Gay club downtown charlotte

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Select a location and bookmark it today. Back to InFocus: Charlotte Index…. As a young gay man in Charlotte of the s, I managed to snag a fake ID that was realistic enough to convince bar owners I was five years older than I actually was. The fact that I was over six feet tall came in handy, too.

My first experience came at a center city nightspot known as The OdysseyAt the time it was located at the corner of Morehead and Tryon Sts. Downstairs was another gay bar known as the Brass Rail. Even then I thought their assessment seemed crass and flippant, but I was initially so club I just stood in the line quietly.

I watched as mostly young gay men and a handful of lesbian couples, mixed in with a smattering of drag queens, danced without care to a popular song by openly gay and cross-dressing disco artist Sylvester. Lights flashed, clouds from dry ice created faux smoke that filled the room and the happiness of perceived freedom was palpable.

It was a magical moment. I felt I had come home. The history of oppressed people is always fragmentary. It downtown goes undocumented for fear of unintentionally providing oppressors with information that could lead to unwanted trouble for those suffering under irrational scrutiny and harassment. Tens of thousands of gay, lesbian and transgender individuals around the country who gay out at a young age in the sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties have their own unique experiences — each defined by their own personal life journey, location and time period.

There has also been talk of a lesbian bar dating back to that same period, reportedly located on Wilkinson Blvd. The first concrete evidence of social night clubs for gays and lesbians dates back to the s with the opening of Oleens and the Scorpio Lounge on South Blvd.

Oleens was reportedly a former service station and auto repair shop. Brafford became part-owner of the iconic Oleens in and went on to open a second Brass Rail in in West Charlotte after the original downtown bar closed.

Charlotte’s Best LGBTQ+ Bars

Not one to overlook the growing gay population in the Plaza-Midwood area, he opened Central Station in after closing Oleens. Later came The Woodshed inwhen the city forced the bar out to redevelop the property. That allowed him to capture patronage from the city as a whole and the surrounding metro area simply by virtue of its location: less than a few hundred feet from Interstate Highway The Woodshed continues to operate today.

But back to Oleens : it was a popular destination for gay men, lesbians and transgender individuals.