09 Queerest Little City in the World Gay Reno in the Sixties

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Journal of Homosexuality
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Queerest Little City in the World: Gay Reno in the
Sixties
Jeffery Auer PhD Candidate
To cite this article: Jeffery Auer PhD Candidate (2013) Queerest Little City in the World: Gay Reno
in the Sixties, Journal of Homosexuality, 60:1, 16-30, DOI: 10.1080/00918369.2012.720527
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Journal of Homosexuality, 60:16–30, 2013
Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 0091-8369 print/1540-3602 online
DOI: 10.1080/00918369.2012.720527
Queerest Little City in the World: Gay Reno
in the Sixties
JEFFERY AUER, PhD Candidate
Department of History, University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada, USA
This article is a history of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans-
gender (LGBT) community in Reno, Nevada, during the 1960s.
Despite prevalent beliefs that there was not a coherent LGBT com-
munity in Reno before Stonewall, my article shows the opposite.
Linked by several LGBT-owned businesses and public places, Reno
had a well-defined community that people knew about. The article
also shows how Reno was looked at as a failing marginalized city
throughout the 1960s and that this, in turn, allowed it to become a
prime place for LGBT peoples to move and start gentrifying the area.
The article also shows how the unusual nature of Nevada and its
relation to vice during the middle decades made it fertile ground
for businesses to spring up that catered to the LGBT community.
Overall, the article shows a dense series of networks between LGBT
Northern Nevada natives, tourists, and the spaces they inhabited
during the 1960s.
KEYWORDS Reno, Nevada, LGBT history, United States
Reno, Nevada, started and ended the sixties at two very different places.
At the beginning of the decade a lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender
(LGBT) community in Reno was almost invisible, relegated to certain under-
ground bars in bad neighborhoods and private house parties. By the end of
the decade, there were two exclusively gay bars, a mixed gay and straight
bar, a bathhouse and two motels for all the LGBT community. This is an
amazing feat of supply and demand, but one replicated in cities all over the
country during this period.
Address correspondence to Jeffery Auer, Department of History, University of Nevada,
1664 N. Virginia St., Reno, NV 89557-0208, USA. E-mail: Jauers@yahoo.com
16
Queerest Little City 17
The mid 1960s saw rapidly expanding discussion of homosexuality in
the popular press, following decades of censorship (Ormsbee, 2009). More
facilities dedicated to the LGBT community alone emerged throughout the
sixties in cities all across America. Some places were not inclusive for the
entire community, yet others were. What this showed was an expand-
ing sense of diversity in catering to different segments of the population.
As Hurewitz (2007) notes about this period in LGBT American history, the
sixties was an era, “[w]hen sexual activity did seem to demonstrate a partic-
ular identity and that identity had growing legal and political ramifications”
(p. 11).
Reno began the 1960s resisting the encroachment of Las Vegas in its
self-defined role as the capital of sin for the United States. The appellation
Sin City was made possible by America’s other states at this time still labeling
the activities of prostitution and gambling under the common Judeo-Christian
label of “sin.” The greater community outside Nevada saw participating in
these activities as unmistakably immoral in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries.
Reno spent the 1910s through the 1940s as the premier place for
Americans to engage in otherwise outlawed or limited practices of divorce
and gambling. With the opening of the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas in
December 1946, Las Vegas and Reno raced to outdo one another in pro-
moting these practices (Barber, 2008). Reno, and Nevada generally, had long
histories of not being unduly influenced by the rest of the United States
(Douglass, 2007). Reno thrived during this period by allowing activities that
were outside of dominant cultural norms. Especially when it legalized gam-
bling in 1931, Nevada became freely associated with touristic opportunities
unavailable in other states.
