Vicki Vara on Backstreet : The story behind Atlanta's most iconic gay bar ever!

Описание: The long-awaited interview with Vicki Vara, owner of Atlanta’s iconic 24 hour disco Backstreet! With an impressive history of nearly THIRTY YEARS serving Atlanta’s gay community, Backstreet made a huge impact on the LGBTQ+ scene in the Georgia capital city and throughout the Southeast. Backstreet, 1975–2004.

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FROM ATLANTAMAGAZINE.com:
Atlanta Needs Its Gay Bars Now More Than Ever by Tess Malone 10/9/2020
“Art Smith’s first Atlanta gay bar experience was when he danced in the new year at Backstreet during a weekend getaway at the end of 1982. “We were so overwhelmed by the feeling of inclusion and energy in the gay scene,” says Smith, who lived with his boyfriend [Chris] in Nashville at the time. They decided the next day to move to Atlanta.”

FOR MORE INFO ABOUT BACKSTREET
Visit the “I Partied at Backstreet” group on Facebook.

According to the ATLANTA HISTORY CENTER website:
“At four feet in diameter, Backstreet nightclub proudly held the largest disco ball in the Southeast. Located at 845 Peachtree Street in Midtown, Backstreet was a 24-hour dance club, bar, cabaret, and entertainment center composed of three levels and 10,000 square feet. First installed over the club’s dance floor in 1977, the iconic disco ball oversaw 27 years of changing dance tunes before Backstreet closed in 2004.

In 2003, the City of Atlanta denied renewal of the club’s 24-hour liquor license. It was the only all-day bar left in the city, thus its motto: Always Open and Always Pouring. When the license expired in 2004, Backstreet closed and transferred much of its interior and patrons to The Jungle, a bar off Cheshire Bridge Road.
It remained there until development pushed it out of the leased space in 2017.”

FROM ATLANTAMAGAZINE.COM:
Backstreet: An oral history of Atlanta’s most fabled 24-hour nightclub by Richard Eldredge 10/9/2020

“It was the Studio 54 of the South even before the infamous New York club opened its doors in 1977 and, miraculously, it endured nearly 10 times as long. In 1975, at the dawn of disco, Backstreet officially opened for business at 845 Peachtree Street in the heart of Midtown.


In the beginning, the massive, three-level, 10,000-square-foot space
(it had housed Lang’s Interiors in the 1950s), catered almost exclusively to the city’s burgeoning white gay male population. But by the time it closed in July 2004, Backstreet had become a 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week playground for the entire city.

Or, as the Backstreet staff T-shirts more succinctly stated, “Always Open & Pouring.” As other nightclubs, including the Limelight, Club Anytime, the Velvet Room, Club Kaya, Esso, and Club Rio, opened and shuttered around them, Backstreet remained party central for nocturnal revelers for nearly 30 years. But as the century drew to a close, Midtown, once a haven for hippies, slowly reinvented itself into a swanky live-work-play district, with million-dollar penthouses near the club’s main entrance—condos owned by working professionals who wanted to sleep at night.

Over the decades, the club was featured in the HBO documentary Dragtime, Comedy Central’s Insomniac, and MTV’s ElimiDate. In 1981, the space even served as the set for the NBC TV movie For Ladies Only, starring Gregory Harrison and Marc Singer, a peek inside the Velcro-fastened, police-uniformed world of a male strip club.

In 2003, after years of battling neighbors and city hall, Atlanta officials declined to renew the club’s 24-hour liquor license, the sole remaining one in the city.

On July 17, 2004, the club closed for good and is now the site of the 36-floor Viewpoint luxury condos, built in 2008.”