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Today, Grand Central Station is in the same general neighborhood. The Carousel was a sleazy stripper/cruise bar (the best kind).Ĭhaps was a Country Western bar originally in Pinellas Park on 49th Street (I think it used to be a straight club called 49th Street Mining Company) then moved to Gandy Blvd by the dog track. Pete currently has one club called Grand Central. The Copa was where Chaps (by the dog track) was. The Copa was well known for it's Sunday T Dance. It turned into The Saint, then Bender's and it's now called Club DeNile. The Cove changed owners and was then The Wet Spot. Later, it became The Jungle, complete with a big tree behind the bar. We are dating ourselves now! Downtown St.ĭallape's is now 1470 West with new owners and a new look. Pete currently has one club on Central Ave. Flamingo was a nice little bar and restaurant. There is currently nothing like it in Clearwater. To some, it was around longer than it should have been! It tried too hard to be everything, but not hard enough to be anything. Was a regular hangout for the over 30 crowd with significant bias towards leather. A bear watering hole, the Arrow was a fun place to hang out, play pool, play darts and meet men. The bar and the infamous play house behind the bar were bull-dozed and removed. Later, it became the Tampa Eagle, and then Rain. The Hurricane (well-known by straight tourists) currently stands in it's place. Small, intimate club with small light-up dance floor, A place where everybody knew everybody else " had an outside bar open during the days in the summer and on the weekends all year round. Hot latin bearded muscle gay blowjob straight serviced.“It’s a big part of history that many people don’t hear about.”Ĭheck out the t-shirt designs at. “To me, that’s a big part of how we got to have gay marriage, how we got to have more protections under the law, is because there were 50 or 100 years of struggle step-by-step, and these bars play a part in that struggle,” said Smith. "People like to have things to remind them of their history, and in the gay world there isn’t a lot of that."Įxcept this time, it doesn’t have to be a secret. Whether it’s grandma’s spinning wheel that she used to do her yarn projects on, or it’s a cast iron skillet from your childhood, or it’s a piece of furniture your mother used to have in the living room," he explained. “It is, just like any other history project, people like to remember where they came from. It’s a fight still being fought today, and that fight is part of what drives Smith's t-shirt project. “Because the gay community deserved to be treated like everybody else,” said Pope. When asked why Pope continued to operate his businesses under such difficult circumstances, Pope has a simple, straightforward answer. He says his bars were constantly raided in the 70s for the simple fact that they were homosexual establishments. Pope looks at photos of his bars with fond memories, but some not so fond ones also. “It’s an important thing to have that history available for people, because young people don’t realize what we went through in those days,” said Robert Pope, former owner of The Engine Room and The Wedgewood Inn. Logos we haven’t seen in 30, 40, 50 years are now front and center on these "throwback" t-shirts Smith is making to commemorate history. “This kind of helps revive those memories- you see the logos, you see the designs,” said Smith. But it’s what they left behind that’s fueled the passion for Smith’s latest design project. These were the center of our social life."Įl Goya and dozens of other bars and clubs just like it here in Tampa Bay and around the country may no longer exist physically. "So in order to meet other people and feel accepted and not have people look at you strangely because you were hugging someone of the same gender, these were our homes. “As you were coming of age in the gay world back in the 70s and 80s, you didn’t have the social atmosphere that you have now," Smith explained. “When this bar opened as El Goya, it put Tampa on the map of being accepting of gays as well,” said Art Smith, founder and designer of The Wow Biz. It's also home to an important landmark of the area's LGBTQ history.Īt the corner of 7th Avenue and 15th Street, is the home of the former El Goya. The center of downtown Ybor City is home to more than just great food, busy streets, and roosters. Order t-shirts from the collection at.Collection celebrates El Goya Bar, The Engine Room, The Wedgewood Inn.T-Shirt collection features logos, names of popular gay bars in the 70s, 80s.