In other ways Reno was (and still is) a very conservative place. It allows
people to be left alone in a libertarian sort of way. Yet, if someone becomes
too conspicuous in their appearance or activity, city and state are prepared
to come down hard on them (Denton & Morris, 2002). In that way, Reno
epitomizes a strong dichotomy between celebrating the outlaw—while also
trying to rein them in. Driggs and Goodall (1996) provide insight into Nevada
when they point to three types of political culture observable in America:
“moralistic, individualistic, and traditionalistic” (pp. xxi-xxiv). Nevada’s may
clearly be characterized as an individualistic state political culture.
Driggs and Goodall (1996) go on to say,
The mining booms of the nineteenth and early twentieth century’s
attracted people to the territory and then the state who were motivated
primarily by individualistic concerns. The western frontier, cattle ranch-
ing, the laissez-faire tradition, and the large amount of gambling activity,
whether legal or not, further encouraged individualism. The concept of
a limited role for government has been reinforced throughout Nevada’s
history by a belief in low resident taxation. (p. 5)
18 J. Auer
Nevada, and cities in it such as Reno, have a very strong belief in limited
government that exists to this day.
The statewide culture of Nevada has changed since the 1990s to become
more accepting of LGBT issues. In 1993, the state repealed its sodomy laws;
in 2009, it passed a domestic partnership bill; and in 2011 it passed transgen-
der friendly legislation. Yet, in the 1960s, Nevada was not a friendly place
for the LGBT community.
LAS VEGAS CONTRAST
In 1960, the population of Las Vegas Statistical Metropolitan Area stood at
127,000 (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1963). By 1969, it had exploded to
273,288. In contrast, Reno’s Statistical Metropolitan Area began the decade at
85,000, only 42,000 fewer than Las Vegas (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1963).
By 1969, Reno had 121,068 inhabitants—but 152,220 fewer than Vegas (U.S.
Bureau of the Census, 1971).
Reno was well eclipsed for preeminence in the state based on popula-
tion alone. Yet, the gay population of Las Vegas lagged behind that of Reno
during the 1960s. By 1969, Metro Reno had accumulated three gay bars, two
gay motels, and one gay bathhouse. Metro Las Vegas at this time counted
two gay bars, no motels, and no baths (Damron, 1968). This was a trend that
would continue for the next decade, as Las Vegas authorities struggled to
control all forms of non-gambling related vice in the face of booming rates
of population and tourism (Moehring & Green, 2005).
Reno officials did not seem to have a problem with the LGBT commu-
nity, so long as they self-segregated to older more run-down parts of town
or outside the city limits in unincorporated areas. This conclusion reflects
1960s maps of Reno noting neighborhoods where gays are located.
THE BEGINNING
Homosexual acts in the United States were still outlawed in 1960. Every
state in the union had mandatory prison sentencing forpeople engaged in
same-sex acts (Eaklor, 2008). By 1961, Nevada changed its state sodomy
laws, thus, requiring all sex offenders to register with the police when they
relocated into a community. Men caught having sex with each other and,
subsequently, prosecuted would be required by the state to constantly notify
officials of their whereabouts (Laws of Nevada, 1961)
As such, homosexuals, along with other marginalized groups in Reno,
were relegated in the public sphere to neighborhoods crowding the edge
of the law. In the early 1960s, this area was centered on Lake and 2nd
Streets, formerly Chinatown, then becoming an African American ghetto.
Queerest Little City 19
It also was close to the cribs section of Reno, housing for prostitutes until
its dismantlement during World War II. Nightlife at this time focused on two
underground bars, the Happy Buddha and the New Holland. Both clubs had
apparent ties to organized crime. The Happy Buddha was reported by local
press to be controlled by a member of San Francisco’s Chinatown mafia
(“Happy Buddha Frowns As Hearing Is Opened,” 1960). At this time, the
bars in Reno were multiracial in their makeup. This stemmed from the clubs
being located at places in Reno that weren’t part of White culture at the time.
Reno in the early 1960s was coming off of a period of extensive segregation
that had earned Nevada a reputation as Mississippi of the West.
