GAY BARS IN PITTSBURGH

pittsburgh

Pittsburgh is a 1942 feature film directed by Lewis Seiler and starring Marlene Dietrich, Randolph Scott, and John Wayne. Shemp Howard of Three Stooges fame co-stars in a rare dramatic role. Dietrich, Scott, and Wayne also made The Spoilers together that same year.
An industrial city in southwestern Pennsylvania, where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers join to form the Ohio River; pop. 334,563
a city in southwestern Pennsylvania where the confluence of the Allegheny River and Monongahela River forms the Ohio River; long an important urban industrial area; site of Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Allegheny County. Regionally, it anchors the largest urban area of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley, and nationally, it anchors the 22nd largest urban area in the United States.

gay bars

(Gay bar) A bar which exists primarily for gay people and whose major clientele are gay people.
A gay bar is a drinking establishment that caters to an exclusively (or predominantly) gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) clientele; the term gay is used as a broadly inclusive concept for LGBT and queer communities.
(Gay Bar (song)) “Gay Bar” is a song written and performed by the Detroit-based rock band Electric Six. It was the second single off their debut album, Fire released in 2003.

michael, r.i.p.

around 30 years ago, my best friend michael and i lived on the same street, in our parents’ homes. one sunday night i was tripping on acid with another friend, at home, and michael came by to borrow a shirt to go clubbing in town. as was usual for us, he was going to hitch a ride, down route 8.

it seemed like only minutes after he left that i got a phone call from a neighbor: "you’re friends with michael lowe, right? they just found him unconscious on the side of the road next to route 8. they’re taking him to the e.r."

i told my parents, grabbed my friend and a car, and raced to the hospital. we were hallucinating madly, but the fear and adrenaline was cutting into it sharply, clearing my head all too lucidly.

they operated on his brain that night. he remained in a coma.

2 days later, instead of calling, i stopped by his house to ask about him. his brutal stepfather, who hated him because he was queer, told me he had died. i broke down, and mr. penetti patted my back, "comforting" me with "it’s for the best". a few hours later i called my stepmum from work to tell her. she told me she had just called the hospital and he was still in a coma. i left work in a daze and went back to his house. his mother answered, and as i told her the story, she turned to ask her husband why he told me michael was dead. mr. p. said "to prepare her for the inevitable". an evil man …

michael did die the next day, without ever regaining consciousness. i was a pallbearer, and layed the flowers on his coffin before lowering him into the ground.

the story goes on as the police and insurance investigators grilled me on his sex life, on *my* sex life – we were "known", we frequented gay bars, surely this was the result of a lover’s quarrel, or suicide … furious, i railed at the police, the investigators as they tried to intimidate me in front of my parents. no shame as i answered them eye-to-eye, stone-faced, angry:

"yes he was gay. no he didn’t have a boyfriend. yes i am bisexual. yes i know a lesbian named so-and-so. no we weren’t affiliated with the gay crime underworld. why aren’t you looking into his hateful mafia stepfather???!!! i believe he had him killed."

it never happened. case closed, unsolved.

this recent visit to pittsburgh, while walking that familiar road nearby, for the first time i saw the cross on the side. why hadn’t i seen it before? i stood there, on the spot they found his body, and cried and cried as i hadn’t since it happened.

he was a good friend, a gentle, loving manchild.

oh, and my sister told me that his younger sister told her a few years back that michael’s older brother had killed him. i don’t care to know why.

The Brewer's Hotel

I’ve driven by this neighborhood bar many times on my way home and always wondered about it. I suspect the name has something to do with the proximity to the old Pittsburgh Brewing Company, brewer of Iron City Beer that is across the street on Liberty Avenue. I’m not sure if this is my native Lawrenceville or possibly Bloomfield, but I do know this, Iron City Beer in not brewed here anymore , it’s brewed in Latrobe, Pennsylvania after a dispute with the Pittsburgh water authority being charged a sewage fee based on the water used. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to to figure out that most of the liquid used was not leaving the brewery through the sewer system, but going out in bottles, cans & kegs! Now I’m not saying it didn’t eventually end up in the sewer system somewhere, just not at this location. At any rate this petty dispute caused Pittsburgh’s oldest and most famous brewery to leave the city.
*Note: A friend and co-worker informed me that this is a gay bar, "not that there’s anything wrong with that…"