 Customs Street West in the mid-1960s | |
| Address | Customs Street West Auckland New Zealand |
|---|---|
| Location | Auckland |
| Type | Coffee Bar |
| Opened | 1957 |
| Closed | 1974 |
The Ca d'Oro Coffee Lounge was a prominent coffee bar located in Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand. It was one of Auckland's first coffee bars and was also a well-known site within the queer community. [1] [2]
The Ca d'Oro was opened in 1957 by actor Harold Kissin and Memé Churton, a well-known personality in the arts sector, [3] [4] [5] on Customs Street West. [6]
Churton, who was born in Italy, was underwhelmed with New Zealand's food and coffee culture. She sought to create an establishment that was more characteristic of European cafes. Kissin's family owned a jewelry shop in Customs Street that was struggling. He and Churton converted this site into the Ca d'Oro Coffee Lounge, which translates to 'House of Gold' in Italian. [7] Kissin and Churton had an espresso machine imported in order to start the establishment. [4] The lounge was designed by Peter Smeele, and had a large steel mural in the shape of a gondola which was created by Frank Carpay who was a prominent Dutch designer. [7]
Unlike most bars, coffee houses were not subject to liquor laws requiring establishments to close at 6pm. [8] Consequently, the Ca d'Oro would operate from 9am-12am, and would avert the strict liquor laws by serving alcohol in coffee cups after-hours. [7] [9] It was labeled as eccentric for its time, and had a significant LGBTQ+ client base. [7] [9] In particular, the Ca d'Oro was popular amongst gay men due to its proximity to the wharf, and the presence of visiting sailors looking for sexual encounters. It was also within close proximity to other well-known queer spaces of the time, such as the Blake's Inn on Vulcan Lane and the Lilypond on Queen Street. [9]
Roy Jackson, a waiter at the Ca d'Oro, was killed onboard the Whangaroa ship in Napier in 1960. The attack has since been perceived as an instance of gay-bashing. Jackson's assailants were acquitted of manslaughter charges. [3]
Ca D'Oro Ltd. was dissolved as a company in 1974. [10]
A gay bar is a drinking establishment that caters to an exclusively or predominantly lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer (LGBTQ+) clientele; the term gay is used as a broadly inclusive concept for LGBTQ+ communities.
Timothy Andrew Barnett is a New Zealand politician who was the member of the New Zealand House of Representatives for Christchurch Central from 1996 to 2008, representing the Labour Party. He is a British immigrant to New Zealand and New Zealand's second openly gay politician. Barnett moved to South Africa in 2009 to work in the field of HIV/AIDS. He returned to New Zealand in 2012 when he was appointed by the Labour Party as their general secretary.
UniQ Aotearoa (UniQ) was Queer Students' Association of New Zealand, a collection of queer student groups at universities, polytechs and colleges of education in New Zealand.
Gay Liberation Front (GLF) was the name of several gay liberation groups, the first of which was formed in New York City in 1969, immediately after the Stonewall riots. Similar organizations also formed in the UK, Australia and Canada. The GLF provided a voice for the newly-out and newly-radicalized gay community, and a meeting place for a number of activists who would go on to form other groups, such as the Gay Activists Alliance and Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) in the US. In the UK and Canada, activists also developed a platform for gay liberation and demonstrated for gay rights. Activists from both the US and UK groups would later go on to found or be active in groups including ACT UP, the Lesbian Avengers, Queer Nation, Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, and Stonewall.
The Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia, formerly the Church of the Province of New Zealand, is a province of the Anglican Communion serving New Zealand, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, and the Cook Islands. Since 1992 the church has consisted of three tikanga or cultural streams: Aotearoa, New Zealand, and Polynesia. The church's constitution says that, among other things, it is required to "maintain the right of every person to choose any particular cultural expression of the faith". As a result, the church's General Synod has agreed upon the development of the three-person primacy based on this three tikanga system. It has three primates (leaders), each representing a tikanga, who share authority.
New Zealand lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights are some of the most extensive in the world. The protection of LGBT rights is advanced, relative to other countries in Oceania, and among the most liberal in the world, with the country being the first in the region and thirteenth in the world to enact same-sex marriage.