Yet, somehow Reno’s unique eccentricity allowed gays to leave the seg-
regation of Lake Street and go to straight cowboy bars. Reno resident, Keith
Libby (personal communication, June 28, 2008), remembers, “I used to go to
cowboy bars in drag and no one would give me a hard time. They’d all buy
me drinks.” In fact, Reno’s looser laws regarding all forms of vice differed
from those of cities traditionally perceived as more liberal. San Francisco,
for instance, was perceived as being gay friendly by the LGBT community
during this time. In reality, San Francisco ended up more repressive toward
homosexuality in the early 1960s, after exploding LGBT-related tourism from
the 1930–1950s (Boyd, 2005).
JEWEL BOX REVUE CONTROVERSY
The Riverside Hotel was built in Reno in 1927 as a luxury hotel catering to
the Reno divorce trade. By 1962, the Riverside Hotel was looking more like a
relic of a long-gone glamorous past. The Riverside followed the trajectory of
Reno itself as it became a less-visited, older version of Las Vegas. By 1962, Las
Vegas was fast becoming the epicenter of the nightclub circuit, most notably
with the Rat Pack—as journalists called stars like Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis,
Jr., and Dean Martin—who started to perform there in 1960. Their sensational
news and review headlines throughout the 1960s left nightclubs in Reno to
book largely second-rate acts. Thus, in February 1962, Doc Benner’s and
Danny Brown’s Jewel Box Revue came to the Riverside Hotel.
The Jewel Box Revue, a cabaret act of female impersonators, had been
touring the country since 1939, playing shows from New York City to Fort
Wayne, Indiana. The act consisted of 17 men and one woman who cross-
dressed playing to a mostly straight audience. Reno has a history of cross-
dressing acts appearing in the casino showrooms at least as early as the
1930s. For example, the Nevada State Journal reported that a popular show
in May 1937 featured a cross-dressing act (“Black Derby Has New Show for
Coronation Week,” 1937). Yet, when the Jewel Box Revue came to town,
after a stint at the Music Box Theater in Hollywood, there were problems in
Reno that led to the show being run out of town, and to a new law being
put on the books to make cross-dressing on the stage illegal.
20 J. Auer
On February 23, 1962, Reno city councilman John Marshall persuaded
the City Council to try to shut down the Revue. He claimed “that he has got-
ten ‘over a page and a half’ of phone calls at home from persons demanding
the show be removed from Reno” (“City Council Sets Meeting on Show
Here,” 1962, p. 20).
Despite the push from Marshall, then Mayor Bud Baker agreed “. . . he
did not favor the current show here but said, ‘I don’t see how the council can
make a justifiable decision on this matter until they’ve seen the show” (“City
Council Sets Meeting on Show Here,” 1962, p. 20). The mayor did concede
that he had received a couple of phone calls asking for the closing of the
show. City Attorney Roy Lee Torvinen and Councilman Charles Cowen also
said they had received calls urging the shutting down of the show (“City
Council Sets Meeting on Show Here,” 1962,). On February 24, 1962, the city
council voted unanimously at a special session to draw up an ordinance
banning the Jewel Box Revue and other female-impersonation shows (“City
Closes Lid on ‘Jewel Box,’” 1962).
A spokesperson for the Riverside Hotel, William Quantrell, responded,
“I can’t understand the objections from a group that obviously hasn’t seen
the show . . . Most people go in expecting to see a freak show and come out
raving (“City Closes Lid on ‘Jewel Box,’” 1962, p. 9). Chief of Police Elmer
Briscoe observed, “He had not seen the show and that his department had
received no complaints about it (“City Closes Lid on ‘Jewel Box,’” 1962, p. 9).
Two days later, the council drew up an ordinance that made it unlawful in
Reno for establishments with a liquor license to present floor shows in which
there were impersonations of the opposite sex (“Council Holds Stand to Ban
Local Revue,” 1962). Councilman Marshall commented that day to the Reno
Evening Gazette that he wanted the show closed down, “My reason for
wanting to see the show closed is not because of the show’s content but for
repercussions of what might come from this type of entertainment in Reno”
(“Council Holds Stand to Ban Local Revue,” 1962, p. 13).
