as was Palmer. Instead, they paid their fines and slinked away. McCann said that was "the first time I remember people actually being nice to each other."īut no one stood up and protested the raids. When people needed to use the toilet, a phalanx of men would stand up and form a wall to give privacy.
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They were herded together into a large cell with open toilets where they spent the night. McCann said that in 1964, he was one of some 80 gay men loaded into 12 paddy wagons and hauled to the Marion County Jail. "We'd quick drop our partner and grab a lesbian," said David McCann, 70, who lived in Kokomo but frequently socialized in Indianapolis.īut often such raids led to nights in jail, especially if the gay patrons didn't have I.D. She saw the police approach, flipped a light switch, a signal familiar to her patrons. But the proprietor, Betty Keller, was too quick for them.
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" 'Visiting a dive,' is what they'd call it," Warman said. Warman recalled being at Betty K's, a club that occupied a big old Victorian house at 17th and Central (since torn down) in the mid-'60s, when police came in to bust men for dancing with other men. "Young kids don't realize what it used to be like, what older people went through." "There's a lot of history behind where we are now," said Coby Palmer, 65, a florist and longtime gay civic leader. "Even way back there was a lot going on here," Bohr said. This at a time when Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio, had just two each. He said that in 1970, the year he stopped concealing his homosexuality, Indianapolis had more than a dozen gay bars. Michael Bohr is the founder and curator of the Chris Gonzalez Library & Archives, a sort of gay museum whose inventory includes rare, original copies of Indianapolis' first gay publication, a mimeographed monthly from 1966 called "The Screamer." On the eve of the 31st Pride celebration, to be capped off June 9 with a giant Downtown parade and festival, The Star revisited the secret, underground-ish, but vibrant scene of decades ago. Some guests wore masks to conceal their identities. Indianapolis' first Gay Pride event, in 1981, consisted of a semi-private dinner at the Essex Hotel. The difference now, said Shantel Sifuentes, who was sitting with the 44-year-old Bill but is 15 years younger - and who spelled out her last name slowly and clearly (she was that committed to full, unmistakable disclosure) - is that "people want the city to know the LGBT community is out there." "They'd be afraid people would shoot them.
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He works now at Greg's Our Place, at 16th and Delaware streets, which opened up its windows in 2009. "People years ago wouldn't have been comfortable with windows," said Steve Warman, 65, who has bartended in gay bars in Indianapolis since the 1970s.
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Indianapolis gay bars used to be in the dark, not just figuratively but literally - they didn't used to have windows. "The afternoon light just came busting through and hit you," said Bill. Since the 1970s, when Downtown Olly's was a different gay bar called Brothers, the wall had sealed off two huge picture windows in front. Several years ago, he was at that same bar, during a remodeling, as workers tore away a wall. He was 90 days sober and figured it would look bad to his AA sponsor, never mind he was drinking Diet Coke.īut he had something interesting, something metaphorical, to say, as "Rock me, Amadeus" played in the background at Downtown Olly's, 822 N. Not because he was in a gay bar, but because he was in a bar period. Actors will bring to life six locations in Indianapolis Old Northside tickets: $60.īill declined to disclose his last name. Indiana Humanities is hosting an LGBT history bar crawl on June 20 at 6 p.m. This story was originally published June 8, 2012. View Gallery: Indy's gay bars of bygone years