Fred's Corner

(a monthly sorta thing):

Bombs and raids and demonstrations, oh
my...they all come out on a warm winter
day

Fred Kuhr

On Saturday, February 19, my lover and
I decided to take a day trip to Montreal.
‘Twas a sunny, bright, warm, and breezy
fifty-degree day after many weeks of
subzero frost heaves and Mt. Mansfield
sized snow drifts. Finally, the snow was
melting and our premature Spring Fever
led us to cross the border for a day of
city walking and shopping, and an
evening of dining and dancing. But not
so fast...

That morning, at an Out In The
Mountains meeting, a friend told us of a
bar in Montreal, K.O.X., that had been
raided earlier in the week. He said many
were arrested, no specific number, and a
demonstration was planned for that
evening outside the bar on Rue St.
Catherine. (That’s St. Catherine Street
for us unilingual folk.)

Part of me was a little excited by this, I
must admit - the thrill of witnessing an
actual, angry demonstration, in a foreign
country even. But then a reality hit me -
“Wait a minute? A gay bar was raided?
This is the '90's!” I thought raiding went
out with Reaganism (kind of like
Members Only jackets). And in
Montreal? Sin City of North America, as
my lover jokes. After all, this is the city
that proudly displays Club Super Sex
next to its upscale department stores.
(And if you have not seen the ad on TV,
or have not had the opportunity to
witness the facade itself, yes “Super
Sex” is written like “Superman".) This is
the city that just the other day loaded gay
men out of a bar and into paddy wagons?

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We decided we would take our chances —
the weather and our sense of adventure
won. We were determined to go to
Montreal and were determined to go to
K.O.X. And maybe we would even take
part in the rally!

After an afternoon of crowded, slushy
streets, we chose to skip the rally and go
to dinner (bad activists, but good
queens). We settled upon a Montreal
landmark for our dining pleasure, Ben’s
Deli, for its famous smoked meat. (Nah,
the joke's too easy.) The restaurant is
located downtown so we were
unintentionally far and away from any
demonstration related hubbub. We were
so far removed, in fact, that I was even
apprehensive about thumbing through
Fugues, The Mirror, and any other gay
or alternative newspapers we had picked
up along the way. As my lover
not—so-apprehensively thumbed through
bar ads, one of Ben's waiters looked over
his shoulder. “Uh-oh,” I thought. The
waiter then stopped, leaned over, and
asked if we were from out of town. We
reluctantly said, “Yes”. He then asked us
if we had heard what happened at
K.O.X. He was there!

A light went on inside of me. What
happened? Why did it happen? From
the little I could understand through his
accent, I figured out the following...l)

* gay men were “treated like animals”, 2)

the raid had something to do with the
owner being a lawyer and possibly
becoming a judge, but owning a bar
would be a conflict of ‘interest (is this
true? or just good political activist
gossip?), and 3) a rumor was running
rampant that K.O.X. would be raided
again that night! He strongly
recommended that we not go.

April 1994

Our paranoia got the best of us; if we
couldn’t feel safe in “Sin City”, we could
at least return to our cozy Vermont home
less than two hours away and enjoy the
passion of Pearl’s. Tucked cozily
between the calm of the Green
Mountains and the...um...calm of Lake
Champlain lies Northern Vermont’s only
gay bar, a safe space in a safe city in

safe state. But not so fast... ‘

Just before the clock struck midnight, the
carriage turned into a pumpkin. The
music stopped, the lights came up, and
the cigarette smoke, no, that remained.
But the DJ did announce that Pearl’s had
just received a bomb threat. The police
were on their way; we were all to leave
the bar. “What? A bomb scare at
Pearl’s? Our safe little bar nestled inside
a wealth of progressive politics and
pastoral pastures?” But it happened.

The police did arrive, searched the bar,
and quickly left. (Weren’t the police the
ones who raided the bar in Montreal?)
The bomb threat turned out to be a hoax,
and the bar reopened half an hour later.
A collective sigh of relief! The
management even bought a free round of
drinks for everyone (maybe we should
have bomb threats more often).

We enjoyed our February thaw, but I
couldn’t help but roll this coincidence
around in my head. A gay bar raided in
Sin City and a bomb threat in the Queen
City. No matter how safe we may feel at
times, a great deal of work still needs to
be done. After all, everyone comes out to
play on a warm February day. V

 

Aiméc S. Green

(802) 660-9238