It is hard to understand what exactly Marshall would have meant by
repercussions from the show. An incident happened six months later when
the Nevada State Journal announced a man dressed as a woman had been
arrested out on the streets of Reno. The former San Franciscan said he was
in town looking for employment as a female impersonator (“Police Arrest
Visitor Wearing Female Clothes,” 1962). As no evidence of incidents like
this were reported before the Jewel Box controversy, it is safe to assume
that the publicity of the Jewel Box in Reno led to some transgender people
coming to town for work. Reports like this in the newspapers might inhibit
straight people coming to Reno, and more of the LGBT community might
move to town. Reno was already concerned with this issue. Many people in
show business, either on the stage or behind the scenes, were gay (Sides,
2009). The end result of the controversy was that the city ultimately passed
an ordinance banning female impersonation in shows (“Court Action May
Queerest Little City 21
Follow Ban of Show,” 1962). This law would remain on the books until the
mid-1970s, when casino owner Bill Harrah intervened, importing a show of
cross-dressers.
Such restrictive initiatives appear all the more surprising since Reno had
a history of booking non-mainstream shows on its stages without people
complaining. At the height of Cold War conservatism in 1949, cross-dressing
performer, Ray Bourbon, played in town without any mention of scandal in
the local press.
Another downside of the Jewel Box Revue controversy can be seen
with the passing of an additional Nevada state law in 1963 restricting people
that had been convicted of crimes against nature and lewdness. They had
to obtain a certificate from a physician stating that they were “not a menace
to the health, safety or morals of others” (Laws of Nevada, 1963, pp. 61–63,
ch. 60).
This upped the ante in terms of members of the LGBT community that
lived in Nevada; they were becoming more and more monitored by the
state. By having to receive a doctor’s note that would not only alert the
medical community but allow the authorities to be free to harass someone
who did not have that note. At a time when other states, suchas Illinois,
were decriminalizing sodomy, Nevada was actually making it harder for gays
to live freely in the state. I find the timing more than a little coincidental
that right after the Jewel Box Revue controversy, the state (which was still
dominated by Northern Nevada concerns at this point) decided to make a
new law bringing more and more of the LGBT community under the net of
the police and the medical community.
Combined, I find the Jewel Box Revue controversy and the legislation
of the following year, were all indicative of an effort on behalf of the city to
stop Reno from being perceived as a place that was welcoming to members
of the LGBT community.
CLUB BATHS
On May 17, 1964, Reno opened the doors to its first completely exclusive
place for gay men with the opening of the Club Baths at 1020 W. 2nd Street
(“New Reno Firms Receive Licenses,” 1964). Bathhouses had existed in large
urban areas of the United States since before the advent of indoor plumbing
in the late 1800s. They afforded the masses a place to wash themselves and
relax in a safe, sex-segregated atmosphere. Baths had been very common
in ancient civilizations throughout the Roman Empire and were sites of sex-
ual liaisons (McGinn, 2004). By the Middle Ages, baths became associated
with prostitution, a tradition which wasn’t entirely lost in the bathhouses of
America (Karras, 1998). By the 1890s, certain establishments in the United
States had become meeting grounds for homosexuals. By World War I,
22 J. Auer
several of these had become institutionalized as gay bathhouses (Berube,
1984). Starting during World War II, many bathhouses started to experience
more and more raids as cities started to clamp down on areas where there
was a perception that soldiers would catch sexually transmitted diseases.
Brothels and bathhouses became places that were targeted by the govern-
ment with the ultimate goal of shutting them down. In Reno, the famous
cribs section of brothels was closed during the war as a result of this and
never reopened.
In May 1964, a local gay Reno man, Dale Shannon Bentley (b. 1935),
applied for a license with the city under the category listing “general busi-
ness”. In the Polk City Directory (the local telephone book) for Reno of
that year, the establishment was listed under the heading of bathhouse.
