“Most people, then and now, coming out …venturing into a gay bar is their first place to meet any people like themselves. Still, he maintains, the gay bar remains an important place in the LGBT community. “The biggest hit to the gay bar scene was the internet. Technology has not necessarily been a conduit for the success of gay bars, Cornett said.
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“The heart of the gay community was the bar.” Years ago, this was our safe haven,” he said, sitting down at a table on a quiet evening inside Other Side Bistro and Grill at the intersection of West Laskey Road and Lewis Avenue, the former home of Outskirts. “Young people don’t feel the need to support gay bars anymore because they can go almost anywhere with their straight friends and fit in and feel accepted. The 52-year-old Cornett, who founded the LGBT Historical Archives of Toledo and is on the Toledo Pride board, notes the declining importance of the gay bar scene over the past few decades. “You can feel comfortable going most places with your partner… That wasn’t the case 10 years ago, and that’s not a Toledo thing- that’s a nationwide thing. Staples now serves as executive director of Toledo Pride. “Most places are LGBT-friendly now,” said Lexi Hayman-Staples, who operated the West Toledo lesbian bar Outskirts with her mother Johanna from 2008-14. Toledo has fewer gay bars now than in the past, largely because most taverns could now be considered safe places for the LGBT community to frequent. Many gay and lesbian establishments have closed in previous years, including notables such as Rustler, Caesar’s Showbar, Ripcord, Hooterville Station, Scaramouche, Blue Jeans, Outskirts, Gilda’s and the Westgate Lounge. Today, Toledo boasts five - soon to be six - LGBT-friendly bars. At the time it closed in 1997, The Scenic Bar, at the corner of Erie and Monroe Streets, was the oldest gay bar in Ohio. Then and nowĪ lot has changed with LGBT issues in the 31 years since Cornett visited his first gay bar- even more has changed since Toledo’s first known gay bar, The Scenic, was opened in the 1920s. The young gay man accepted the request and found the atmosphere inside the bar reassuring and welcoming. An hour later, Cornett was still sitting there, so the guard asked him to come with him into the bar. “I’m just waiting on friends,” a timid Cornett replied. I didn’t know anyone who was gay.”Ī security guard circling the lot noticed Rick sitting in the lot and asked him what he was doing. “For weeks and weeks at night, I’d drive over there and just sit in the parking lot and observe.
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“I was scared to death the first time I walked in,” he recalled of The Open Closet on Secor Road. The 21-year-old man couldn’t bring himself to get out of his car in the Secor Road parking lot.Ĭornett, a gay man born and raised in West Toledo, did not know any other gay people in 1985 but he had a strong desire to change that.
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The first time Rick Cornett went to a gay bar, he didn’t actually walk through the doors.