Exploring Capitol Hill's oldest gay bars, and their future

Seattle has a long and colorful history with its gay bars.

Finding spaces that were “out and proud” began with the opening of Shelly’s Leg, named for its owner and proprietor, who lost her leg after being struck by an antique cannon used as part of the local Bastille Day parade in 1970. The $330,000 settlement went into the nightclub, which became not just Seattle’s first disco, but Seattle’s first openly operated gay discotheque.

The first gay bar in the city dated back much further. The Elite Tavern, by some accounts, traced its roots on Capitol Hill all the way back to 1935. But Shelly’s Leg was different; it opened as an openly gay bar, and in 1973 that was no small feat.

“The impact that bar had on the gay rights movement is pretty profound,” Monte Levine, Shelly's caretaker during her final years, told Seattle Gay News. “I mean, we're looking at less than four years after Stonewall (Inn, a New York City bar that was the site of riots between citizens and police in June 1969).”

But the landscape in which Seattle gay bars flourished in the 1970s is gone now. And the scene that’s left – well, now the scene is different.

The thing that hasn’t changed? The communities that crop up around these places

It’s something Shelley Brothers knows well; the now co-owner of the Wildrose originally landed at the bar because of the community. Since it opened in 1974, the Wildrose has been focused on being a safe space for women, carving out the lesbian niche under the big umbrella of “gay bars.”

Two decades after she first walked in, and now running the bar, Brothers is still committed to that sense of family. But in the almost 33 years since it opened, the uniqueness of those spaces has waxed and waned.

“At the time it wasn’t (unique). There was a lot of lesbian bars around for a long time. And it’s just been decreasing, decreasing, decreasing over the last 25 years,” Brothers said.

“If it was just the same amount of spaces evolving into more inclusive spaces … but it’s not like there were lesbian bars and then they just became gay bars, where it was a more mixed crowd. The lesbian bars went away, and that’s sad.”

It’s a culture that many gay bars around the city can sympathize with. Gone are the days when owners of such establishments paid off Seattle police to avoid harassment, or secretly projected a safe space by naming themselves after astrological signs. But many spaces, and the bonds forged by years of coming to them, remain.

“Over the years we’ve lost a number of our older patrons, who’ve been coming here since the ‘70s. And we’ve always held a public memorial at the bar,” Crescent Lounge bar manager Scott Hembree said. “Because they’re not customers to us. We’re family. That is the mentality at the Crescent, and how it has (always) been.”

The Crescent can trace its roots back to 1949, when it opened as the Crescent Tavern and its astrological titling could signal a safe space, according to Hembree. In the decades since, it’s seen a few different owners and even more patrons. But the Capitol Hill to which it opens its doors now is much different.

Broadway, once the epicenter of the LGBTQ community in Seattle, has shifted wildly in demographics in the past few years

“Knowing that the crowd I was dealing with was making anywhere from $50,000-$75,000 a year, I knew where to put my pricing,” Joe Martin, property owner and former bar owner of the Crescent Lounge, said.

“Now the demographics have changed quite a bit. You have people making well over six figures, and they’re a little bit more discriminate with their money.”

Karaoke nights have helped bring in crowds over the years – a soft pivot that took two wildly popular nights per week to a full seven. That kind of pivoting is becoming more and more familiar for even long-time, established gay bars on the Hill.

Back in 2014, the Capitol Hill Seattle Blog mentioned in a post that while many proprietors didn’t believe gay businesses were being forced out of the Hill, they were expecting a different crowd walking through their doors.

“You can’t have your cake and eat it, too,” Brent Lerseth, a manager at Lobby Bar, told the blog, noting that it was a good thing that gay was becoming more “normal.”

“We have gay events but there is not a gay crowd that comes in. … It’s good for gay as a whole. It’s just not so positive in the individual gay bar.”

Brothers succinctly shares this sentiment: “Capitol Hill seems to be a little less gay than it used to be”

There have been shifts in the neighborhood’s culture before, of course. Both Martin and Brothers have seen more than a few in their time on the Hill. But there are a lot of changes coming from all directions these days.

There’s rising rent, more expensive (and more limited) parking, new development that won’t rent to bars, and a shifting demographic of who can actually afford the Hill. And Hembree has heard more than one complaint about the return of “gay bashing” to Capitol Hill.

As gentrification steamrolls its way through the neighborhood and newer apartments crop up left and right, older buildings – and the mainstay gay clubs along with them – are being left in the dust of development.

Martin has found that the best thing to do is be adaptable, in any way the Crescent can be. He has faith in the community that's been sticking with the lounge for decades. 

“I think, in time, it is your demographic; if the neighborhood changes you’ve got to learn to change with it,” Martin said. “I think the bar itself, its culture, has never been intimidated by changes that have come about in the last 30, 40 years. We’ve always had a solid base.”

After all, the alternative is shuttering, a fate that’s befallen many of the prominent gay clubs in the past few years – an odd thing for out-and-proud, liberal Seattle, but one that Brothers recognizes as a reflection of the times.

“When I came out, I could’ve lost my security clearance. It’s stuff like that which the clientele now doesn’t necessarily have to worry about,” Brothers said. “It was different being gay 25 years ago than it is now. Things were very segregated; you couldn’t go to what’s considered a straight bar and hold hands and not get hurt – (you’d) at least get kicked out.”

But she, at least, still believes there’s a place for gay spaces in a modern scene, even if things are “much more open now” and accepting.

“We’ve all found that it’s still necessary for our community to have a safe space. And as many strides as society has made, we’re not there yet. And we want to provide that space,” Brothers said. “It’s not over. There’s still a fight to be had.”