Events tagged with "Bill Gavan"
Bill Gavan
Bill Gavan played a pivotal role in the development of the gay scene in Wolverhampton and later revolutionised gay clubbing in Birmingham when he opened Subway City. He has also been instrumental in building links between the gay community and the po...
Birmingham Triangle Committee
The first Birmingham Pride came about from an alliance between gay commercial interests and interested members of the wider gay community who formed the Birmingham Triangle Committee and worked together to organise the first event.The first pride com...
DV8
Dance club situated on Lower Essex Street. Opened in 1999, although before opening as DV8 the premises formed part of an audacious bid by Bill Gavan in to buy out the Nightingale club and create a large gay entertainment complex on Kent Street. The c...
Nightingale Essex House
The Nightingale decided it wanted to expand, but the Thorp Street site was hemmed in by the Hippodrome Theatre who had plans to expand themselves. The club decided to sell the Thorp Street venue to the theatre and began the hunt for new premises. The...
The Dorchester
Gavans at the Dorchester was a large nightclub in Wolverhampton, the largest in Europe at the time. It was gay on Saturday nights initially. Owned by Bill Gavan who later went on to open Subway City. The club had a very large dance area on the ground...
The Jug
The Jug was owned and managed by the charismatic and well known Laurie Williams. Laurie named his club The Jug being an acronym of ‘Just Us Guys’, later changed to ‘Just Us Gays’. Originally situated on Albert Street and later on Water Street, the Ju...
Wolverhampton Scene 1960s
Wolverhampton has had an active gay and club scene for many years, at times in the 70s and 80s more inclusive than Birmingham's. The Gay Flamingo was one of the earliest clubs and the Silver Web owned by Norman and Betty Webb was a regular haunt of m...
Memories tagged with "Bill Gavan"
Boot Women - 'a walking cocktail party'
Boot Women was started in 1993, set up by Val, Catherine’s ex-partner – and they weren’t speaking at the time, but a year later they were OK and Catherine’s been leading walks ever since. “At first we knew all the women, it was described as a ‘walkin...
Great send off for Laurie
Lyn recalls “Laurie Williams died in 2002 or 2003, after I had moved back to Cardiff. His funeral was amazing; it was a humanist funeral, it was packed solid with several hundred people; anyone who was anyone that was involved in the pubs and clubs o...
Helping to organise the first Pride 1996
Trevor joined the Birmingham Pride committee (The Triangle Committee) in November 1996, which was set up to organise the first Pride in May 1997. Trevor was the Secretary; there were about ten people involved on the executive committee and they broug...
Hotch potch of gay businesses
“That’s not to knock the entrepreneurs because Bill Gavan’s had an important role – a hard-nosed business person with an altruistic underbelly who has made an important contribution. Then we’ve got a hotch-potch, ranging from opportunist, 'let’s put ...
Organising first Pride 'by accident' 1997
“I got involved with the first Pride 1997, almost by accident. I was in between relationships so I had a lot of time on my hands. God knows how I found out about it, but there were plans for a Pride. The initial meeting was in a back room of a pub in...
Pubs/Clubs at the time - 1992
"At that time a lot of pubs were still knock on the door. You could walk into Partners. The Jester was up Holloway Head, and is one of the oldest gay pubs in Birmingham; I think it's renamed now. There's a police station above it and it's opposite...
Wolverhampton Scene and Bill Gavan
“Wolverhampton was never a gay scene at one time, we all used to go into town, then suddenly a bar opened in Chapel Ash called the Alexandra, Geoffrey Bangham opened it, and it became very popular – in the seventies, everyone used to go and that took...