It’s hard to say when the two bars became a gay hangout, but by the 1960s, they were a favorite spot for white men - and a target for law enforcement. In 1955, she got her own beer license, and renamed the place after herself, opening it the next year. Miss Juanita, as she was known to her customers, had been waiting tables around town. He opened The Jungle in 1952, and a few years later, he hired Juanita Brazier to run the little sliver of a space next door, then called The Leopard. It starts with Warren Jett - a straight man - who had been running bars all over downtown for years. “The story behind these two bars is fascinating,” he says. It was Bridges, a Nashville writer and author, who led the research effort to get a historical marker downtown. “People went there so they could be themselves,” Bridges says. But once inside The Jungle, with the doors shut behind them to the outside world, men found friendship and love. Gay men caught holding hands out in the open would be handcuffed and hustled downtown and possibly jailed if they didn’t make bail.
“Of course, you couldn’t be out in public,” Bridges says, “there was just no way.” It was a spot they stopped at before heading to The Warehouse on Franklin Road to dance the night away. John Bridges’ first boyfriend took him to The Jungle in the 1970s. “And this will give them a little bit of history.” “Gay people coming up today, they don’t know what it was like back then,” says Peek, who is 76. Though the bars have long since been demolished, the place where they stood on the corner of Commerce and Seventh will now be permanently marked for passers-by, remembering an era when police raids and arrests sometimes ended in violence against the LGBTQ community. Recently, the Metro Historical Commission unveiled a plaque recognizing The Jungle and Juanita’s as the city’s first gay bars. “It was a rough time, but it was also a wonderful time for people like myself who were coming out.” “They both gave our circle a place to go where you felt safe,” Peek says. In the 1960s, at a time when same-sex relationships were considered unlawful, it was a welcoming place where gay men in Nashville could hang out together. It’s also where he met his partner, Joe, 47 years ago. It was the first bar Jerry Peek ever went into. Next door, Juanita’s, a skinny, shotgun-style joint with only a handful of tables, served as The Jungle’s sister establishment. The restaurant had a straight clientele during the day for lunch - but in the evening, it morphed into a gay bar.
(AP) - On a wild stretch of Commerce Street, next door to Ira’s Barber Shop and just blocks from Ryman Auditorium, stood a pair of unique bars surrounded by a slew of beer dives.ĭimly lit and filled with cigarette smoke, The Jungle was a one-room club with a grill where cocktails were mixed and a piano often inspired a round of singalongs. 21, 2018, the Metro Historical Commission is unveiling a plaque recognizing it and Juanita's as Nashville's first gay bars. 12, 1954, photo shows The Jungle, one of Commerce Street's better-known bars, in Nashville, Tenn.