After being beaten by a cop for carrying his wigs and dresses in public, Freddy still puts on a show (heavy on the “Hedwig” overtones), thanks to Wes’ skill at making gowns from trash bags. Courtesy Skip Bailey (NEW ORLEANS) The City of New Orleans has launched an effort to find the lost remains of Ferris LeBlanc, a World War II veteran who died in a 1973 fire that killed 32 people at a popular French Quarter gay bar called the UpStairs Lounge, ABC News has learned. There is also Puerto Rican drag performer Freddy (Ruben Melendez Ortiz) and his loving mother, Inez (Selene Perez). These include a prayer service for the Metropolitan Community Church led by Richard (Robert Quintanilla), who also pleads for donations to the local children’s hospital as a way of “making allies in the greater community.” This doesn’t sit well with Dale (Eric Lindahl), who reminds everyone frequently of his own homeless status and who clashes early with Wes. But as the show goes through all the different components of what made the UpStairs a community center as much as a watering hole, Wes develops a greater understanding of what it means to be connected in more than the social media sense. Top 5 Gay Clubs & Bars in French Quarter: See reviews and photos of Gay Clubs & Bars in French Quarter, New Orleans (Louisiana) on Tripadvisor. Revjeffhood.Wes, as you might imagine from his resume, is self-centered in a way that doesn’t sit well with most of the patrons initially. Evidently, this was a very hard lesson for it to learn.
For the first time, New Orleans had to confront the reality of a thriving homosexual community in its midst. The man that opened the steel door was greeted by a hurling Molotov cocktail that quickly engulfed the staircase and spread in seconds. At 7:56pm, the buzzer that signaled a cab sounded. The fire exposed a surprisingly deep fissure of homophobia in a city that has historically prided itself on its egalitarianism and cosmopolitan tolerance. On a Sunday afternoon on June 24, 1973, around sixty patrons were drinking at the Upstairs Lounge, a gay bar in New Orleans’ French Quarter. and what is more, it is a crime that has never been solved.īut the city of New Orleans did its level best to ignore the whole event. It was also the largest mass murder of homosexuals ever in the U.S.
The death toll was the worst of any fire in New Orleans history up to that time, including the great fire of 1788 that burned the old French Quarter to the ground. Larson, twenty-eight other individuals lost their lives that night, and three others later died of injuries received in the fire. In addition to the horribly incinerated Rev. gay bar and a safe space for the LGBTQ community in New Orleans in the 1970s. No one was ever charged with the massacre. After two hundred years, a blazing fire, a suicide, and a deadly Yellow. Bill Larson burned to death hanging out of a small opening screaming, “Oh, God, no!” When the flames subsided, 32 people were dead.
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When the fire broke out, the bars on the windows kept most people from escaping.
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The space was full of members of the local Metropolitan Community Church gathered to celebrate the last night of Pride Weekend. On June 24, 1973, an arsonist attacked the Upstairs Lounge in New Orleans, Louisiana. This would be the largest mass-murder and hate crime on the LGBT community in the United States until the recent Orlando shootings.