At this point in time, running a bathhouse would not necessarily have been
a warning sign that it was for homosexual activity. Most people would have
assumed that it was an older type bathhouse where men could sit in a steam
room and have a shower. Property records for that year list the building
as being built in 1964 (Washoe County Assesor, 2009). Any question as to
the original purpose of the Club Baths can be found in its listing in the
1965 edition of Bob Damron’s Address Guide (Damron, 1965).
The oldest picture I have of the establishment is from a 1975 article
in the May/June 1975 issue of Ciao magazine that depicts the bathhouse
as a converted house (Josephs, 1975). Local gay Renoite Keith Libby (per-
sonal communication, November 3, 2009) remembers going to an opening
party for the club, which was still under construction converting the second
floor of the house for business purposes. In 1965, a Cleveland businessman
opened a bathhouse in Ohio by the same name that turned into a very pop-
ular national chain of bathhouses, yet the Club Baths in Reno predated this
and was not affiliated with them.
As the 1960s wore on, gay bathhouses served as defacto community
centers for gay men where they tended to be safer from the police harass-
ment that plagued the bars. Not all bathhouses were safe and many men
risked raids at this time by the police of the baths. Yet there are no notices
of the local press that the Reno baths were being raided at this period. The
Club Baths seems to have served this function for the Reno area gay/bisexual
community. It is interesting to note that all throughout the 1960s and 70s the
club is never mentioned in the Reno newspapers. This was at a time when
the state had just come down even harder on people committed of sodomy
(Laws of Nevada 1977 , p. 1626, ch. 598). This is also at a time when Las
Vegas had a larger population than Reno but did not operate a bathhouse of
its own until 1971.
Writer, Martin Hoffman (1968), had heard, “Some police feel they want
no homosexual gathering places in their domain, while other law enforce-
ment agencies feel that homosexuals should be allowed to segregate in their
own public, but enclosed, places in order to prevent them from becoming a
Queerest Little City 23
nuisance in the more open areas” (p. 49). This might explain why the police
left the Club Baths alone. From the mid-1930s until the early 1970s, the
meeting grounds of the LGBT community had been pushed into marginal-
ized areas of American cities not only on the national stage but locally as
well. Chauncey (1995) argues in his book, Gay New York, that gays had
an increasing presence in major cities from the 1890s through 1932, and
that there was a crackdown on all forms of behavior labeled as vice as the
Depression wore on. Both bathhouses and gay bars quickly became targets
for extortion. New York City bathhouse owner, Steve Ostrow, talks about
how, when he opened his Continental Baths in 1968, you had to pay off the
Mafia and the Police who were often in league with each other. After several
raids, he was approached by someone who offered him a chance for the
vice squad raids of the bathhouse to stop, provided he bought 40 tickets to a
policeman’s ball that happened every week ($23,000 in 1968, by today’s cal-
culations the club was grossing $250,000 a week in today’s dollars; Ostrow,
2007). The mafia never had a large presence in Reno, so it is unlikely that
they were involved with the baths. On the other hand, Reno small business
owners, as late as the 1990s, referenced that they expected to be able to
bribe police for favors (Ivkovic, 2005) This protocol makes sense as to why
the Club Baths were never raided in the 1960s and 1970s. Another reason is
that the baths could have fit into a long-held native libertarian Nevadan belief
system of everything is fine behind closed doors (Barber, 2008). However,
that argument doesn’t necessarily hold up for the whole state, with Las Vegas
having a long history of baths being opened there and then closed by the
city or county (Phillis, 1975).
It also can be argued that, at times, the libertarian aspect of Nevada
doesn’t necessarily apply to gays and other minorities.
The way that bathhouses got around the restrictions of catering to illegal
acts of sodomy was that they were registered as private clubs. As private
entities, they were not subject to the same laws that public places were.
