Events tagged with "Nightingale"
Birmingham Pride
Birmingham hosted the first Birmingham Pride festival in 1997 and has held the event annually since. The first event was organised by a group of business and community volunteers called the Birmingham Triangle CommitteeThe roots of the event can be t...
Brian Wigley
Brian Wigley aka 'Boxer' was a well respected figure on Birmingham's gay scene throughout the 80s and 90s. He was responsible for introducing innovative party nights to the Nightingale, such as beach themed nights. Brian was the prime mover in the fi...
Five Days of Fun
Five Days of Fun, also known as 'Gay Brum'. The annual event took place for five days over the August Bank Holiday, the first taking place in 1983. Teams from different community and commercial ventures took part in 'It's a knockout' type games. The ...
Gay Village
Birmingham's Gay Village stretches the length of Hurst Street and everything to the right towards Bristol Street. The top end of Hurst Street has been a focus of gay life since the 1970s with the Jester, Windmill and Thorp Street Nightingale all serv...
Grosvenor House Hotel
The Grosvenor was a large Victorian hotel situated on the Hagley Road, on the Edgbaston/Bearwood border. About two miles out of the city centre, it was owned by the same couple who owned Guys Limited on Bromsgrove Street, John Walters and Keith Campb...
Hurst Street
Hurst Street has become the heart of Birmingham's vibrant Gay Village over the last fifteen years. Previously a run down warehouse district characterised by post war industrial units and Victorian shops and housing, cut off from the rest of the ci...
It's a Knockout
In the mid 1970s a competition was organised between the Grosvenor House Hotel on the Hagley Road and the Nightingale club, then in Witton Lane. The event was held in the gardens of the hotel. This event eventually grew to become Five Days of F...
Laurie Williams
Laurie Williams was the godfather of the early gay scene in Birmingham, he regularly held parties and promoted club nights pre 1967. He was instrumental in setting up the Nightingale Club in premises at Camp Hill and later opened the Jug. He was know...
Patrick Edwards aka Black Pat or Bula
Patrick Edwards or Black Pat aka Bula was one of the most well known and liked characters on the Birmingham gay scene. Of Afro-Caribbean descent, Pat was raised in Handsworth. Black Pat had a long association with the Nightingale Club where he was th...
The Nightingale
Opened in 1967, at 40 years old, The Nightingale, or Gale, is the oldest surviving gay venture in the city. It has a special place in the city's history as it was set up as much as a community venture as a commercial one, a place run for gay people b...
The Royal Court of Campania
The Royal Court of Campania was an honours system invented by Laurie Williams and Peter Scott-Fleeman, aka 'Ada', and given to people who had made an outstanding contribution to the gay scene. Laurie and Peter were part of one of the ‘in’ groups of g...
Tin Tins
Situated at the top end of Smallbrook Queensway in the 1960s Bull Ring Shopping Centre. The club was set on two levels, a long thin bar downstairs with a large dance area with bar upstairs. The club was a popular alternative to the Nightingale on Tho...
Tony De Vit
Tony De Vit started as a wedding DJ in 1976, before becoming resident DJ at Birmingham's premier gay venue, Nightingale, where he played pop and Hi-NRG. During the early 80's, he worked at Wolverhampton's Beacon Radio, playing club tracks during a re...
Twiggy
Twiggy has worked in clubs for over 25 years and has built up a reputation as one of Britain's top club hosts. He currently works at DV8 in Birmingham and at various clubs throughout the UK. At the height of the dance boom in the 90s he worked for th...
Voice
The Voice was the members magazine of the Nightingale Club, published between December 1982 and 1986. The magazine included editorials from prominent members and columns from DJ Tony de Vit and Bula....
Women's access to bars
Pre 1960s Prior to the 1960s, and well into the 1970s there appears to have been very little opportunity indeed for lesbians to get together openly in a social or public space. All the bars noted as being popular with the gay crowd in the 40s and 50...
Memories tagged with "Nightingale"
80s alternative scene
Mark F talks about the gay scene when he came out in the early 80s "I realised I was gay and this was when I also decided to visit what Birmingham had to offer a young gay man, who liked alternate music and had a penchant for make-up and a slightly (...
A closeted gay scene in the early '90s
Tom says he found Birmingham very closeted in the early '90s. “At the Nightingale everyone was very proper in the queue outside, but as soon as the outer clothes came off they were gay, then when they left and put the clothes back on, the same. Very...
