And on the night of June 24, 1973, at just shy of 8 p.m., with the sun yet to set, it was where they died. It was where the men prayed and played and danced in the drag revue. the bar would open, and an extended family of lovers, exes and strays would begin to gather in the lofted rooms, around a white baby grand whose keys were worn from use. If you were new, you were “honey” or “sweetheart.” On Sundays, you could pull up a pew in the morning and return in the evening for a $2 bottomless beer night that drew more than 100 people - from longshoremen to doctors to a hustler who went by “Napoleon” and dressed the part. The bartender kept a microphone behind the bar to announce regulars by name à la Ed McMahon (“Heeeeerrree’s Luther Boggs!”).
It was a place of assured discretion and warm, easy brotherhood. To those who loved the Up Stairs Lounge, it was a kind of paradise.Ī gay club that doubled as a church, it was a sanctuary in 1970s New Orleans at a time when homosexuality was considered sufficient grounds for deportation, in a city where assaulting gay people was sport for college fraternities and local ordinances made it unlawful to rent or sell homes to “sex perverts.”
