A Turning Point: A look at Cleveland LGBTQ club scene, then and now

Описание: As 3News continues to shine a light on Cleveland's LGBTQ community, we turn our focus to what many consider a vital part of LGBTQ acceptance: the club scene.

Cleveland's gay bars and clubs were some of the only places many members of the LGBTQ community say they felt welcomed and free to be themselves. The scene started downtown in the Schofield Building on Euclid Avenue, but seems to have ended with the worldwide web.

"The internet really ruined a lot of things," transgender Cleveland entertainer Isis Tiffany Soul explained. "Nobody goes out anymore, because you don't have to."

Let's start with Cleveland's early gay hey-day—beginning in the 1940s with the opening of the city's first gay club, Cadillac lounge on Euclid.

"Straight, gay, tall, short, fat, white, black, blue—it didn’t matter, all were welcome," Jerry Czolka, former owner of the popular LGBTQ nightclub The Grid from 1994 until 2003, said.

Cadillac—along with clubs like Little Ted's—fearlessly opened to all, at a time when LGBTQ clubs were some of the only safe havens many queer youth had.

"Back in those days ... you got thrown bricks at [you]," Soul recalled. "Rocks, baseball bats, you had to run."

"Honey, I'm just a queer," Czolka remembers thinking at the time. "You could beat me up; you've gotta catch me first."

Gay clubs offered protection, families when families weren't around.

"If there was a problem, they were right there," Soul said. "With my mom, she wasn't accepting. God bless her, but she said she had a son. She always made sure I knew she had a son."

"One time, these two guys were harassing some of my patrons outside of the bar," Czolka added. "Honey, you never saw so many queens go after these guys, chasing them down the street."

January Keaton reports.