The Black Cat Bar or Black Cat Café was a bar in San Francisco, California. It opened in 1906 and closed in 1921. The Black Cat re-opened in 1933 and operated for another 30 years. During its second run of operation, it was a hangout for Beats and bohemians but over time began attracting more and more of a gay clientele.
Because it catered to gays, the bar became a flashpoint for the nascent homophile movement. The Black Cat was at the center of a legal fight that was one of the earliest court cases to establish legal protections for gay people in the United States. Despite this victory, continued pressure from law enforcement agencies eventually forced the bar's closure in 1964.
Read more about Black Cat Bar: The Original Black Cat, Beats and Bohemians, Growing Gay Clientele, Police Harassment, Closure
Famous quotes containing the words black, cat and/or bar:
“Personality is the glitter that sends your little gleam across the footlights and the orchestra pit into that big black space where the audience is.”
—Mae West (1892–1980)
“The black cat does not die. Those same books, if I am not mistaken, teach that the black cat is deathless. Deathless as evil. It is the origin of the common superstition of the cat with nine lives.”
—Peter Ruric, and Edgar G. Ulmer. Edgar G. Ulmer. Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff)
“The bar ... is an exercise in solitude. Above all else, it must be quiet, dark, very comfortable—and, contrary to modern mores, no music of any kind, no matter how faint. In sum, there should be no more than a dozen tables, and a clientele that doesn’t like to talk.”
—Luis Buñuel (1900–1983)