Men were upstairs, and drag shows became regular events, a kind of pre-Provincetown testing ground for the up-and-coming.
In New Haven, in the late 1970s and early ’80s, the bar Partners was known for its upstairs-downstairs configuration. They seemed to be spaces of freedom and excitement, islands in an otherwise unfriendly world. I am not sure about my earliest memory of the gay bar, but I do know that I was in bars very often starting at the age of eighteen, or just before. Photo: New-York Historical Society Museum.
