Travel Safety Tips Local Expert: Gay Scene in CozumelĬozumel is a well-known gay-friendly area of Mexico. MUST VISIT: Gay-Friendly Bars & Nightlife Today, it’s a popular cruise destination, and you'll often see Royal Caribbean ships in port.Īll Aboard! Let's Set Sail Together and Discover Cozumel! There’s also a handful of endemic species such as a raccoon, a fox, and a colorful species of toadfish that cannot be found anywhere else. ‘Cuzam’ means “swallow” like the bird, and ‘lumil’ means ‘land of’ so Cozumel translates to “land of Swallows”. Maya women would come to Cozumel to worship the fertility/moon goddess, Ix Chel, traveling by canoe from Playa del Carmen or Tulum in a fashion similar to many of today's visitors. Cozmels’ original inhabitants and many of its sacred temples were destroyed by Hernan Cortes and smallpox in the 16th century. Cozumel has been inhabited for over millennia.
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It was originally settled by the Olmec even before the Maya. Listings in early "Gay Guides": (For more information on the Guides, click here.)Ĭredits: web site concept, contents, design and arrangement by Don Schwamb.Ĭreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.Cozumel, Mexico, is a small island in the Caribbean Sea, located off the Eastern side of the Yucatan Peninsula across from Playa del Carmen. These pre-Civil War buildings had almost limitless possibilities for renovation and reuse instead, they were all reduced to rubble by a city drunk on power. The loss of the Plankinton Strip is really quite a tragedy. Rather than erasing the gay community, the "renewal" of the Plankinton Strip mobilized it. The Riviera was long gone by 1967, as was Bourbon Beat (closed in Wally Whetham's 1966 bankruptcy.) An era was quickly coming to an end.Īlthough city planners thought they'd eliminated blight- both architectural and social- gay bars were already gathering at 1st and Pittsburgh, with more to come by the early '70s. Water St.) continued until at least 1970, the Fox Bar was the last survivor of the old Plankinton Strip. The Fox Bar closed on Jafter 18 years in business, when the land was acquired for the freeway.ĭemise of the 'Plankinton Strip' of gay barsĪlthough Crystal Palace (402 N. (Bemis owned the nearby New Yorker Lounge until the mid-1970s.)
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Knowing the property was condemned for freeway construction, Bemis mortgaged the liquor license and fixtures to loan shark Harry Kaminsky. Josie Carter remembers being asked to do a drag show here, but the stage was made out of card tables, and she said "get me a real stage and we'll talk." (from the oral interview on the UWM Archives website)įormer Milwaukee police sergeant turned gay bar operator (!) George Bemis took over in 1964. It made news headlines for being robbed on a regular basis, which speaks to the questionable safety and character of the 'Plankinton Strip' (as this area of Plankinton Avenue was then known, being a popular area for gay bars.) The bar was listed in national gay guides from 1963-on. In 1959, the Fox sold off its curved mahogany bar- for $6/foot- and installed a stainless steel bar in an attempt to modernize the somewhat run-down space.
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Contributors remember an "Otto Fenzel" or "Otto Ferkel" but these names don't appear anywhere in city directories.
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The bar remained open, but it's not clear who was operating it from 1955 onward. Was his death related to his highly profitable bar business? Entirely possible. In July 1955, Demling died suspiciously of a "stroke" in the basement of the Tunnel Inn (today's Safe House.) He was found dead at the bottom of 11 stairs by a cleaning crew. While Frank Demling opened the Fox in 1948, it's unclear how he was openly operating it as a gay bar. The Fox offered "noon lunches" in its onsite restaurant throughout the 1950s. The bar was sometimes called "the Skinny Fox" because the space was so incredibly narrow. Patrons remember a long, dark, dusty hallway of a bar that you had to step down into. The Fox opened in 1948 in an ancient saloon formerly known as the Clybourn Inn. Fox Bar- Bars and Clubs in the History of Gay & Lesbian Life in Wisconsin HistoryĤ55 N.