Tea dances are events organized on Sunday afternoons in the US gay community, originating in New York in the 1950s and 1960s. [1] The original dances included tea service. [2] They were a place for singles to meet. [3] The name alludes to traditional tea dances of the English countryside. [4]
It was illegal until the mid-1960s for bars in New York to sell alcohol to people known to be gay, [2] and New York City police would conduct raids on establishments catering to them. Hence, gay men in the area began to hold tea dances outside the city as an alternative venue for meeting. In New York, these generally took place on Fire Island, in Cherry Grove and the Pines, on Sunday afternoons. Serving tea rather than alcohol made them more acceptable and less law-defying. Because they were held in the afternoon, attendees could catch a ferry and return home and be ready to work on Monday morning. [5]
Tea dances spread beyond New York and lasted into the 1990s and beyond, regularly taking place in Miami, [6] Fort Lauderdale, [7] Provincetown, [8] and Los Angeles and San Francisco, [4] among other cities.
As gay people became more accepted and legally protected, the tea dances were subsumed into nighttime club events such as circuit parties, although have recently seen a resurgence, particularly at gay vacation destinations such as Provincetown [4] and Fire Island. [4]
A gay village, also known as a gayborhood, is a geographical area with generally recognized boundaries that is inhabited or frequented by many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people. Gay villages often contain a number of gay-oriented establishments, such as gay bars and pubs, nightclubs, bathhouses, restaurants, boutiques, and bookstores.
A circuit party is a large dance event. It extends through the night and into the following day, almost always with a number of affiliated events in the days leading up to and following the main event. Proto-circuit parties in the late 1970s, the precursors of what later became circuit parties, were called disco parties. They lasted only one evening and were held in various large venues in metropolitan areas with large gay populations.
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.
The Stonewall Inn is a gay bar and recreational tavern at 53 Christopher Street in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It was the site of the 1969 Stonewall riots, which led to the gay liberation movement and the modern fight for LGBT rights in the United States. When the riots occurred, Stonewall was one of the relatively few gay bars in New York City. The original gay bar occupied two structures at 51–53 Christopher Street, which were built as horse stables in the 1840s.
Fire Island Pines is a hamlet in the Town of Brookhaven, Suffolk County, New York, United States. It is located on Fire Island, a barrier island separated from the southern side of Long Island by the Great South Bay.
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This article concerns LGBT history in Florida.
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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.
LGBT culture in Leeds, England, involves an active community of people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender/transsexual. A BBC News Online article published in 2012 stated that, while Leeds City Council has not published statistics relating to the number of LGBT residents, the figure can be estimated at 10% of the overall population, which currently suggests a total of at least 77,000. The tenth year of the Leeds Pride march and celebration, held in 2016, was attended by over 40,000 people.
Jonathan D. Lovitz is an American policy advocate, former actor, and non-profit executive.
Miami has one of the largest and most prominent LGBTQ communities in the United States. Miami has had a gay nightlife scene as early as the 1930s. Miami has a current status as a gay mecca that attracts more than 1 million LGBT visitors a year. The Miami area as a whole has been gay-friendly for decades and is one of the few places where the LGBTQ community has its own chamber of commerce, the Miami-Dade Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (MDGLCC). As of 2005, Miami was home to an estimated 15,277 self-identifying gay and bisexual individuals. The Miami metropolitan area had an estimated 183,346 self-identifying LGBT residents.
Julia's on Broadway, or simply Julia's, is a restaurant in Seattle's Capitol Hill, in the United States. It is associated with a small chain of restaurants in the metropolitan area called Julia's.
JR's Bar and Grill is a gay bar in Neartown, Houston, in the U.S. state of Texas. Charles Armstrong is the owner.
The Paper Doll Club, also known as Paper Doll, was an LGBTQ bar and supper club in operation from 1949 to 1961, and located at the corner of Cadell Place and Union Street in the North Beach neighborhood in San Francisco, California. It is believed to be one of the earliest lesbian bars in the city.