The lost LGBT bars of Cardiff and the people who remember them

EVERYONE thinks the era they starting going out in is the best.

Cardiff’s gay community is no different but the rich history stemming from many of the bars is fast disappearing.

From leisure centres turned into legendary discos and TV stars taking to the stage with drag artists and the bar where you had to have your own key to get in – there was plenty going on.

Depending on the era, bars still had to be discreet, being gay wasn’t always accepted, there were attacks and the terror of Aids emerged.

Describing the 1980s, one man said: “We were fighting to exist.”

Almost all of Cardiff’s gay and lesbian bars have gone, but the role they played in the lives of the people who went there lives on.

Pride Cymru asked people to share their memories of iconic bars and why they were so important.

David was 18 when he started going out in Cardiff in the early 1980s.

“Then, the culture around being gay was that it was unacceptable.

“I remember when I was going round town with my stepdad and we parked up and he said, ‘That’s a queers club’ and I mean, my ears pricked up then.”

But like many other gay people at that time, he didn’t want to hide away.

In March 1985, he took part in the first Pride march in Cardiff.

People were captured on video walking down Queen Street carrying banners saying “Glad to be gay” and balloons, chanting “We are everywhere”.

David remembers: “At that time, when you went to Pride marches, it was because you were fighting for your rights, it wasn’t a party like it is now.

“In 1985 I was part of the march when the miners were there. It was quite life-changing because at that time we were fighting for the age of consent, fighting against Aids discrimination.

“It was a time we were fighting just to exist. Going out then was about community.

“In those days, I never had many sexual partners, it wasn’t about that but it was where we made friends and where we used to go where we felt safe.”

Francis Brown is 56 and started going out in Cardiff in 1980.

“The difference with gay bars then, and now, was that it was the only place to meet other gay people.

“You could put an ad in the Gay Times but that was a bit of a palaver.

“In the 1980s if you were gay you had to go cruising, to toilets or round the parks or you had to go to a gay bar.”

Francis worked as a volunteer at Cardiff Friend, a helpline for gay men.

“One of the things we did was to meet people and take them to the gay pub, not hand-holding as such, but to show them it was there and just to sit and have a drink.”

He said there would be a few warnings thrown in for younger gay men.

“There was definitely an element of nurturing and to help people come out. We’d all been through it. In those days you wouldn’t have told parents or work colleagues or fellow students.”

In a relatively small city like Cardiff, there was also the risk you’d be spotted.

“With the Kings Cross, for example, you could be seen coming out of it and being spotted in Cardiff, it was a small world,” he said.

There was also a helpline for lesbians and it was through that that Belinda started going out.

Belinda Davis is 44, and Barrybased. She remembers calling Lesbian Line, just before she turned 18, to ask for help.

“I’d watched a TV talk show with Phil Donahue, who talked about lesbianism and gays, that was what initially prompted me to get in touch with Cardiff Lesbian Line.

“It was through that I found out there were these lesbian discos once a month.”

Many lesbian-only events were held at leisure centres or community centres.

They were never explicitly booked as lesbian events, instead as “women only” and partly that was to try to ensure bookings were honoured.

“I did phone very nervously that line, they agreed to meet me in Cardiff either in Burger King or McDonalds, I can’t remember which now.

“I told them about that talk show I had watched, we had a long chat and they then invited me to the Star Centre lesbian night.

“I didn’t really know my way around Cardiff so when I called Lesbian Line they would meet me, pick me up and take me to venues.”

On her first visit to the Star Centre, two friends “reluctantly” went with her.

“Everyone welcomed them and made them feel at ease, which was nice, as they were clinging on to each other for dear life,” she laughed.

But the contact with Lesbian Line was crucial for her.

“I was struggling at that time coming out. I found it very difficult.”

Zoe Balfour was a DJ at tea dances and queer ballroom and latin dances where she also taught dancing. She came out aged 20, in 1977, after returning from five years in America, where she now lives again.

“I was a lesbian feminist who loved dancing, so I went to all the clubs. I was also involved in the women’s centre and started Cardiff Lesbian Line with Sally Fowler, Helen Pacey, Carol Rowlands and some others.

“Through the women’s centre I was involved in ‘reclaim the night’ marches, matriarchy study groups, groups talking about class.”

She recalls the location of the tea dances moving around.

“We started at the Electricity Club in Pontcanna. It was a great venue and we filled it, we had a huge dance, but that was also when they realised it was queer and they refused our booking the next time we tried to go there.

“We had two tea dances at the old Welsh National Opera, Julie worked there and got us in.”

Mike was a former manager of Channel View Leisure Centre. Discos were held there in the late 1980s.

“I knew exactly what the dances were when they booked them in, but they were a bit coy, called them women’s dances. I understood, because it was hard for them to find places that would accept them in the late 1980s and lesbians in particular were not that ‘out.’

