![playland gay bar boston playland gay bar boston](https://www.wolfyy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/playhouse-gay-bar-new-york-city.jpeg)
State Representative Barney Frank made a name for himself in the mid-1970s as a political defender of the Combat Zone. The Pilgrim then ceased to feature live shows, instead focusing on X-rated movies, and became a cruising site for men to have (paid or unpaid) sex with men. The Pilgrim Theater, one of the last old time burlesque houses, was the site of a political scandal in December 1974 when the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Wilbur Mills, seemingly inebriated, appeared on stage with stripper Fanne Foxe, "The Argentine Firecracker". Most congregated near "Good Time Charlie's" at 25 LaGrange Street. LaGrange Street, a small one-way street which runs between Washington and Tremont Streets, was the principal gathering spot for street prostitutes.
![playland gay bar boston playland gay bar boston](https://rosietaxicab.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/30109_image-2048x1024.jpg)
Along with the drug dealers and prostitutes, he writes, "mixed-race couples shacking up have begun to nervously doubt their freedom." Prostitution In his memoir, Jonathan Tudan recalls the tension in his Tremont Street building over news of an impending police raid in 1969. The Combat Zone was also recognized as being racially diverse at a time when other Boston neighborhoods were relatively segregated. As late as 1984 the Globe was referring to certain theaters in the Zone as "notorious gathering places for homosexuals". and the gay bars have closed and the fags and hookers and pimps and pushers roam the streets." In a 1974 Boston Herald article, representatives of the Sack Theater Chain called the Combat Zone "Satan's playground" and "a malignancy comprised of pimps, prostitutes, erotica, and merchants of immorality" whose growth had to be removed. Jeremiah Murphy wrote in a 1973 Boston Globe article about the Combat Zone, "Now it is almost 3 a.m. The Combat Zone's detractors often grouped homosexuals, transvestites, prostitutes, strippers, purveyors of adult books and films, and drug dealers together under an umbrella of perceived immorality. Nearby Park Square and Bay Village were home to several gay and drag bars, such as the Punch Bowl and Jacques Cabaret. Popular gathering spots included the Playland Café on Essex Street, the Stuart Theater on Washington Street, and many others. As the area changed, that nickname fell out of circulation, but the Combat Zone's relatively open atmosphere still attracted many LGBT people. Lower Washington Street, by contrast, was known for many years as the "Gay Times Square". The prevailing attitude towards homosexuality at the time was one of intolerance. In 1976, The Wall Street Journal called the area "a sexual Disneyland".
PLAYLAND GAY BAR BOSTON MOVIE
Besides the strip clubs and X-rated movie theaters, numerous peep shows and adult bookstores lined most of Washington Street between Boylston Street and Kneeland Street. Peak years: Mid-1960s – late 1970s ĭuring the Combat Zone's heyday, some of the larger strip clubs were Naked i Cabaret (famous for its animated neon sign which superimposed an eye over a woman's crotch), Club 66, the Teddy Bear Lounge, and the Two O'Clock Club. During the 1970s, when laws against obscenity were relaxed, many of the cinemas then screening second-run films began screening adult movies. With the closing of the burlesque theatres in Scollay Square, many of the bars began to feature go-go dancers and, later, nude dancers. It was located between the classic, studio-built movie palaces such as the RKO Keith's and Paramount theatres and the stage theatres such as the Colonial on Boylston Street. Lower Washington Street was already part of Boston's entertainment district with a number of movie theaters, bars, delicatessens, and restaurants that catered to night life. Originally, there was an attempt to name the area Liberty Tree Neighborhood after the Liberty Tree that once stood in the area, but the name did not catch on. Displaced Scollay Square denizens relocated to the lower Washington Street area because it was only half a mile away, the rents were low, and the residents of nearby Chinatown lacked the political power to keep them out. The Combat Zone began to form in the early 1960s, when city officials razed the West End and former red light district at Scollay Square, near Faneuil Hall, to build the Government Center urban renewal project. The moniker described an area that resembled a war zone both because of its well-known crime and violence, and because many soldiers and sailors on shore leave from the Charlestown (Boston) Navy Yard frequented the many strip clubs and brothels while in uniform.
PLAYLAND GAY BAR BOSTON SERIES
The name "Combat Zone" was popularized through a series of exposé articles on the area Jean Cole wrote for the Boston Daily Record in the 1960s.