In the acknowledgments, Fieseler writes that the idea came to him from a book editor and two professors at the Columbia Journalism School. Oddly enough, this might not be far from the truth. Why does this seem like an energetic impression of a book? The anxious, frantic shifts make it feel as if he is constantly trying to please someone reading over his shoulder. I remonstrated with Fieseler out loud and in the margins. It’s intensely irritating - but interesting, too. And the voice careens crazily, from a just-the-facts tone to awkwardly elevated diction (there are no homes in this book, only “domiciles”) to lamentable efforts to introduce local color (the “ragamuffins” who “do-si-do” around the place until they need to “vamoose”). The arsonist was never caught but was suspected to be a patron enraged at being thrown out of the bar for fighting.īut Fieseler seems at a remove from New Orleans his only points of cultural contact appear to be Tennessee Williams’s “A Streetcar Named Desire” and Anne Rice’s “Interview With a Vampire,” giving the book a dated feel. They included ministers, veterans, trust-fund kids and fathers of young children. Thirty-one men and one woman perished in an arson fire, the largest mass killing of gay people in this country until the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting. 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. When using a search engine such as Google, Bing or Yahoo check the safe search settings where you can exclude adult content sites from your search results Īsk your internet service provider if they offer additional filters īe responsible, know what your children are doing online.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.” Use family filters of your operating systems and/or browsers Other steps you can take to protect your children are: More information about the RTA Label and compatible services can be found here. Parental tools that are compatible with the RTA label will block access to this site. We use the "Restricted To Adults" (RTA) website label to better enable parental filtering. Protect your children from adult content and block access to this site by using parental controls.
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