“They were held in the ‘general activities room.’ I got to know Annie and Zoe, who I think ran them, quite well. The dances were very ‘arty,’ some of them were very good dancers.”

One iconic night was when a stripper, dressed as Marilyn Monroe, went on stage.

Belinda remembers that legendary night, as does Mike.

“The story about the stripper is true, I wasn’t there that night but I remember my staff telling me all about it.”

The people who were went were mixed, Belinda remembers.

“There were always lots of people at them, some my age and some a little older.

“I remember them being at the Star Centre and I also went to Channel View.

“At Channel View I remember seeing my first female stripper, she was dressed as Marilyn Monroe when she came out.

“Some people would do poetry readings or sing, they did everything.

“It was always very busy and they always used to play Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive near the end of the night, everyone just expected it to be played.”

As you’d expect, many of the bars were in the city centre.

Francis remembers Hunters, a longdemolished bar which would have stood where the St David’s shopping centre now is.

“It was quite a mix in terms of males and females but we all seemed to be about 23 or 24, it was almost like a gay youth club,” he laughed.

David was 18 when he went out in Cardiff for the first time in July 1983.

“I was brought up a Catholic and I was hanging out with a bunch of people and we were all out on July 4, 1983, and bumped into a group of people in this burger bar.

“They turned out to be gay and they said: ‘Why don’t you come to Terminus and the King’s Cross, it’ll be fun’.”

David’s friends went along with it and “within a few months we’d come out”, he says.

“We considered ourselves quite experimental and avant garde really. We were 18 and they were in their 20s and we just thought ‘let’s go with it.’

“It didn’t faze us there was this bunch of gay people who were older than us.

“We were kind of adopted by that group. One of them is still one of my closest friends now,” says David. The big night out was a Sunday. “Then, Sundays were dead and the bars all closed at 10.30pm so there wasn’t much going on.

“So, they invited us out the next Saturday to Terminus and we never looked back.”

Throughout the decades, there were gay-only or gay-friendly venues at everything from hotels to a superclub.

Belinda remembers going to the Courtfield Hotel on Cathedral Road.

“There was a little bar there and at the time it was mainly used by older gay men. I always remember there being a lot of older men all sat round tables with little lighting and candles on the tables.”

Terminus was a mixed crowd, but it wasn’t somewhere people cruised for sex. Sirs was a venue above the restaurant Le Monde, still open today. It was a men’s membership bar at 60-62 St Mary Street in the 1970s and 1980s in what is now the back first floor of Le Monde.

One person recalled working in the bar downstairs for months before plucking up the courage to ask where the ice buckets were taken to.

Only then did she realise there was another bar upstairs.

“It was up some stairs,” one Pride Cymru contributor remembers.

“It was mainly men, women were considered a bit too rough to be welcomed. They fought more.”

The women who did get in were only allowed half-pints. Others remembered the lit-up dancefloor, like something from Saturday Night Fever. Some blagged their way in. “You’d knock and then knock for entry again and think of a male name to ask for inside.”

A copy of the Sirs key has been donated to the Cardiff Story Museum.

“I still have my key for Sirs. I think I was the only woman to be issued with one,” boasts one woman.

David said that Sirs split opinion.

“I never went in it much. I’d prefer a venue that was guys and girls and loved a mixed crowd.

“I think I only ever went twice, but it was the first place I ever saw a male stripper”.

Nearby was Terminus – the door was near Mill Lane.

“The gay area was small bar on the right and after pub hours in upstairs room.”

Another recalled: “Terminus was originally known as the Greyhound, a pub where many alcoholics and winos drank, even meths drinkers. When it first converted to Terminus it was nicknamed ‘the Gayhound.’”

For David, Terminus was one of his favourite places.

“Terminus was more of a neighbourhood bar and it was about having somewhere to fit in. It was about being free, you couldn’t get that in a lot of places.

“It was very much a place for friends to meet for drinks and dancing and that type of thing. It was very small and a small dance floor.

The owner was Lenny Lancaster but the day-to-day running was by Bob Showbiz. “Everyone loved Bob,” he said.

Tunnel became the first superclub. To mark its 30th anniversary, a huge reunion party was held. David was a DJ there for six years. “It was the first club that did mixing,” he recalls remembering its highenergy music.

“We’d go to London and buy records in a fantastic record shop and bring them back here.”

Both men and women would go but it was more geared towards men, David recalls.

“There was a main bar but there was a men only bar down at the bottom by the stage,” he remembers. Why, he’s not sure. “I think it would have been so women weren’t put off by the cruising or men getting it on.

“It was almost harking back to the old Labour clubs where women had their own bars,” he laughs.

Richard was the manager and would