A main thesis of the documentary posits that gay bars have been a foundational part of the LGBTQ experience, not only as safe places for socializing and forming interpersonal relationships, but also as cultural institutions that have played important roles in the formation of community over generations. San Diego’s LGBTQ history, viewed through the lens of its postwar gay bars and nightclubs (and through the voices of witnesses who lived through this history) in many ways parallels the development of the modern LGBTQ community in other large cities throughout North America, and gives the documentary, while regional in its focus, a wider relevance.
![number gay bar san diego number gay bar san diego](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BYzAyNTVjZTItY2E3OS00Zjc4LThmZDQtN2QxYmNhMzFhOWQ4XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTU1Mzg2Mjg@._V1_QL75_UY281_CR155,0,190,281_.jpg)
From 2017 to mid-2018, I sorted through a multitude of photographs, gay periodicals, and ephemera in the process of producing San Diego’s Gay Bar History, a documentary that was initially broadcast in June 2018 on KPBS, San Diego’s public television station, and had its premiere at FilmOut 2018, San Diego’s LGBTQ Film Festival. They are some of the many artifacts in the Lambda Archives, a repository for collecting, storing, and preserving the LGBTQ history of San Diego and northern Baja California.
![number gay bar san diego number gay bar san diego](https://data.actu-gay.com/files/slider/36/210/551/4821/logos/3603814660425610300dea469d097644.jpg)
The images I’m marveling at offer candid glimpses of San Diego gay bar culture from different epochs in modern gay history. A third snapshot: a festive lineup of Halloween-costumed contestants-a drag version of Tippi Hedren (a stuffed crow entangled in her stylish platinum updo), a garish clown, and a butch female cowboy-all vying for prizes awarded long ago in an unidentified San Diego gay bar.
NUMBER GAY BAR SAN DIEGO FULL
Another photo presents a dance floor crowd, beaming faces glistening under a sheen of sweat, big 1980s hair and lip gloss in full effect on the women (and on some men, too). There’s a shirtless, mustachioed blond on roller skates in front of a 1965 red Plymouth Barracuda the position of the Giant Dipper roller coaster and street signage in the background establishes the photo was taken in the vicinity of the Apartment, a women’s gay bar that opened in Mission Beach in 1974. I’m alone, but surrounded by faces smiling to me across the decades. I’m hunched over a smoky glass table covered with a treasure trove of photographs, shivering from the chilly air conditioning as much as from the excitement of discovering photographic gold nuggets. We at Cheers are excited to be serving you again but take the saftey of you and our staff very seriously.7:45 p.m., Lambda Archives, June 17, 2017 Patrons will have to sanitize their hands before entry.
![number gay bar san diego number gay bar san diego](https://theholesandiego.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/PrideSlide1.jpg)
![number gay bar san diego number gay bar san diego](https://fastly.4sqi.net/img/general/699x268/JsyzS9_fWfEfVfH4Jsayvs3gCx11kSwPhlyzk3y_Bgo.jpg)
With these new guidlines come a new set of rules and regulations when visiting us here at Cheers. We are proud to announce that we will be open as of Friday June 11th in accordance with the new guidelines California and the San Diego Health department have set out. All bars in San Diego have been closed since March 19th and that included Cheers. As you may know, due to the California stay at home order.