Despite some 2000 venues in Melbourne catering to straights, straights invaded the gay space of the Peel Hotel and made themselves some trouble, forcing the owners to go to court to resolve the issue.
Vancouver needs a few of these injunctions. Celebrities, the largest gay nightclub in the city, had a problem in the mid-90s, which came to be known as "the Biff and Candy scandal".
Despite a giant neon sign just inside the door proclaiming "This Is A Gay Establishment" on any given night, half of the patrons of Celebrities would be straight. And not the enlightened straights one frequently runs into downtown, but knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing suburban types who come downtown occasionally to enjoy themselves a faggoty floorshow.
Fights ensued, of course, because often the monkeys refused to dance. Despite Biff and Candy's dancefloor antics bordering on the gynecological, if two men so much as air-kissed near them fists would fly. After all, what's a greater display of insecurity than a man kissing a woman on the dancefloor of a gay bar? And how better to display insecurity than gay-bashing.
The straight owners, naturally, sided with Biff and Candy.
Celebrities was closed for a few years after these incidents (business fell off, some kind of "boycott", whatever), and reopened last year, again as a "gay" bar. The last time I walked past it on a Saturday night, at least half of the substantial queue out front looked like incipient Biffs and Candys, so I have my doubts. Too bad, too, because the place has a massive dancefloor.
Both the story and the photo are from Towleroad; click on the photo to get the rest of the story.
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