At bathhouses in the 1960s, one had to register with a name and address
for a membership card to the private club; this practice to gain admittance
is still used today as a way to circumvent local laws. At that time, bathhouse
owners did not require that the person entering the establishment present a
government issued identification; that allowed gay men to give false names
and addresses to protect their privacy, thus, making the baths a safe place to
engage in gay sex.
By the end of the 1960s, the Club Baths was one of the places that
gay men could go to socialize in a relatively safe environment. Places for
gay men in Reno would increase at the start of the seventies, yet, with
increased visibility comes increased scrutiny. The establishment of the Club
Baths can be seen as the beginning of a trend that would continue for the
next 20 years with more and more semi-public places appearing to serve the
LGBT community.
24 J. Auer
RENO BAR
Located at 424 E. 4th Street was the Reno Bar. By 1964, the bar was definitely
all gay at night. Located across the street from a construction company there
would be men that would come over and drink but didn’t seem to inter-
act or bother the homosexual clientele (K. Libby, personal communication,
November3, 2009). A Vector magazine article from March 1970, covering a
1969 trip to Reno, indicates that the Reno Bar was the oldest gay bar in Reno
(Collins, 1970). It was described as, “An old barn, and clean. But it has a
certain charm all its own. In addition to being the only gay bar in Reno to
have a pool table, we also found it to be the campiest. When the dancing
on the bar started, there was Le Roy dodging glasses with the best” (Collins,
1970, p. 19).
Gay bars have a history of being very popular within the gay commu-
nity starting in the 1920s and in some places even earlier. However, the
sixties was a transformative time for gay bars, as this was the time period
when certain bars started to become completely gay bars habituated by only
the LGBT community in contrast to the mixed bars of the earlier eras. The
gay bars of the time were not completely utilized by gays for reasons rang-
ing from shyness, ageism, class consciousness and moral reasons (Michels,
1974). Shyness kept many people away as they did not feel comfortable fit-
ting in with the whole bar scene. Ageism was another reason that many did
not participate in the gay scene. As a whole, the gay scene of the sixties (and
to this day) placed a premium on youth. People that were older would not
be made to feel attractive or welcome at many places. Class consciousness
would play a part depending on what reputation the bar had (Chauncey,
1995). Many gay bars were targeted at middle class people; others coming
from poor or working class backgrounds would be made fun of. The flip
side of this is that many upper class people would not feel at home in most
gay bars as they would be victims of reverse snobbery or blackmail. Moral
reasons would keep many out of bars as some would equate drunkenness
or public drunkenness with moral failings and, thus, wouldn’t participate.
In this way, the Reno Bar can be looked at as one of the last mixed bars of
the previous era (Faderman & Timmons, 2009).
In addition to class elements, there were racial elements at this time as
well. Most bars were still segregated not by law but by preference at this
point. African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans were not made
to feel welcome at White bars during this period, but this started to change
at the end of the 1960s as identity politics started to seep into the interac-
tions of people in the general public. Interactions between men and women
were more accommodating throughout the 1960s, and it is only after the
lesbian separatist movement during the 1970s that men and women started
inhabiting different bars.
Queerest Little City 25
By the early 1970s, bars like the Reno Bar would no longer be patron-
ized by gays, as places that catered exclusively to gays would have appeared
and made them seem like an anachronism in an increasingly liberated
environment.
DAVE’S VIP
Starting with the appearance of a new property called Dave’s VIP and
increasing advertisements for it in gay Reno’s LGBT spaces were becoming
more public by the mid-sixties, a phenomenon that would not have been
possible just a few years before.
Along the Old Highway 40 from Reno to San Francisco, at 3001 W.
4th Street, was a motel. Like others built as part of a large group of motels
to cater to the newly emerging auto tourism industry that started sweeping
the United States in the 1930s; by 1950, the whole stretch of 4th Street was
dominated by motels for people driving from Salt Lake City and points east
to San Francisco. By 1965, the motels were starting to become obsolete and
dated as construction had begun on a new interstate highway system 80 that
would link New Jersey to San Francisco. The Reno section was started in
1962 and was completed by 1974.