Ageism on the scene
Ageism on the scene“When I had my seventieth birthday I thought it would be really good to have it in a gay club so I went to the Nightingale and they showed me the room upstairs which they wanted a fortune for. I didn’t want to ask all my friends th...
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...
Bringing Poppers to Birmingham
"There weren't as many drugs then, I introduced poppers to Birmingham then, via the Grosvenor, they were banned in the Nightingale, they used to smoke (weed) but never in the bars or the clubs, not that we banned it, they just didn't do it, if they s...
Closure of Lesbian and Gay Centre, Aston, '86
“It was really sad when the Lesbian and Gay Community Centre closed down. It existed for about three to four years with major funding from the then West Midlands County Council and then we lost the funding. No one had much commercial acumen also no o...
Clubbing at the Powerhouse 1985
“Eventually I made friends and got the confidence to go out on the scene. There was a one nighter at the Powerhouse. Thursday night was gay night, and it was the best venue in Birmingham. It’s still there, called something else. It has been a club si...
Coming Out : A Closeted Scene
Garry first came out in the Nightingale. It was his first gay bar/club and he saw the act of going there as his coming out. "You have to come out to yourself before you come out to other people and in those days it wasn't as free to be gay. It wasn't...
Competition from the Nightingale
"The Nightingale, which was in Camp Hill then (1969), moved to outside the Villa Ground, by the Holt pub (in 1975), for years, then (in 1981) they moved to Thorp Street, so I had to decide what I would have to do to keep the punters coming out of tow...
Contrasting attitudes of Friend counsellors 1992
“I had spoken to a Friend counselor in a face-to face situation and he was very supportive. He just said 'Be careful because of your age.' I was nineteen, twenty at the time. 'Good Luck. I think you'll be alright.' He wasn't looking to sexually ex...
Description of the Nightingale 1981
“The Nightingale moved to Thorp Street in 1981, the opening night they had an evening with Quentin Crisp which was quite dramatic. It was very ambitious to move from a small two roomed club in Witton Lane in Aston, with water running down the wall of...
Development of the Gay Village
Mike was asked about the rate of development in Birmingham and he explained that a big change was prompted by the change of the Nightingale's premises from Thorp Street to Kent Street after the return of the lease to the Hippodrome. Because this was ...
Difficulty accessing the Nightingale
At the Nightingale Twiggy said "I was regularly refused entry because of the way I looked in the early eighties; I dressed in an alternative manner to the regular guys in denim. The only way I got in hassle free was when I made friends with George Ba...
DV8 in the mid 00s
Becky says “DV8 was even more studenty. It was a more chilled out, studenty version of The Gale (Nightingale). The Gale has a more ‘Euro-poppy’ commercial kind of look to and feel to it. It was really obviously that they were trying to be really span...
First steps on the gay scene
Paul found a copy of Gay Times, which listed the Jester and Peacock (looked for but couldn’t find it) so he went to The Jester first. “When you go down the stairs everyone can see you going in, it’s very daunting, with fear, trepidation and excitemen...
FIrst time on the scene
I remember going to the Nightingale for the first time on a blind date “I was so nervous I don’t remember the entrance, the club was very large and the bar was on the back wall. The dance floor was sunken and to your right, it was dark and nothing li...
Five Days of Fun, 1983
Editorial from the Gay Midlander, September 1983 reviewing the first Five Days of Fun."Last Friday, 26th September, saw the launch of a unique event in the annals of Gay entertainment. Gay commercial venues in Birmingham collaborate in the production...
Friend Counseling Service
220 Friend Counseling Service"I was involved with Friend West Midlands, a gay lesbian bisexual counseling service that used to run alongside Switchboard. There was Gay Switchboard one side of the room. It used to be above the Nightingale then it m...
Fun and games on the Village Green, Pride 2005
“'Will you organise a two day programme of community events for Birmingham Pride?’ I was asked by the Birmingham Pride 2005 organiser, Paul Steeples, acting for the Gay Business Partnership. The brief was to include some of the fun elements such as a...
Galvanising community action against Clause 28
“I was very involved in Birmingham and Aston University Gay Societies; I and a woman, Rachel, decided we needed to do something about Clause 28, so we produced leaflets and on New Years Eve 1987 when it was going through Parliament, stood outside The...
Gay Centre discos at the Matador
“Prior to the Nightingale moving into town (Thorp St) in 1981 there was nothing in the city centre other than the original Gay Community Centre discos in Allison Street, bring your own booze, and 25p for a baked potato, that sort of fund-raising. So ...
