"If such practices had occurred 40 years ago, it is imperative to note that it would never be condoned nor tolerated by our current management," the PR firm wrote. If anybody feels discriminated against in any of their clubs today, they should report them to management. Many see that as proof that LGBTQ people are over the problems from years ago.Ĭaven Enterprises, owner of Station 4 and other clubs, declined to provide anyone for an interview for this article, but in messages sent through its public relations firm, Caven pointed out the claims of racism Hunter and Okan related happened decades ago. In Dallas' gay bars today, black, brown and white people dance and drink together. "We pride ourselves in being open to all people regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation and/or gender identity as celebrating diversity is the very nature of our business and who we are as a company." – Caven Enterprises tweet thisīut that was long ago, and it’s hard to convince many white people that overt racism perpetrated decades ago is still relevant. Black night was Friday white people had their nights on Saturday. Like the Wave (and Wrapps, which he opened about the same time as the Brick, merging the two in 1998), the Brick catered to black people. For the next three years, black gays and lesbians poured into the club on Monday nights, he says.īlack nights at the Wave proved lucrative, so Okan opened the Brick in 1991. “CALLING ALL STARS” was the theme, and the stars showed up. There, he and his team began testing an all-black night. Okan already owned a gay club called the Wave. “They thought in their minds that if they let blacks in, the crowd was going to move.” “There was so much money to be made in the white community that they weren’t interested,” Okan says of the bars. They were not wanted in the bars, at least not in high numbers, Okan recalls. Okan can still visualize bouncers combing the lines for black people. Often on busy nights, the line outside Station 4 wrapped around the corner of Throckmorton Street, reaching beyond where Sue Ellen’s is today. He was good friends with the founders of the company and frequented the clubs.
He was an architect who helped design for Caven Enterprises, which owns several gay clubs and bars on Cedar Springs. Howard Okan, a white Jewish man, also saw the racism afflicting the neighborhood in the '80s. “It was really a kinship, because for the first time we had a club of our own that catered to things that were important to us,” Hunter says. He and his business partner ran a club called Elm & Pearl downtown for about 30 years. We got tired of people dictating where we could go out.” That’s part of the reason why we started our bar. “If you wanted to go out on a Friday night, you got called a nigger. “We never experienced the racism in Oklahoma City that we got in Dallas,” says Hunter, who moved here in 1987. “We never experienced the racism in Oklahoma City that we got in Dallas.” – Glenn Hunter tweet this Hunter and his partner were black, and they could not get into the gay club. Hunter stepped up to present his, and the bouncer told him they didn’t take Oklahoma driver's licenses. The couple, one of whom was Native American and lighter skinned than Hunter and his partner, got in just fine with Oklahoma identification. They headed to Village Station, a club once named the Old Plantation that still exists today as Station 4. One night in the '80s, Hunter and his partner traveled to Dallas for a night out on Cedar Springs with a lesbian couple. Hunter recalls just how bad racism in the Cedar Springs area could be. One facet the press tours glossed over was the racism and transphobia that sometimes lurked in LGBTQ spaces in Dallas. “But the truth is, it’s not us as a community.” Michael Doughman, executive director of the guild, says the travel press explored the fantasies they had of Texas through a gay lens. It took writers out to cattle ranches and had them ride four-wheelers.
Around 2004, the Dallas Tavern Guild, the group of gay bar owners who throw the annual Dallas Pride celebration and compose one of the city's most influential queer organizations, invited the gay travel press to tour Dallas. Before the mid-2000s, gay travel writers stuck to the usual queer haunts - Hollywood, San Francisco, New York, Washington, D.C., South Beach, Florida. Life, he means, for a gay man and his partner in the 1980s - an active, vibrant community centered then as it is now on Cedar Springs Road, whose gay-friendly clubs offered a safe, lively space for gay people that he didn't find in Oklahoma City.ĭallas’ reputation as a national destination for LGBTQ life is actually relatively new. Glenn Hunter's reason for moving to Dallas from Oklahoma City was simple.