“All the gay men would grab a girl and they would start dancing so that when they cops came in, they wouldn't be arrested,” he said. Owners employed a lookout person who would flash a red light when police showed up to the clubs. Other gay clubs opened despite police crackdowns, Camp said. In the ’50s, mafia-owned speakeasies on Fort Worth’s notorious Jacksboro Highway stepped in to serve the community - with watered-down, overpriced drinks. Businesses could lose their liquor licenses, or they could face shut down if they served the LGBTQ community. When prohibition ended, gays and lesbians were forbidden from drinking in bars. According to his data, there have been more than 100 gay bars in Fort Worth and nearby Arlington, with 651 Club the longest-tenured at about 35 years (and the Rainbow Lounge was later housed in the same building), and a club called Trixx lasting only one weekend. You can walk into almost any bar in the city of Fort Worth on any given night and find gay people in it being openly gay, kissing, being emotional, engaging in public displays of affection with no fear of repercussions because, for the most part, people feel comfortable.”Ĭamp has been researching Fort Worth’s gay history dating back to the turn of the 20th Century for a book he’s writing. “We wanted inclusion - to be part of the bigger world at large - and we got it. “The gay community is the dog that caught the car,” he said.
Todd Camp - a local gay rights activist, co-founder and former artistic director and executive director of QCinema, Fort Worth's Gay & Lesbian International Film Festival, the state's longest running gay film festival - said the lack of local gay bars isn’t necessarily a bad sign for the city. Now, there are even fewer places scattered throughout the city. By 2017, there were only about six or seven in Tarrant County, and most of them were concentrated in a small corridor just south of downtown at the cross-section of Jennings and Pennsylvania avenues. Back in the early ’80s, the town boasted nearly 20 gay bars. When the Rainbow Lounge burned, the number of gay bars in the city was already comparatively low. A Dallas filmmaker made a documentary about the raid, protests, and resulting dialogue with the city and police. The event galvanized a population that had long faced persecution and fought to integrate. The timing of the raid incensed the local gay community and its supporters. In Fort Worth, Police made several arrests for public intoxication, and one customer suffered severe brain and head injuries. Local police and TABC agents raided the then recently-opened bar on the 40th anniversary of the raid at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, which set off the Stonewall Riots and gave birth to the modern gay rights movement. In 2009, the Rainbow Lounge was the setting for a national news story. When the iconic Rainbow Lounge burned down in 2017, the "gayborhood" permanently changed.Just a few years ago, there was a growing gay bar scene in an area south of downtown.Back in the 1980s, there were as many as 18.
There are only about half a dozen gay bars in Fort Worth.