The other motivation - and the two aren’t always mutually exclusive - is to provide a safe place for gays to socialize.īeachler’s recollections began with the Sir Club in the early 1970s. This revelation illustrated one of the two motivations I discovered behind gay bar proprietorship: the economic one. A few surprises popped up as I listened, the biggest one being that neighborhood bar Stober’s had its turn as the gay hot spot. People like Bill Beachler, longtime Lansing resident and the historian for the Lansing Association for Human Rights, a LGBT advocacy group celebrating its 41st year, focus on the feelings rather than the facts.īeachler rattled off the list of Lansing gay bars, and remembered the historical flow of traffic fairly accurately.
The point is that the history of gay bars in Lansing is about the personal experience of the individuals who tripped those lights fantastic.
Go ahead, snicker away, and get it out of your system. What does this mean in terms of gay bar culture in Lansing, then? Are gays losing ground in terms of social space, or is that even the right question to ask?īeing a people-person, I eschewed hard historical data and decided to gather some oral histories. It may as well have been a strip show at a straight bar. The strippers made the bulk of their tips from the women. At least 60 percent of the crowd - which was a nice size for a Tuesday, but not enough to warrant the cost of the performers - was made up of (presumably) straight women. Looking at the crowd instead of the stage, I found that Steele was on the money. As I watched the men strip down to their banana hammocks, I reminded myself, “It’s just research. To be sure that Steele’s rationale wasn’t simply spin put on the change to make it more palatable, I observed one of the last Tuesday night reviews at Xcel.
“It will do better over there, “ he said, “because it’s later in the week, (and) it is a gay bar, so the clientele will (enjoy) it better.” The new show may even include female strippers to accommodate the lesbian audience as well. The good news is that Spiral Dance Bar in Old Town, a gay bar that’s also owned by Donell, has picked up where Xcel left off, and hosts its own Male Review night on Thursdays.Īccording to Steele, this is a move that will actually serve the gay audience better. Attendance has declined in the past few years, forcing Donell and manager Chris Steele to consider more viable ways in which to attract the Tuesday night crowd. Now simple economics are driving the decision to drop the event. The Male Review tradition began 17 years ago when Xcel was a gay bar called Paradise, and it continued under the current ownership of Tom Donell even as the club became a mixed-crowd bar. In fact, the rather unscientific and mostly anecdotal research done by one totally square breeder/drag hag reveals that the gay bar scene in Lansing has never been stronger. The caveat is that it’s not a negative trend. The news hit the street that Club Xcel in Lansing would be ending its long-running Male Review nights, which begged the question: Is this loss a signifier of some sobering trend affecting gay bars in Lansing? It started out, as many things do, with strippers.