The scene in the 70s
1972
Trevor discusses the attitudes of gay men and the gay scene in the 1970s. “They got more bolder and it was more accepted but there was no such thing as a gay village, it was the odd pub every now and again, and nothing in the outskirts, it was just in the city, until around about the seventies when Mr Steel disappeared from the Trocadero and he took the Duke of York on in Harborne, (corner of Lordswood Road) (now knocked down) and Sunday nights it used to be gay, about mid seventies. Nothing outrageous, there used to be a pianist and we all used to sing, but the bar was crowded and it was a big bar, at a certain time town emptied and everyone went out there and also there was no such thing as, you could go to a club after the pub closed, because the pub closed at 10 o clock and all you could do then is go, but then somebody opened a coffee bar in the Horsefair, called the El Sombrero, at the time the coffee bars came out, and it was Expresso, so everybody used to go to the El Sombrero. It was packed, you could stop there till 2 in the morning, just drinking coffee, (well I suppose something else went on as well) and they were happy days as well, of course all that’s gone now, it’s all knocked down and disappeared, all there is now is the clubs, which now to me is awful, I don’t like them at all.”
Contributed by: Trevor Hall, 76