![]() "The owner really didn't have to do anything except buy the beer. "Back in the 80s and 90s, it was a happening place," Marcin says. She spent the next 11 years struggling to keep it afloat. In 2006, Marcin was hired as a bartender and then quickly became bar manager. ![]() She began to explore her identity as a woman, and the people she found in the bar supported her through her gender transition. Like Stroud, Marcin was coming off a divorce. It was in the years after the shooting that Deanna Marcin first came to Backstreet. One man was so terrified of losing his job that he went to work the following week with a bullet in his back, trying to act like nothing had happened. Some of the those were injured were outed in the ensuring media coverage when they were identified as shooting victims. Much of Roanoke's LGBT community was still closeted at the time of the shooting. Some time after that I went to Backstreet and the bartender and I talked a bit. "I was all by myself and went up on this raised platform they called 'the meat rack.' I was so scared that I left by 11. After the divorce, she started working through her feelings with a therapist, and in early 1994 she visited Salem Avenue. By the early 90s, her marriage was on the rocks. Sue Stroud moved with her family to Roanoke in 1984. A gay scene formed around the restaurant's bar, likely sparked by a gay activist who bought most of Macado's kitschy decor for its owner.Įven after their peak, those spots remained important for those seeking to explore their identity in a supportive environment. Additionally, however, there was Macado's, a family-friendly restaurant with quirky decor-think 3 Stooges mannequins flying a plane hung from the ceiling-that spawned a regional franchise. The late 70s marked the high point, and by the mid-80s the scene had dwindled to the Park, Backstreet, and the Last Straw. That's not to say there wasn't pushback and hostility: Barbara Maberry, who grew up in Roanoke, remembers people in passing cars shooting BBs at those standing in line during the '80s. The Park quickly made an impression, and for the next few decades, lines at its door often stretched around the building into the parking lot. ![]() By the time the Park opened in 78, the Star City was home to six gay bars. LGBTQ individuals began to move into Old Southwest, a historic district near downtown, making it Roanoke's first gayborhood. Its second gay bar opened in 1973, the first gay discotheque in 1975. Ripples emanating from the Stonewall uprising of 1969 created an efflorescence of gay culture in Roanoke. "It's really a small percentage of the LGBT community." "These are largely white spaces, largely male-dominated, largely people with means," Rosenthal says. The same social restrictions pressing against women and minorities applied to the world of gay bars, too. Yet the gay bars served only a small section of the regional LGBTQ community. For that reason, Trade Winds-and nearby city parks, which became cruising sites-also attracted a steady flow of people from large rural swaths of surrounding Southwest Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Roanoke's location at a gap in the Blue Ridge Mountains makes it an urban center for a significant area of eastern Appalachia: People travel here for retail shopping, medical needs, public services, and culture. For three decades, the bar served as an LGBTQ destination, appearing in gay travel guidebooks that functioned like a rosetta stone for people on the road. Roanoke's gay bar history extends at least back to 1953, when Trade Winds opened. Partly out of respect to the closeted era these bars represent, MUNCHIES is not identifying either by name. The owner of the Front Row does not wish to be associated with his bar's past, while the Park's former owner was amicable but did not follow up on an interview request. MUNCHIES contacted both the owner of the Front Row and the former, longtime owner of the Park. Then, that stretch of Salem Ave was home to a string of rock clubs, gay bars, and more than a few purveyors of black market wares. When the Park opened in 1978 and Backstreet in 1982, their section of Salem Avenue, which marks the point where downtown Roanoke gives way to industrial buildings and the railroad, was considered edgy and maybe even a little dangerous. However, the non-profit Roanoke Pride continues to operate the Park as a dance club, event venue and community center. The dance club remained under the same ownership until 2013, when it was sold off. The Park opened in 1978, when disco was still hot in Roanoke. A variety of factors, from social media and hookup apps to a rapid shift in societal attitudes to become more accepting to the LGBTQ community, has caused a sharp decline in gay bars across the country, and Backstreet was no exception.Īnother long-running gay nightspot located three blocks up Salem Avenue also has evolved. In truth, Backstreet had long since ceased to be a gay bar.
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