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Show 154 got arrested for being gay and prostitutes. I knew exactly where to go, they'd tell me, 'If you want to have fun, this is where you go. '" When a Liberty Park acquaintance told Ben Holbrook of a secluded stretch of sand along the Great Salt Lake affectionately known as "Bare-Ass Beach," the wide-eyed youth wasted no time getting there. Too young for the bar yet old enough to drive, Ben was Salt Lake. " .. .intrigued that something like that was going on in Ijust felt like I started knowing people and I wasn't the only one." Finally, after completing a "gay education" in San Francisco comprised of bars, bathhouses, and parks, Neil Madsen returned to Utah and, to his dismay, learned of Radio City from a "gay-friendly, sophisticated" woman: "I had no idea there was anything like that in Salt Lake, or anywhere in Utah."26 Although Radio City had been around during his youth, it required someone savvy to steer Madsen past the culturally-imposed myopia which made gay bars in Utah inconceivable. Having discovered the bar, gay men found the imperative of "blending in" did not necessarily stop at the entrance. Although Salt Lake's bars fit Thomas Noel's description of a gay bar as "a homosexual market place where courting and sexual contacts transpire," patrons had to be circumspect.F With blue laws regulating the hours, operation, and physical surroundings of taverns, owners wary about license revocation maintained strict standards of dress and behavior. Bars could only serve light beer under Utah's state liquor monopoly system, although patrons could "brown bag" bottles purchased at a state liquor outlet and request "setups" for mixed drinks from the 26Hewitt, Jeffries, Holbrook, Madsen interviews. 27Noel, 59. |