Getting into Thorp Street
“A group of us used to go the Nightingale, it was open seven nights a week. You would turn up, there was a shutter on the door, they would open the shutter and look at you ‘hiya’, if they knew you they would let you in, if they didn’t they would not ...
Grosvenor 1970s
Then Pam’s favourite place opened, the Grosvenor Hotel on the Hagley Road, very much more upmarket, John Walters owned it and two of his regular clients were Peter Harris who designed the muppets and Noelle Gordon as well. The Nightingale had moved t...
Hilli's first impressions of the Fox
Hilli was working in the Nightingale and in 1994 was invited to help with managing The Fox but turned it down; she wasn’t very comfortable in The Fox as it was very clique ridden. She enrolled in a British Sign Language course which was being held in...
How Campania came about
Alan discusses The Royal Court of Campania "Peter Scott-Fleeman and Laurie Williams met one New Years Eve in the 1960’s and they were talking in a camp way about the honours list, they joked that the gay scene, although it was called the homosexual s...
I loved it
I loved the Nightingale Club at Witton Lane, Aston. I was the DJ there from 1977 until the club moved to Thorp Street. It was a small, triangular building on three flours. The club occupied the first two floors and the club managers, (Mick Dunn and...
I loved the Nightingale at Witton Lane, 1977
I loved the Nightingale Club at Witton Lane, Aston. I was the DJ there from 1977 until the club moved to Thorp Street. It was a small, triangular building on three flours. The club occupied the first two floors and the club managers, (Mick Dunn an...
Important role of the Nightingale
“The big picture in Birmingham is the presence of The Nightingale and its history. It was established with a constitution like a working men’s club, by and for its members, for 30 years or more. It acquired its name from a former Indian restaurant, o...
Impressions of the Scene 1986
Mike discussed his impressions of the differences between Manchester and Birmingham in terms of the things he would value. "Well both of the cities have changed an awful lot in the time since 1990, that's for sure but I think that Birmingham's change...
It's a Knockout
"Birmingham's "Five Days of Fun" originated in the Grosvenor house Hotel. It was the Grosvenor against the Nightingale, I think when that happened, the Nightingale was still in Aston (pre-1981). This became the precursor to Pride, so the Grosvenor st...
Lack of disabled access c2007
Trevor, who is disabled and uses a wheelchair, talks about the lack of disabled access c.2007Trevor states, “Even now there are only three or four venues that are accessible to me. I can’t get into Angels, The Village or Partners. I can get into The ...
Lack of women’s venues in 1980s and early 90s
When Inge first came out in the mid 80s “There was hardly anything in town, (for women), apart from the Matador (Lesbian Line discos). I didn’t go to the Nightingale much. I first socialised at the Jug approx. 1992, but it was very hard to get into t...
Laurie and The Jug
“Laurie Williams worked at the Home Office and he managed to get the Nightingale a late licence, like a Working Man’s Club, in a tin hut in Camp Hill. Then they had a political fall out about whose club it was and Laurie was booted out, so he set up ...
Laurie was unique
Laurie Williams was unique; an interesting and complex figure. He was an openly gay man from the 1940s, a pioneer. He was involved in gay life in World War II in Birmingham. He survived the 1950s because he was so out. That gave him a degree of...
Massive change in Village since 1990
Mike described the change in the social side in Birmingham since 1990. He felt that there had been a "massive change", referring again to the "two gay basement bars (The Jester and one gay club (Nightingale)" around when he first arrived in 1987, alt...
Meeting John
“I was working at the Royal George down in Digbeth, it was then a really superb restaurant and bar and I was in charge of the cocktail bar downstairs and John used to come in as a customer and stand there for an hour watching me and I was aware of hi...
Memories
"I first met Laurie Williams and his partner Lionel Strawbridge in 1977. I was a student at Birmingham University where, during term time I helped run the Birmingham University Gay Society, (GaySoc). In the 1970s The Nightingale Club, at Witton Lane,...
Memories from down under! 1982 - 7
"I’m 44 and have lived in Sydney (Australia) since 1989. However, I was born in Birmingham and grew up near Worcester.Friends and I used to go clubbing regularly in Brum from around 1982 to 1987 when I moved to London.It would be magical to see some ...
Memories of Thorp Street
Garry talked about the Hi-Energy music at the Nightingale which was a real enlightenment. There was a thrill in "just seeing people like yourself. They'd talk to you. It wasn't all about ... well, a lot of it was obviously... copping off... but you m...