The Homosexual Law Reform Act 1986 is a New Zealand Act of Parliament that broadly legalised consensual sex between men as well as anal sex regardless of partners' gender. It removed the provisions of the Crimes Act 1961 that criminalised this behaviour. The legislation established a uniform age of consent, setting it at 16 for both same-sex and opposite-sex partners.
New Zealand society is generally accepting of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) peoples. The LGBT-friendly environment is epitomised by the fact that there are several members of Parliament who belong to the LGBT community, LGBT rights are protected by the Human Rights Act, and same-sex couples are able to marry as of 2013. Sex between men was decriminalised in 1986. New Zealand has an active LGBT community, with well-attended annual gay pride festivals in most cities.
The Circle was a lesbian journal collectively produced by the Sisters for Homophile Equality (SHE) in Wellington, New Zealand between December 1973 and 1986. The magazine was renamed Lesbian Feminist Circle in 1977, and continued to publish until 1986.
LGBT culture in Portland, Oregon is an important part of Pacific Northwest culture.
Seattle has a notably large LGBT community, and the city of Seattle has protected gay and lesbian workers since the passage of the Fair Employment Practice Ordinance in 1973. Seattle's LGBT culture has been celebrated at Seattle Pride which began in 1977 as Gay Pride Week. Gay cabaret traveled in a circuit including Seattle and San Francisco since the 1930s. Seattle had gay-friendly clubs and bars since the 1930s including The Casino in Underground Seattle at Pioneer Square which allowed same-sex dancing since 1930, and upstairs from it, The Double Header, in continuous operation since 1933 or 1934 until 2015, was thought to be the oldest gay bar in the United States.
The Auckland Pride Festival is an annual festival held in Auckland, New Zealand. It began in 2013 and is New Zealand's largest Pride Festival. The festival has also brings together a number of other queer and queer supporting festivals and events in Auckland. They include the Same But Different Festival, Auckland Council's Proud Centres, Ending HIV NZ Big Gay Out, F.I.N.E Festival, Heroic Gardens, and Bear Week New Zealand. Alongside the annual festival, Auckland Pride also hosts 'The Queer Agenda', a year-long programme of events that allow people to have a taste of pride outside of the festival dates.
A lesbian bar is a drinking establishment that caters exclusively or predominantly to lesbian women. While often conflated, the lesbian bar has a history distinct from that of the gay bar.
Elizabeth Anne Kerekere is a New Zealand politician and LGBTQ activist and scholar. She was elected a member of parliament for the Green Party in 2020, but resigned from the Greens on 5 May 2023, following allegations of bullying within the party. Kerekere remained in parliament as an independent until the 2023 election.
Local Lounge was a gay bar in Portland, Oregon, operating from 2010 to 2021.
Henrietta Hudson, originally named Henrietta Hudson Bar & Girl, is a queer restaurant and lounge in Manhattan's West Village neighborhood. It operated as a lesbian bar from 1991 to 2014. Until it rebranded in 2021, it was one of three remaining lesbian bars in New York City. Henrietta Hudson's location is the original location of the Cubbyhole bar, which had the distinction of being lesbian-owned and managed.
FAFSWAG is an arts collective of Māori and Pacific LGBTQI+ artists and activists founded in Auckland, New Zealand in 2013. They explore and celebrate the unique identity of gender fluid Pacific people and LGBTQI+ communities in multi-disciplinary art forms. In 2020 FAFSWAG was awarded an Arts Laureate from the New Zealand Arts Foundation, and they also represented New Zealand at the Biennale of Sydney.
Gina Annette Cole is a New Zealand writer and lawyer. Her writing is inspired by her experiences as a queer Fijian woman. Her short story collection Black Ice Matter received the award for best first book of fiction at the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Her first novel Na Viro was published in July 2022.
Lois Marguerite Cox is a New Zealand writer. She writes under her own name and is also one half of a writing partnership with Hilary Lapsley which publishes under the pen-name Jennifer Palgrave.
The KG Club was a prominent community center in Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand. It was known as one of New Zealand's first lesbian clubs.