Old gay bars in boston
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Like the beautifully bonkers and often political All-Star Mondays and the satirical shows staged by Ryan Landry’s vaudeville-inspired theater troupe the Gold Dust Orphans.īefore you could catch her in 2019 as part of season three of the reality TV show “The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula,” one of Violencia Exclamation Point’s more memorable moments came when she started hosting All-Star Mondays’ late drag show. The drag and theatrical shows there were queer - as in LGBTQ-friendly and queer as in, well, weird. The spot hosted Dyke Nights and at least one gay wedding reception. The gay scene in Boston is still dominated by white guys, but at least for many, Machine was a hub for a more diverse crowd. Downstairs, drag queens twirled on stage in front of crowds that swayed under the disco lights. It was a sex-positive spot in a (still) puritanical city, with loud music and stiff drinks. Both spots had that kind of slightly dingy, lived-in feel of a well-loved gay hangout, the cigarette smell that seemed to hang in the air long after Boston banned smoking indoors, the dim corners here and there for making out.
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Ramrod, the leather and Levis gay bar, moved into the first floor in 1981 with Machine carving out a separate gay nightclub downstairs in 1998.
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But until just before quarantine - when Machine Nightclub and bar Ramrod officially closed - past the front door and the blacked-out windows at 1254 Boylston St., inside was magic. Right now, the bars and storefronts that fill this building are empty as they await the wrecking ball that will usher in a future luxury apartment building. The site of so much gay history in Boston is pretty boring from the outside, just a squat gray building that stretches a whole block on Boylston near Fenway Park. (Courtesy Kristen Porter/Hurley Event Photography) This article is more than 1 year old.
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The Intermission Lounge and the Scene movie theater in Boston’s Combat Zone, 1970s.Second Saturday at Machine in June. The owner of the Pilgrim Theater, Joe Savino in front of his beloved burlesque club in Boston’s Combat Zone, 1970s.īoston hardcore band SSD posing outside the Scene, a peepshow club in the Combat Zone, early 1980s. The State Theater, the Combat Zone, 1967.Ī theater marquee in the Combat Zone, 1967. The legendary Pilgrim Theater in the Combat Zone, 1970.Ī burlesque dancer outside of a club in the Combat Zone, 1970s. Many of the images from the show as well as others taken during the Zone’s heyday, follow. In 2010, an art exhibit at the Howard Yezerski Gallery showcased photos taken in the Combat Zone from 1969 - 1978. Which is in part why in 1976 The Wall Street Journal dubbed the area a “sexual Disneyland.” In other words, there was something for everyone in the Combat Zone.
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Specifically, thanks to its “relaxed” approach to adult oriented pursuits, the Combat Zone was also home to a wide variety of drag clubs and gay bars frequented by Boston’s LGBT community.
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Because what could go wrong when a blond teenage girl decides to run through the seediest part of town full of peep shows, dirty book stores, prostitutes and pimps?Īlthough widely considered a place of ill-repute, the Combat Zone’s history is important to Boston for many reasons. I remember one particular night when, after a couple of pots of cold tea, someone dared me to sprint through the Zone alone as fast as I could, which I did. Of course, after a night of youthful boozing, we would occasionally have enough “beer balls” to walk through the red light district of Boston that bordered Chinatown known as the Combat Zone.
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As far as you (and my parents) know, I (mostly) never did anything more than drink said stolen beer under train track bridges while underage.īut when it came to a right of passage in Boston, if you were a late teen or mostly of legal drinking age in the late 80s, you hit up Boston’s Chinatown after last call to eat food full of MSG and drink “cold tea.” In Boston, (and perhaps where you grew up, too), “cold tea” was code for “beer” (usually flat) that you could order slightly before or after closing time that was served up in white teapots in certain restaurants in Chinatown. I ran with a crowd that was comprised of teenage losers that enjoyed passing the time stealing beer from delivery trucks. And like pretty much like any other teenager, I worked quite hard at the craft of getting into trouble as often as possible. I grew up in a small town just outside of Boston called Somerville. The Naked i Cabaret in Boston’s old “Combat Zone.”