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He was in the 300-pound range, wore overhauls and "had a big stack of Supremes records," recalled Bohr, who bartended at the Déjà vu. The first deejay, at the Déjà vu, was Jimmy Spaulding in the mid-1970s. Before deejays, the background music came from juke boxes and occasionally from live performers, such as the piano player named Flo (her last name is lost to history), who in the early '60s delighted McCann and others with Cole Porter tunes at a long-gone gay bar at 22nd and Meridian called Bolland's. The Déjà vu, in an old, narrow building on ground now occupied by the Indianapolis Zoo, is believed to have been the first Indianapolis gay bar to employ a deejay. Hudnut issued a proclamation declaring it was city policy not to discriminate against gays. Under Berg's pressure, the Indianapolis Police Department hired a liaison to the gay and lesbian community. Berg is considered Indianapolis' first political gay man, "the one willing to be the face of the gay community," said Bohr. Complaining about the surveillance fell to Stan Berg, who owned a gay bath house in the 4100 block of North Keystone Avenue. Police tried to shoo them away by videotaping them. Monument Circle, in the early 1980s, was a popular gathering spot for gays and lesbians, and this made some people uncomfortable. "If you wanted a screwdriver," said Warman, "you were screwed." "Anita Bryant was probably the best thing that happened to the gay community."Īt gay bars, orange juice was no longer served because of Bryant's affiliation with the Florida growers.
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"We carried signs (one said: "Heil Anita Gay-Stop-O") and walked up and down the sidewalk in the pouring rain - 800 of us," she said. Mary Byrne recalls protesting outside the rally. She was there to promote a bill in the Indiana General Assembly (championed by a Greenwood lawmaker named, ironically, Don Boys) that would criminalize sodomy. Politically, gays in Indianapolis didn't band together until October 1977, when the recording artist/former Miss USA/Florida Citrus Commission spokeswoman Anita Bryant led a rally at the Indiana State Fairgrounds. "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. 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. " '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.