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Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name. We asked various people from across the community to reminisce on what is no longer physically present anymore, but which lingers in the memory. Many have left their marks on the folks here who survived them. We have had our cultural centers - baths, bookstores, bars… restaurants, coffee shops and galleries … businesses, fundraisers and groups … and, of course, people, have come… and gone (and sometimes stayed). Dallas’ gay community, which Dallas Voice has been privileged to serve and document for 35 years this week, has changed a lot over its lifespan. And as a result, parts of it die off - whether people or places or things. THE CROSSROADS CONTINUES TO SERVE THE NEIGHBORHOOD AND THE CITY OF DALLAS AS A SYMBOL OF SOCIAL, ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL ACTION AMONG THE LGBTQ COMMUNITY.RSVP An oral history of the gayborhood of the pastĪ ny thriving community is an organic thing.
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WITH THE ONSLAUGHT OF THE AIDS CRISIS IN THE 1980s, THE CROSSROADS BECAME NOT ONLY AN ENTERTAINMENT DISTRICT, BUT ALSO A CENTER FOR POLITICAL ACTIVISM, SOCIAL SERVICES AND MEDICAL TESTING.ĪS THE HISTORIC HEART OF THE LGBTQ COMMUNITY OF DALLAS, THE CROSSROADS REMAINS THE LOCATION OF THE OLDEST GAY BUSINESSES IN THE CITY AND AS THE PRIMARY GATHERING POINT FOR LGBTQ POLITICAL AND SOCIAL EVENTS, INCLUDING THE ALAN ROSS FREEDOM PARADE. MORE GAY-OWNED BUSINESSES AND BARS FOLLOWED, AND BY THE END OF THE 1970s, THE MAJORITY OF BUSINESSES IN THE AREA CATERED TO THE LGBTQ COMMUNITY. GAYS AND LESBIANS BEGAN MOVING TO THE AREA, DRAWN TO ITS BOHEMIAN IMAGE AND PICTURESQUE ARCHITECTURE. THE AREA SURROUNDING THE INTERSECTION OF THROCKMORTON STREET AND CEDAR SPRINGS ROAD HAS BEEN CONSIDERED THE CENTER OF THE DALLAS LGBTQ COMMUNITY SINCE THE EARLY 1970s AND IS KNOWN AS "THE GAY CROSSROADS" OR "THE CROSSROADS." IN THE LATE 1960s AND EARLY 1970s, THE CROSSROADS WAS A MAGNET FOR THE CITY'S COUNTERCULTURE MOVEMENTS. For decades it has been a place where men and women gather to celebrate when the news is good and come for help when things get bad.Ĭedar Springs at Throckmorton Street, where JR's sits, has always been especially important. The intersection had been known as The Crossroads since the late 1960s, but its legacy was forever cemented in 1980 with the opening of the namesake market there that became the community's bookstore and meeting place. We know it as the gayborhood, or what's left of it - the Resource Center, JR's, Sue Ellen's, Station 4 and the Round-Up Saloon. He reached out to Doty and Robert Emery and Sam Childers of the Dallas Way, keepers of this city's LGBT history, who penned the necessary narrative, submitted the paperwork and raised the money for the marker.įor most of us, I imagine, this city's LGBT history begins and ends in Oak Lawn, along Cedar Springs, where people march in parades and in protests. But in 2016 Dwayne Jones, a former Preservation Dallas executive director now in Galveston, thought it time to tell the "undertold story" of Dallas' LGBT community.