They were assured that the police actions were not harassment, but two weeks later the Dallas Times Herald ran a story about the DPD’s vice squad and its entrapment methods. Within a week, Dallas attorney Mike Anglin, who chaired the Dallas Bar Association’s Goals for Dallas Committee, met with police officials and committee members, to state its strong opposition to raids on gay bars. He posted signs at the club asking for witnesses to the raid to come forward. That Thursday morning, the Village Station’s general manager, Charlie Hott, posted bond for the men arrested that could not afford it themselves, and he announced he was filing a civil case against the city of Dallas. They’ve tried to buy up every piece of property around here and turn this into a queer community, but I don’t intend to let this place become a queer joint.”īut the Village Station raid was different. Adair, owner of Adair’s Bar & Grill on Cedar Springs, said, “They’re mentally ill. In fact, in a 1979 Dallas Morning News article profiling the rising gay demographic in Oak Lawn, R.L. And in Dallas, gay men - and some women - were routinely labeled “perverts” and “deviants” in local newspapers, while raids on gay bars, bathhouses and theaters were commonplace.
Two months earlier, a series of arson fires at Houston gay bars had put the community there on edge. Anita Bryant, a former beauty queen and orange juice huckster-turned-evangelical-activist, was making a name for herself as the country’s No. In weeks before the Village Station raid, harassment of gay men in such liberal bastions as New York, Boston and San Francisco made news. Joined by undercover cops inside, they began making arrests, eventually charging 10 men for public lewdness and a bartender with a liquor violation.Įven though the LGBT community had made progress toward equality since the Stonewall Riots in New York a decade earlier, persecution of gay people was commonly accepted in 1979. 25, several Dallas policemen arrived, ordering Dougherty to stay where he was and not to interfere. 24, and Streisand and Summer’s defiant “Enough is Enough” was thumping through the speakers as patrons formed a conga line, laughing and singing along as they bunny-hopped through the club. And in a matter of weeks, the nation’s first reports of a mysterious and deadly disease spreading within the gay community would change everything forever.Įrnie Dougherty was staffing the Village Station’s front door that night, on Oct.
Just two weeks later, the Iranian hostage crisis would begin, facilitating Ronald Reagan’s election victory and a hard shift right politically. They didn’t know it was the twilight of an era. Others contemplated checking out the Hidden Door, a new bar holding its grand opening the next night. Some compared notes on the “March on Washington for Gay and Lesbian Rights” held the week before. The typical mid-week clientele danced to Donna Summer’s “Dim All the Lights” and Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ‘til You Get Enough” while nursing 10-cent draft beers. It was the last Wednesday of October 1979 at the Village Station, a popular gay disco that had opened at the corner Cedar Springs and Throckmorton barely four months earlier.
A sign at the door of the Village Station proudly proclaimed the bar to be “gay-owned and gay-operated.” (Courtesy of The Dallas Way)