#Chicago gay bar with back room serial#
The club closed in 1991, shortly after serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer lured a victim from the premises. An infamous 1985 police raid in which all of the club’s patrons were photographed resulted in a successful class-action lawsuit by the ACLU.
Later DJs included Mark Vallese and Larry Fox. By 1982, the club featured video screens with VJ Grant Smith and DJ Joel Levin. In 1980, a “Punk Out” party starred performers with names such as Mysterious Marilynn, Mary Ann Mouthful, Diana Hutton and Cotton Candy. The club was renovated in 1979 with a new lighting system and a larger dancefloor.
Saturday afternoons featured a roller skating party and Sunday featured shows by the Bearded Lady. If you didn’t like the snobbishness or the ultra-chichi attitude of the Bistro, the only other place you could go was Carol’s Speakeasy.”Ĭarol’s Speakeasy had an amazing lineup of talented DJs in 1979: Peter Lewicki (Thursdays), Frankie Knuckles (Fridays), Greg Collier (Saturdays), and Mike Graber (Sundays). It was nothing like the Bistro, but it was the only alternative for a big gay dance club. “It was the only thing… as far as gay bars went, that even came close to giving Bistro a run for its money. “It was quite a fun club,” remembers DJ Danny Goss. After a couple of name and location changes (Carol’s Pub and Carol’s in Exile), Carol established this members-only club at 1355 North Wells Street and ran it until passing away in September 1979. Carol (Richard Farnham), was a grocer who first opened a gay bar called Coming Out Pub in 1972. In October 1978, Mother Carol took over the Den One space in Old Town where famous house DJ Ron Hardy first spun. The beloved club was torn down to make way for a parking lot in 1982. “Who else could put a thousand miles of mylar ribbon down the outside of a building and cover a corner with glitter – right across the street from a police station?” quipped impressionist Allan Lozito of Dugan, as quoted by the Chicago Tribune. The club’s sixth anniversary featured nine mirror balls and four mortar guns shooting foam stars. As Danny Goss, DiVito’s alternate for many years, recalls, “Lou was the first DJ I ever heard mix on beat and in perfect pitch.” DiVito became Chicago radio’s first “hot mixer” in 1979, recording mixes for WDAI from his DJ booth.Įach year the club’s interior was refreshed in preparation for an anniversary bash. Billboard named DiVito “best regional dee-jay” in 19. An interior decorator, DiVito assisted in designing the club’s layout and sound and light systems. Lou DiVito became the Bistro’s main DJ in 1974. Dugan alluded to the club’s restrictive door policy in a 1974 Chicago Tribune article, explaining, “We’re primarily gay, and we don’t want straights filling the place up so our regular clientele can’t get in.”
On some nights, the line of people waiting to get in stretched an entire block, just north of the iconic corn-cob shaped towers of Marina City. Go-go dancers, including a drag queen known as the Bearded Lady, often performed above the large dancefloor, which was surrounded by three bars and decorated by a pair of bright neon lips.
Eddie Dugan opened The Bistro, Chicago’s first big, influential disco, in May of 1973, at what had been an old French restaurant.