Men only at the Gale was old-fashioned for '87
Mike also said: "One of the things that I did notice when I came here (late 80s) was that there was a real demarcation between where men socialised and where women socialised. Women tended to go to Partners whereas The Jester was almost exclusively m...
More choices for lesbians in town 1996 onwards
“By the mid 1990s things were starting to happen in town (the gay village area). I remember going to the Fox in about 1996/7 before it had become a women's bar, but it was vaguely turning into a gay bar, it was just on the edge. Angels might be there...
Nightingale - It Was a Bit Seedy!
Norman says "I also used to go the Nightingale, firstly when it was in Camp Hill, only a small place a downstairs bar, with a restaurant and toilets upstairs. People came from miles around. I'd heard people talking about it in the Trocadero. I found ...
Nightingale charges Switchboard peppercorn rent
“When the Nightingale opened in Thorp Street (in 1981) Switchboard was invited along with Friend to take rooms there for a peppercorn rent for something like £100 a year. There was a stretch for about 3 years when the Nightingale declined to ask for ...
Nightingale Robbery
This article from 'Lesbian and Gay News West Midlands' describes a particulalry brutal robbery, which occured at the Nightingale Club in 1991.£10.000 STOLEN FROM 'GALE' BY MASKED RAIDERSBurglars armed with a knife stole £10,000 from the Nightingale C...
No women in the Gale
The Jug’s main competitor in 1986 when Steve came to Birmingham was the Nightingale, then in Thorp Street. He recalls that there were two dance floors on one level and it was about half the size of the current club. Male strippers formed a regular pa...
No women members at clubs 1970s
Basically all the gay venues, of which there weren’t many, were men. “You had to be signed in, you couldn’t get membership. We tried all through the sixties to get membership, and there was just no way. When the Nightingale moved to Thorp Street, wom...
One summer with Laurie is like a lifetime
"I first met Laurie Williams and his partner Lionel Strawbridge in 1977. I was a student at Birmingham University where, during term time I helped run the Birmingham University Gay Society, (GaySoc). In the 1970s The Nightingale Club, at Witton Lane,...
Only two bars to choose from
“When I first came out there were only two bars and the Nightingale, the bars were the Windmill and the Jester. I’d heard of the Jug too but never ventured down there.At that time, all the bars were downstairs, there were no windows, it was pretty gr...
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...
Party Nights
They began to have theme parties; the first one was a Beach Party. “We covered the dance floor in tiny polystyrene beads, parked a sailing dinghy on the side of the beach, on the stage area in the concert room they put a three hundred weight of sand ...
The first Pride Ball in 1998
"Out of the first Birmingham Pride, to fundraise came the Gay Pride Ball. I suggested we all invite our solicitors, accountants, doctors, dentists, hence why the Ball is 50% gay, it’s friends, families, associates, it’s become a business. The first P...
The Inge Street Taxi Rank
A typical night out for James would have involved a drink in The Jester, then onto The Windmill (now Partners) and finally onto The Gale. There was nowhere else to go afterwards so they would run the gauntlet getting a taxi to escort them safely out ...
The Nightingale Camp Hill 1969
“A tin shack (the original Nightingale), by the flyover on the Stratford Road. It opened at 10pm, only on a Saturday and Sunday. Then it moved to Aston, then Thorp St, then now, and got better with every move. You went there with the risk of gastroe...
The Nightingale was born
After the ‘Queen Victoria’ closed, there was a barren period in Birmingham in respect of club life. ‘La’ (Laurie Williams) approached me one night in the Imperial Bar and told me he had found a backer who wanted to put up the cash to start a gay memb...
The politics of gay clubs
The politics of gay clubs"I’ve no idea about the politics of the Silver Web because we didn’t go there often enough to get to know the hierarchy but there was a lot of politics with a small ‘p’ at gay clubs about who they would let in because they we...
Through the Spy Hole at the Nightingale
“Once I’d discovered the Viking and made some friends, we went round to the Nightingale, which was in those days in Camp Hill in a two-up two-down house. You had to ring a bell and a spy hole would open and you would be perused. It was not very lesbi...
Tuesday was stripper night
“In my early twenties, (late 80s) the whole premise was going to The Jester and then round to The Nightingale . You got your cash from the Barclay cash machine outside The Jester. People would say ‘Are you going round the corner?’ (to The Gale). The...
Working at the Nightingale
Garry worked at the new Nightingale when he came to Birmingham as a mature student. He worked there not for the money but to make friends. (From 1994 onwards the Nightingale was in its current premises in Kent Street). Women were allowed in at this t...