Memories tagged with "Trocadero"
First Gay Bar, The Imperial
"I first went to my first gay bar, the Imperial Hotel, in Temple Street when I was 13, in 1962. There was one opposite, called the Trocadero. If you were a smart queen you went to the Imperial, if you wanted a bit of rough you went over the road to t...
He was very gay and a great character
“I recall Laurie Williams, he was a great character, a great Brummie character, very flamboyant and very gay. Laurie was a bit like Quentin Crisp because he was flamboyant and I remember him coming into the Trocadero one night, in this fabulous...
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...
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 ...
No women on the scene in the 60s
Trevor talks about the absence of women on the scene in the 1960s. “There was ladies there as well, but in those days, not so many ladies used to come out, but one or two used to come out. Why was that? There were no ladies in the bars, I find that s...
Smoky Trocadero
“In the mid sixties when I first started going into the Trocadero, I remember one Sunday night in November vividly. Laurie Williams came in dressed spectacularly in a pure white raincoat, he said his ‘hellos’, everyone called him ‘La Williams’. He co...
The scene in the 50/60/70s
“At the time the bars were fabulous - in the fifties and sixties, all the bars were fabulous. There were still a lot of American bars, still a lot of people who drank cocktails in those days, gin and tonics I suppose. There was the Imperial up Temp...
Trocadero mid-1950s
In the 1950s a group of artists and writers used to meet in the Trocadero, it had a number of bars stretching between Temple Street and Bennetts Hill, and you could walk right through from one street to the other. “We used to meet in the back on the ...
Women only disco at the Imperial
There was quite a divide between the political and non political lesbians, so Pam never went to the Old Mo or the Women’s Discos at the Star Club. She would go to “the rubbishy ones at The Imperial on a Wednesday evening, to chat someone up, not to g...