Recently, my husband and I watched Small Town Gay Bar, a documentary film about two gay bars in rural Mississippi..Rumors, in Shannon...and Different-Seasons in Meridian. Even though the movie centers around these two bars, its wider story is about the roll of these bars in creating a sense of community in a place where there would otherwise be nothing but naked hostility and homophobia. The bars serve as dating hub, safe zone, and community center all in one. The patrons of the bar, who often have to live their everyday lives under cover, find a place to be themselves and to connect to a gay self that can find expression no where else. That small piece of freedom comes at a price though, as they are only safe within the doors of the bar. If its not "family values" people writing down their license plates numbers and sending them threatening letters to their homes...its people harassing them in the parking lots, or law enforcement looking for any excuse to shut them down. Its a story told less about the bars themselves and more about the people that give them life...and like life, its sometimes sad, sometimes triumphant...but always changing.
It made me remember a place that was both refuge and coming out catalyst for me so many years ago...The Santa Rosa Inn. Today, I have no pictures to share of what it looked like, but they could never do justice to my memories..nor to the roll this place played in my life...