A gay couple, Rex Allen and his partner Dave Kirkcaldy, opened a
series of successful gay bathhouses in San Francisco and Seattle in1965.
By February 1966, they also opened a bar in back of a motel. Rex man-
aged the facilities while his partner, Dave was not involved in the day to day
operations of the facilities.
All throughout the 1960s, the VIP was a private club. In this regard,
Dave’s VIP used the guise of laws applying to private clubs (e.g., the Club
Baths) in order to run an operation that would not be considered illegal
within the confines of the law. Because it was located, at the time, in an
unincorporated part of Washoe County (it is now in the city limits), this was
another way around strict policing. Other places on the West Coast had a
similar situation (e.g., West Hollywood, California) in that they would be
policed by county sheriffs who had a tendency to be looser when it came to
law enforcement than city police.
Another reason to keep the club private was to restrict access to certain
members of the LGBT community. As local Keith Libby (personal commu-
nication, November 3, 2009) recalls, “Rex Allen didn’t like lesbians and
transsexuals and used the membership restrictions to deny entry to les-
bians and transgender people.” In making the club private, Allen would
deny those subgroups memberships and entry into the club. According to a
former patron, “I remember when I first moved to Reno and went to Dave’s
VIP club you had to have a card saying you were a member. It was like
a speakeasy. Someone opened a little hole in the door and asked to see
26 J. Auer
your membership card and then you were let in. It was a lot of fun” (http://
StandupShowup.com, 2009).
Double rooms at the motel cost $10 a night. They had, “rich red car-
pet, television, comfortable beds and an outdoor pool open in the warmer
months” (Collins, 1970, p. 19). The club itself “is carpeted, with a hard-
surface dance floor. A fireplace is located toward the back. The bar has a
good atmosphere with enough activity to keep things interesting” (p. 19).
In 1968, coming with increased visibility of the LGBT community, adver-
tisements for the bar and motel were found in the glossy San Francisco based
magazine, Vector. Before this, the place would be listed in the gay guides of
the time but, as with all gay businesses trying to keep a low profile, there
would be no ads. By 1969, the place was doing well enough that it had
started to expand: the bar had turned, partly, into a disco and the motel had
undergone extensive remodeling—a new pool with Jacuzzi whirlpool and
the whole area appearing more like a resort (“Dave’s Reno,” 1969). It was a
member of Tavern Guild, (based in San Francisco), an organization of gay
businesses formed to fight police corruption by banding together (Boyd,
2005).
Dave’s VIP started in 1965 as a small motel, expanded into a nearby
bar, and expanded the motel property itself as the decade wore on. The
visibility of Dave’s VIP was not just relegated to its physical presence but to
advertisements in national gay magazines from San Francisco based Vector
to Florida based David.
CHANGES IN THE LATE SIXTIES
By the end of the sixties, city leaders are asking for new public restrooms at
Wingfield Park. In an article in the Reno Evening Gazette, the chief of police
mentions that one of the reasons for this need is because homosexuals are
hanging out at Wingfield Park (“Restrooms Improvement Need Told,” 1970).
At this point in time, many closeted men were continuing a long-time tra-
dition of meeting up anonymously in public restrooms for sex (also known
as tearooms). The bathrooms ranged from parks, to YMCAs, to transporta-
tion facilities (Humphreys, 1975). More than a few men who participated
in having sex in the restrooms were married with children. They used the
relative quickness and anonyminity of sex in the restrooms as a way to have
homosexual sex without anyone knowing who they were. As opposed to a
place like the baths or a gay bar, where someone might see them going in
or out, being seen at a restroom in a park would be not out of the ordinary.
At this point in time, a review of the sodomy laws was, yet again,
commissioned by the state. The new laws had a criminal code revision to
reduce the sentence of consensualsodomy from one year to life to 1–6 years.
