Also, Pegasus, a club founded in 1994, is open every day of the year and offers five different themed bars: a main bar, a patio bar, a karaoke bar, a sports bar, and a country bar. This includes Knockout Sports Bar, Pup’s Pizza, Sparky’s Pub, Ouch Apparel, and Heat Nightclub, each a safe bet for up-all-night entertainment. A short stride over a nearby rainbow crosswalk will land you at the pinnacle of gay nightlife in San Antonio, North Main Avenue’s bar strip. This show of the restaurant’s devotion to its community keeps its customers bursting with pride. In 2016, Luther’s hosted a spontaneous meeting with San Antonio Police Chief William McManus to discuss the response of local law enforcement after the tragic mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Luther’s Cafe, famous for its juicy burgers and even more delicious drag shows, has served the San Antonio LGBTQ community on North Main Avenue since 1949. Its motto: “After Darkness Comes the Rainbow.” Also on June 26 is The Strip’s Pride Block Party, an in-person event to commemorate Pride Month in the gayborhood. Its main event is the “ Pride Bigger Than Texas” Pride Parade and Festival, which will be held virtually on June 26 this year. Located just north of downtown, in Tobin Hill, this central gayborhood district doesn’t fall short on rainbow flair. San Antonio’s Main Avenue is interchangeably referred to as “The Strip” and “The Gay Strip,” but it’s gay no matter what you call it. This restaurant, which began in California, offers family-friendly dining during the day and switches to an entertainment venue at night, with events such as “Dining with the Divas.”īar Boheme in Houston’s Montrose neighborhood offers a creative food and drink menu and features drag shows during brunch on Sundays. (Yes, that means avocado toast and mimosas served with a side of drag queens shaking their rumps.) Another festive Sunday scene is Hamburger Mary’s Sunday Broadway Brunch. Bar Boheme, a restaurant known for its frozen mojitos, creative pizzas, and Vietnamese fries, is well-known for its Sunday drag-show brunches on the massive wraparound patio. RIPCORD opened in 1980 and has the distinction of being the oldest gay leather bar in Texas. Less than five miles west downtown, Montrose features gayborhood staples like permanently installed rainbow crosswalks and historic saloons. By the ’80s, amid the HIV and AIDS epidemic, Montrose was known for being the hub of queer life in Houston. More than 1,000 people showed up, which began the gay liberation movement in Montrose and led Hill to help establish The Montrose Center, an organization still operating today that focuses not only on advocacy but also on offering resources to the community. In June of 1977, LGBTQ advocate Ray Hill organized a rally in protest of singer and anti-gay activist Anita Bryant visiting the city. The Montrose neighborhood in Houston was founded in 1911 and had an estimated 30 to 40 gay bars by the late ’70s. The marker sits at “ The Gay Crossroads,” located at the intersection of Throckmorton Street and Cedar Springs.Īsia O’Hara, a former contestant on RuPaul’s Drag Race, performing at The Rose Room on Cedar Springs Road in Dallas.
In 2018, Dallas became the first city in Texas with an official Texas Historical Commission subject marker acknowledging its longstanding queer community. The Oak Lawn neighborhood, located along Cedar Springs Road, has held the heart of the LGBTQ community in Dallas for over 30 years and is the primary assembly point for LGBTQ political and social events, including the annual Alan Ross Freedom Parade.
As that group grew to over 3,000 while marching through downtown, Dallas became the site of the first gay pride parade in all of Texas. That emergence intensified in 1972, when three days after the Stonewall Riots, 300 activists took to the streets in the name of equality. In 1947, one of the first gay bars in Texas, Club Reno, opened in Dallas, heralding the city’s LGBTQ community as one of the earliest to form in the state. Their one-of-a-kind restaurants, vivacious nightclubs, and lovable locals crown these gayborhoods as attractive destinations-no matter where you fall on the sexuality spectrum. For decades, all types of people from cowboys to drag queens have lived, worked, and played harmoniously in these charming meccas of queer life. Texas’ “gayborhoods” aren’t just neighborhoods with rainbow-painted crosswalks at their intersections they’re historic communities where Texas pride and gay pride intersect in ever-fascinating unison. One of Oak Lawn’s two gateway signs sits at the intersection of Douglas Avenue and Cedar Springs Road, in Dallas, right in front of Kroger.