Keeping the party hearty — and safe
After Orlando, gay clubs try to stay secure and maintain vibe
The first time Kevin Sessums walked into a gay bar, he knew he had found his people. Merely a teenager in Jackson, Miss., in the early 1970s, he had used a razor blade to meticulously rearrange the numbers on his driver’s license to gain entry to Mary’s Cabaret.
Bars and nightclubs have long served as safe spaces for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and other marginalized people, and for the former Vanity Fair writer who chronicled his childhood growing up in the South in his memoir “Mississippi Sissy,” no amount of effort to get inside was too much.
“I experienced a new kind of joy,” says the now 60-year-old Sessums. “I found my tribe. I found redemption. It wasn’t just that I found a place where gay people could be together, but it was a camaraderie that went across socioeconomic levels, gender and racial lines. It was something I didn’t experience anywhere else.”
More than just places to grab a drink and cut loose, gay clubs have functioned as community
centers, hookup joints and havens from the pressures of the outside world. But following the killing of 49 people at an Orlando gay nightclub on June 12, many business owners are wondering how to keep these places secure in more practical ways, so they can continue to provide sanctuary for future generations.
Radical changes are already being made, even in a city like San Francisco known for tolerance. Pride organizers and city leaders announced Monday that, for the first time, visitors will have to go through metal detectors, security gates and bag checks before entering this weekend’s Pride celebration in Civic Center Plaza.
Local bar and club owners are taking note of these efforts, trying to find effective ways to adopt and implement their own security measures without casting a pall on that sense of freedom that people associate with their venues.
Clubs’ responsibility
“It would be irresponsible of us not to take what happened in Orlando into consideration and not do anything about it,” says Cip Cipriano, general manager of QBar, one of the most popular dance clubs in the Castro area. “There’s a contract between you and the people who come to your venue — they expect you to be responsible enough to take those precautions so everyone has that safe space they need.”
Major public institutions around the world already have elaborate security procedures, some in place for decades, like metal detectors at sports venues and surveillance drones in Paris following the terrorist attack at the Bataclan theater in November.
San Francisco is catching up.
“Nobody knew this was going to be a thing, where you have to check exits, use wands and search bags,” says Cipriano, who ramped up the screening process at QBar after the Orlando shooting. “It’s the new normal.”
Pat-downs aren’t enough
But traditional measures, including pat-downs and placing bouncers out front, can help only so much. Chris McGoey, a former San Francisco resident who has worked as a security consultant for nightclubs in Southern California for more than three decades, says business owners need to look beyond the basics.
“They need to dust off that emergency binder and look at their security plan,” he says. “Make sure they know how to evacuate quickly, shut down the entertainment, turn on the lights. We’re more hip to earthquakes than an active shooter experience.”
McGoey acknowledged that there was a uniformed police officer working security for Orlando’s Pulse nightclub on the night of the attack, and added that the reality is there is ultimately very little anyone can do to prevent such worstcase scenario situations beyond having a solid response strategy in place.
“If somebody comes in intent on mass murder and is heavily armed and starts shooting indiscriminately, no business is set up for that,” McGoey says. “We’re going to have to start arming clubs, shops, bars, restaurants, flower shops, hardware stores. That’s not going to happen. We need to up our vigilance at the door.”
The one sentiment echoed by security experts, police officials and community members alike is that the best way to keep these spaces thriving is to resist feeling terrorized by the attack.
“That’s exactly what terror wants you to do, to not go out and be terrified,” says Heklina, the San Francisco drag icon who co-founded Trannyshack and is a business partner in Oasis, a cabaret in the city’s South of Market neighborhood. “You have to embrace life. You can’t let it change how you look at things.”
Even though the role of nightlife has become less vital in gay culture with the rise of social networks and dating apps, Heklina says that this is precisely the time to embrace those institutions.
Don’t stop the party
“You have to go out there and celebrate,” says Heklina. “Go and be as flamboyant as possible. All those people died because of who they were, so be as gay as possible.”
Supervisor Scott Wiener, whose district includes the Castro, told The Chronicle the day after the Orlando tragedy, “This isn’t about having the police in bars and clubs. This is about making sure the bars and clubs have security plans in place that match the current reality we face given what happened and making sure the police know about those plans so that they can respond effectively.”
It’s going to take vigilance, McGoey says, to prevent similar tragedies.
“The public is going to have to step up,” he says. “The business owners can’t do it alone. We have to raise the level of awareness and intolerance for these mass shootings so that anyone contemplating it gets reported. Everybody has to participate.”
Daily threats
The shooting in Orlando underscores day-to-day threats faced by LGBT people, even amid hard-fought progress in gaining acceptance and legal rights.
This year’s Pride festivities take place in marked contrast to the jubilation of last year, when the U.S. Supreme Court had just issued its ruling legalizing same-sex marriage.
“I feel like we have accomplished so much,” says Sessums, who is the Curran Theater’s editor-at-large. “What upsets me about Orlando is how young all those people were. There were a lot of shifts in their lives. We thought we reached a point where we made the world better for generations behind us.
“I feel that very deeply,” he continues, tearing up. “I wanted to make the world a better place for those people. They were massacred. It breaks my heart. There’s so much work to be done.”