Years earlier, a church group waged a letter campaign against the pub after claiming that a rusty pipe bracket on its roof looked phallic and obscene.
In 2001, after ordering from Pizza Hut, some patrons saw that the delivery slip showed a code name for the pub: "some fag." The pizzeria chain apologized and offered free food, Pearson said. He was later sentenced to 15 years in prison.īut the pub's days of controversy were far from over. Casey sent apologetic letters to the bar from a mental hospital, asking to be electrocuted or sent to a communist country, according to the Clearwater Sun. Patrons doused the flames with water-filled beer pitchers. XXXX grabbed a pool cue and ordered him to leave, the Times reported.Ĭasey returned with gasoline, setting wood paneling ablaze. One Monday afternoon in 1980, a drunk man named Donald Casey punched a woman who rejected him. Advertising was solely through word of mouth.
The Andersons kept the bar modest, swapping windows for hazy glass blocks. Visitors faced "gay-bashing" in the parking lots, she said. Though she was Catholic, Gail Anderson became especially "protective of the gay community," Anderson Lux said. But after nights of standing-room-only crowds, the family grew more accepting. The Andersons were taken aback, Mike chief among them, Patti Anderson Lux said. Unbeknownst to them, XXXX was a lesbian, and she invited her friends in the gay community over for drinks. It didn't help that the closest golf course, Clearwater Country Club, was a mile away.Ī year later, the Andersons hired a woman named XXXX to tend bar.
On the bar, to cement the sports theme, he decoupaged cutouts of star quarterbacks.īut the pub was a dud. It had a deli with hamburgers, hoagies and coleslaw, a football room with a 3-by-5-foot color television, and plans for a pool table and a golf-club repair shop. Instead, he settled for the next best thing: a small parlor and eatery, a kind of golfers' lounge. Mike Anderson had dreamed of running a country club before deciding the job would impede his game, he told the Clearwater Sun. His mother, Gail, recruited Patti to help start the family business. His family had fled the winters of Flint, Mich., six years earlier, and he and his sister, Patti, took classes at Florida State University. In the '70s, it was a sandwich shop named Kountry Kitchen.Įach business left after a few years until, in 1976, a young mustachioed man named Mike Anderson decided to use the building for his first pub. In the '50s, the building held Wings Restaurant, a glass-fronted diner serving the "South's finest ice cream." In the hippie '60s, it became the Confucius Tea Garden.
The Pro Shop Pub's history is much less revolutionary. Three years later, riots at another gay bar, the Stonewall Inn, sparked the modern gay rights movement. In 1966, activists there declared a "sip-in," protesting state crackdowns on homosexuals in bars. Julius, a tavern in New York City's West Village, is believed to be America's oldest gay bar. They owe that celebration to the humble beginnings of a small, straight Michigan family - a golf lover, his college-age sister and their mother, a spiritual Catholic. Bar manager Steven Pearson sent out 300 invitations on the labels of eight-track tapes. Dancers and DJs and a small sorority of drag queens will lead the festivities. Today, the bar's gay and straight clientele will gather to toast the pub's 35th year. It became one of the few places where its patrons could be themselves.
Birthed in the disco days of 1976, the pub served as a meeting place. The pub served as a sanctuary.īut it was also something else.
Decades ago, men who went there braved violent, bigoted attacks. The pub's obscurity was a defense mechanism. Our Colorful history written by Washington post reporter Drew Harwell 2011ĬLEARWATER - One of downtown's oldest businesses is a nondescript gay bar named the Pro Shop Pub.ĭrive too fast on Cleveland Street, east of Myrtle Avenue, and you'll miss it - a garnet outpost, brick and glass block, with only "Pro Shop" in neon lights.