An addition of “lewd or dissolute conduct” and loitering “in or about any
Queerest Little City 27
toilet open to the public for the purpose of engaging in or soliciting any
lewd or lascivious or any unlawful act” was added (Laws of Nevada, 1967,
p. 1398, ch. 523).
Once again, the timing of this redrafting of the laws is suspect. In 1963,
after the Jewel Box controversy, the state laws against sodomy were changed.
After many years of increasing homosexual activity in public parks, the loiter-
ing and lewd conduct laws are, then, changed again in 1967. This, perhaps,
was the state’s way of maintaining increased surveillance and punishment
for gays when they became too visible. The city of Reno already tried to
get rid of hippies and other people looked upon as undesirable that were
hanging out in the parks, and it makes sense that homosexuals would be
another group that the city would try to push out of public places (“Gazette
Survey on Jailing the Hippies,” 1968). The appearance of legislation trying to
contain public restroom sex, along with the Jewel Box controversy five years
prior, illustrates that, when gays encroach on the straight public’s space, they
were brought to heel by force of law.
SUNNYSIDE BAR
In 1968, homosexuals were becoming more visible to the general public,
with behaviors based less on hiding and passing for straight; and creating a
noticeable rise, nationwide, in places that were catering to them (Damron,
1968). Reno was a small metropolitan area with only 85,000 people living
there (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1960).
Going by the standard of Janus and Janus report’s speculation that self-
identified homosexuals comprise approximately 4% of a male population,
and 2% of a female population at any given time (Singer & Deschamps,
1994), a rough estimate of Reno’s homosexual population in 1960 would be
about 1,000 people. One bar meant to serve 1,000 people within a com-
munity wouldn’t be adequate enough to serve them efficiently, so it is only
logical that, as the sixties wore on, more gay bars would start appearing
to cater to them. With the 1968 opening of the Sunnyside as a gay bar by
owner, John DeAzevedo, the competition for the gay dollar had begun. The
bar was located at 8100 W. 4th Street, well outside the city limits. Further
west on 4th Street than Dave’s VIP, it seems to back up the argument that
gay places of business were allowed outside of the city, not be seen by
straights.
A Vector article described it as “reminiscent of the beer taverns of my
youth in the great American Southwest. Has a knotty-pine interior. Plainer
than the VIP, it has great charm. Its dance floor also sees the action” (Collins,
1970, p. 19). What the appearance of the Sunnyside shows is, that despite the
increasing legislation hampering the LGBT community, enough businesses
were seeing the potential of opening places in Reno to cater to them.
28 J. Auer
STAGECOACH MOTEL
The increase in a gay subculture in Reno saw the opening of another motel
aimed at gay travelers, the Stagecoach Motel. Having been around since the
1950s, the Stagecoach was listed in the Bob Damron’s Address Book ’69 for
the first time, meaning it would have been gay in 1968 when the book was
published. Tying in with the appearance of the Sunnyside in the same year,
it is interesting to speculate that the Stagecoach was meant for competition
for the gay traveler with Dave’s Motel. Having not just one, but two gay
motels to serve the gay community in Reno, points to the fact that there was
a definite increase in out gay tourism with businesses that sprung up to cater
to them.
What the opening of the Stagecoach Motel shows is that LGBT travel in
Reno had expanded so much by the late sixties that there were two motels
that were business to cater to the LGBT community.
CONCLUSION
Reno throughout the sixties starts to get a reputation as being down on
the heels and run down. Las Vegas becomes the place that is dedicated to
heterosexual vice. Homosexual activity, still being seen as unwanted get’s
pushed onto older cities past their primes, or into bad areas of older existing
cities where gentrification hasn’t taken over yet. Las Vegas doesn’t end up
changing this equation until the 1970s. Quasi-public spaces end up being
important to constructions of gay identity in Reno and in other cities across
the country. This would set the stage for the 1970s as more and more places
would start appearing in Reno for the LGBT community at the exact same
time that gay’s were becoming more visible on the national front.
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