It also paved the way for many local musicians and DJs, as the House of Tilden also operated as a disco that frequently hosted balls. Special entrance cards granted to members allowed access to a likeminded community, and many people found work as bouncers, bar-backs and waiters-which was denied to them in Pittsburgh’s mainstream heterosexual society. Enrollment in one of Lucky’s clubs translated to a kinship that extended protection to a covert homosexual social world. According to a local newspaper, Johns’ clubs collectively may have hosted up to 30,000 members total. Its successor, House of Tilden, was even more popular, boasting a list with nearly 3,000 people on it. The first 200 members were exhilarated by this shift in the social landscape, and by 1970, the list of Transportation Club affiliates included over 1,000 people. His first club initially had 200 members and was officially registered as a traditional fraternal organization with a charter, a purpose, a membership and a “clubhouse.” But behind closed doors, it became a space for queer identities to come together. Much of this nascent gay nightlife scene, he goes on, was made possible by Robert “Lucky” Johns, a proprietor and political pioneer who was ordained “the Pope of gay Pittsburgh.” Johns created exclusive social spaces for the development of gay, lesbian and trans communities: The Transportation Club in 1967 The House of Tilden in 1970 The Travelers Social Club in 1980. “A shared patois of drag names, passwords and codes began to evolve and unite a formerly fractured queer community,” notes Pittsburgh Queer History Project Co-Director Dr. According to the catalog that accompanied an exhibition on queer history by Pittsburgh historian Harrison Apple, over a dozen policemen formed this so-called “morals squad” to witch-hunt local homosexual “degenerates.” Though the members were eventually convicted of embezzlement, fraud and collusion, they represented a larger conservative social ideology that permeated the American midwest and provided a catalyst for Pittsburgh’s gay community to organize discreet, underground spaces that would permit and revitalize LGBTQ identities.Īlthough those living in western Pennsylvania had a more difficult time forging a strong community than their counterparts living on the coasts, queer social spaces did begin to appear in the ‘70s and ‘80s. In the mid-20 th century, anti-gay sentiments manifested in direct repression from the government, including a campaign investigating allegedly subversive homosexual activity. Unlike bigger and more cosmopolitan cities like San Francisco and New York, which cultivated gay bastions concentrated in specific neighborhoods, queer-friendly spaces in Pittsburgh were dispersed throughout the city, likely due to an intense scrutiny that threatened them in more commercial districts. Bonadio court case in 1980, and serving queer people in bars and restaurants was considered illegal until the early ‘80s. Outwardly homosexual behavior was severely condemned and even illegal until the Commonwealth v. This illicit party culture was shaped by fundamental changes that occurred in the region during post-war industrialization culturally, Pittsburgh was-and to a certain extent, continues to be-informed by blue-collar working class identities dependent on hard labor and deeply ingrained heterosexual ideologies of masculinity. And it’s mostly thanks to the efforts of one man, Robert “Lucky” Johns, that the once-elusive scene exists and has since transformed into a robust niche worthy of global attention.
While those parties have dominated popular knowledge of contemporary midwestern techno, the city actually has a rich history of queer social spaces that laid the groundwork for the now-popular nightlife destination. The unlikely American city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania recently entered the international clubbing consciousness thanks to a gay bathhouse-turned-techno club called Hot Mass.