JumpingAtTheWoodside wrote:Does anyone have any reminiscences/ horror stories about gay venues in Glasgow over the years? I'm gay and used to go out in Glasgow when I was a lot younger, but then I moved away for many years. When I came back all the places I knew had closed!
Some I used to know:
Club X
Austin's
Vintners
Squires
Glasgow was always a hostile place towards gays and the bars in the 1960's-early 1970's were fairly discrete. I believe the most popular bar then was Guys at the top of Hope Street (which later became a "Berni Inn" steakhouse. There was also the Strand, again in Hope Street, which later opened up a bar in its basement which went on to become Austins. I was only in the original Strand once, when it was at street level, and remember a small deaf and dumb guy who served there. He was quite famous.
Across the road was McCalls, which was probably the most comfortable of all three, but was never very busy when I was there. Down in Gordon Street was the Corn Exchange, which also had a lounge bar in the basement, but it was always a very mixed crowd in there, with lots of commuters having a quick pint before catching their trains across the road in Central Station.
The Duke of Wellington in Argyle Street had only recently been taken over by "the Aramis layer" as the gay scene in Glasgow was once termed when I started frequenting there, and the Waterloo Bar, next door has always had the reputation of being friendly to both gays and the prostitutes that have draped themselves around doorways in the surrounding streets for generations.
When the bars closed, people would often drift to the Classic cinema in Renfield Street, where a cafe and restaurant was situated in the basement. There had been a coffee bar on the third floor of the Central Hotel in Hope Street that was reputed to be gay-friendly, but by the time I got there, I was about the only person on the premises....
For those seeking that rare delight, an alcoholic drink once the bars closed, there was the Close Theatre Club, part of the Citizens Theatre at Gorbals Cross, but you had to know someone with a car to get you there, and even more important, someone who was a member who could sign you in. There was a small theatre and two adjoining large rooms separated by a small bar. The decor was red velvet, with a proliferation of large, bevelled mirrors and lots of young, well-dressed men bending over pool tables. It was almost decadent, and just didn't feel like it was in the Gorbals, at all, let alone Glasgow.
It was some years before the Vintners in Clyde Street became a known venue. Originally it started out its gay career as a typical Victorian bar at street level, with a very friendly lady with an enormous beehive hairstyle serving with a wide grin. Shortly afterwards they opened upstairs, with two Italian brothers providing our comfort zone. The decor was quite unlike anything that had gone before, and they served really good meals at lunchtime.
The lighting was soft, and a guy who I had been at school with provided the music from an enormous pile of reel to reel tapes that hung untidily from above the bar. Another feature was at closing time, when an unlikely reggae anthem "The Guns of Naverone" would be played, and a series of hideous, strong green lights switched on, glaringly revealing the clients in unflattering detail. This had the effect of obliging some of the more "sensitive" clients to leave before this music started.
The next bar to be colonised was up near Blythswood Square, originally know as the Whistle, and frequented by people from the nearby deaf and dumb association. It was a strange feeling being in a crowded bar with absolute silence reigning, everyone communicating by sign language. This soon changed when it became Squires, and the silence was replaced by screams and whoops. A famous piece of grafiti that I can remember on the wall of the
gents toilets was the assertion "Vera owes the catalogue......" Vera being the nickname of one of the bar staff at that time.
Another gem was aimed at a longterm member of the bar staff, who, at closing time, was wheeling a heavy trolley filled with empty bottles towards the door. The trolley made a kind of jingling noise on the floor and someone shouted "Is that you taking your jewellry home then Glen?"
The next longterm bar to appear was the Court, in Hutchison Street. This was a much smaller, and more intimate bar, and seemed to have its regular crowd. Its low light was more sympathetic to an older, more laid back crowd who gathered there. The bar staff i remember were particularly friendly.
Thereafter gay bars seemed to attract a much more mixed crowd, and "trendy" straight couples began hanging out at what they now felt were unthreatening environments as opposed to straight bars where trouble was often never far away. The number of bars grew, and by that time, the dress codes had become more individualistic to the extent that you really couldn't tell if you were in a gay or straight bar if you didn't already know. Bars came and went, and social habits changed, so that gays and straights merged seemlessly and felt at home anywhere. The ghetto mentality was over.