They are institutional histories of a region, a safer place to meet strangers, escape families, or bump into old friends or new lovers. Wayne offer more than a night’s entertainment or a place for patrons to be themselves. Small-city gay bars like those in Lima or Ft. Patrons of Fort Wayne, Indiana’s, Babylon Nightclub, for example, told the drag queen who brought them on stage one evening that they’d driven from hometowns more than an hour away: Muncie, Indiana Coldwater, Michigan and Fort Shawnee, Ohio. They are the only physical places where LGBTQ people gather in public, and they serve multi-county regions of multiple states. Gay bars are a marker of cosmopolitanism for small cities. At some point the bar stopped using its original name, “Somewhere in Time When Even the Moon is Not Enuff,” before it was fictionalized in the Fox sitcom Glee, which introduced the world to a shinier, more musical Lima. I’d driven to this small city of under 40,000 souls for the express purpose of interviewing the manager of Somewhere, Lima’s LGBT bar and club since 1982. I was in town for the book project that had taken my research assistant Tory and me through 27 states, interviewing gay bar professionals.
I hadn’t even told her that I already knew. The fire gutted the building, resulting in a roof collapse and a loss of power to surrounding areas.“We have a gay bar here,” the waitress informed me after I told her how impressed I was with the offerings in downtown Lima, Ohio. On Saturday, January 31, 2015, the building housing Karma was lost in a four-alarm fire which began in the stage area about 7:15 pm, ahead of a planned night of performances.
Approximately $100,000 in remodeling brought a new central bar design and skylights to the main room, however no pivotal changes were made to the club's operation. įollowing a period of uncertain fate, the nightclub re-opened under new ownership about three months later, on January 24, 2014. The club claimed it could not sustain itself for the week after a deposit of $3,000 was stolen from the bar, asking patrons to return the following weekend, however the club remained closed.
Re-branding Īfter The Q shut its doors on November 1, 2013, it was revealed by local news sources that the establishment had been in arrears with payments to the IRS, as well as in debt to private lenders-though this did not contribute directly to The Q's closing.
It was by far Lincoln's largest and most prominent gay club, with a full theatrical stage, 15,000-watt sound system, and 6,000 sq ft surrounding the primary bar and dance floor. The club existed in a non-descript building with spare outdoor lighting, in an area southwest of Lincoln's primary downtown bar district, and southeast of the Haymarket. The establishment housing the club was lost to a fire on January 31, 2015. Originally opened as The Q in April 1995, it closed abruptly following a Halloween event in 2013, and re-opened months later under new ownership as Karma. Karma Nightclub & Cabaret (formerly The Q/ Club Q) was a gay nightclub in downtown Lincoln, Nebraska. Later stages of the fire which gutted Karma nightclub in 2015