Gay bars in south bend indiana
Guerrilla Gay Bar grows in South Bend
Editor's note: The February Guerrilla Gay Prevent event was changed from Feb. 13 to Feb. 20. See box for details.
In December 2012, 40 people attended the first Guerrilla Gay Bar event in South Bend.
It was a respectable size, organizer Willow Wetherall says, but it was small compared to the 200-plus crowd the event attracts now, three years later. The events draw folks from cities and towns around the area, but also regionally, with people driving in from Chicago, Grand Rapids and Indianapolis to come to the parties.
“The fact that we possess something that attractive for people to drive that distance says a lot about what we’re doing,” she says.
They’ve grown out of a lot of their initial venues, Wetherall says. Now they contain to get a small creative with their locations, so they can host the crowd size. This Saturday, GGB is taking over the gym at Madison Center with an ’80s-themed dance party, with attendees encouraged to wear their favorite Lycra, Day-Glo and tennis shoes to dance in. In Protest, they’ll head to Main Street Grille in Mishawaka. The events are normally held the second Saturday of the month, but sometimes switch to a differen
Guerrilla Gay Bar Brings Together South Bend LGBT Collective for Night of Fun
There has been a gigantic void in the market ever since Truman’s closed in 2012. The accepted two-story gay bar at the 100 Center in Mishawaka was the largest in the South Lean region.
Now that Truman’s is gone, the local LGBT community has turned to places like Vickie’s in downtown South Bend or to Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood.
“There was clearly a desire for an upscale non-smoking social venue for the GLBT community but no one had any plans to open a fresh club so some friends and I decided to try a concept that had been successful in other cities like Boston, Philadelphia and LA – to take a unbent bar and make it gay for the night,” says Willow Wetherall, the founder and co-organizer of Guerrilla Gay Bar.
The Guerrilla Gay Bar — which will be celebrating its second anniversary in December — is a monthly event held on the second Saturday each month at alternating venues. Wetherall along with Michael Path co-organize the event, choosing a new venue each month.
“We focus on locally-owned, non-smoking venues,” Wetherall says.
The most recent locations contain been at Woochi Japanese Fusion & Bar
In 2015, Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend announced in a South Angle Tribune op-ed that he was gay, making him Indiana’s first openly gay mayor. Four decades before Buttigieg’s announcement, the city reportedly outlawed same-sex dancing. In 1974, Gloria Frankel and her gay club, The Seahorse Cabaret, withstood police harassment, challenged regulations against LGBT individuals, and endured a firebombing. In this upload, we explore the struggle for gay rights in the Michiana area and the intrepid woman who lead the charge.
According to Ben Wineland’s “Then and Now: The Origins and Maturation of the Gay Collective in South Bend,” Frankel opened South Bend’s first lgbtq+ club in the preceding 1970s. Its opening followed the famous Stonewall Riots of 1969, in which members of New York City’s LGBT bar community responded to a police raid with a series of stormy protests. The riots immediately forwarded the gay liberation movement and the struggle for LGBT rights in America. LGBT individuals in smaller cities capitalized on the momentum by opening bars that fostered same-sex attracted communities and provided them with a relatively unharmed space for entertainment, dial
South Bend LGBTQ City Guide
South Bend is a thriving Indiana town perhaps foremost known for being house to the University of Notre Dame- and certainly, it is proud of that reputation. Beyond creature home to the Fighting Irish, however, it’s also a city known for excellent education, health tend , and manufacturing. Equally importantly, it’s a diverse capital, with a smaller but thriving LGBTQ community that is welcoming to all. All of that is not to mention that South Bend is well-known for electing openly lgbtq+ mayor and former presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg.
A Stare at South Bend's History
Saint Joseph County in which South Bend is located was officially formed in 1830 with four original townships. At that time, many inhabitants of the town were either tavern owners, fur traders, or merchants. Initially, only a small number of settlers came to the area, but the town quickly grew, particularly after the arrival of the railroad system. South Tilt was officially incorporated as a city in May of 1865. Since its founding, South Bend has grown to become most famously the home of the University of Notre Dame but also a city with thriving agricultural and manufacturing ind
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