In order to learn more about Pittsburgh’s gay social clubs, as well as make up for my disappointment in not being able to visit the exhibition in my own hometown (though my parents did!), I spoke with Apple and Dr.
Spanning the years 1967 to 1990, the exhibition unveils a local nightlife scene completely different from the “gay meccas” of New York or San Francisco, revealing, as Harrison Apple explains, “not just a queer history but a queer history of Pittsburgh.” Curated by Harrison Apple, Lucky After Dark focuses largely on three social clubs–the Transportation Club, the House of Tilden and the Traveler’s Club, which were all owned by Robert “Lucky” Johns, a gay working class Italian-American from Pittsburgh’s North Side who sadly passed away on June 18.įrom photographs to membership cards to cocktail napkins and flyers, Lucky After Dark depicts the underground world of the gay social clubs as sanctuaries for gay men, which as licensed members-only fraternal organizations were quite distinct from other commercial bars. In the absence of institutionalized documentation or in opposition to official histories, memory becomes a valuable historical resources, and ephemeral and personal collections of objects stand alongside the documents of the dominant culture in order to offer alternative modes of knowledge” (8).īoth drawing on and emphasizing Cvetkovich’s understanding of queer archives as ephemeral records of affect and memory, the Pittsburgh Queer History Project’s exhibition Lucky After Dark at Future Tenant Gallery, which closes June 29, uncovers the hidden history of Pittsburgh’s gay after-hours social clubs. Forged around sexuality and intimacy, and hence forms of privacy and invisibility that are both chosen and enforced, gay and lesbian cultures often leave ephemeral and unusual traces.
Gay bars pittsburgh pennsylvania archive#
In An Archive of Feelings, Ann Cvetkovich discusses the unique nature of archiving queer history, stating: “In the face of institutional neglect, along with erased and invisible histories, gay and lesbian archives have been formed through grassroots efforts, just as cultural and political movements have demanded attention to other suppressed and traumatic histories, ranging from the Holocaust, to labor and civil rights activism, to slavery and genocide.
Lucky (all images courtesy Pittsburgh Queer History Project)