![gay bar grand rapids gay bar grand rapids](https://www.denverpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/8.4D-Sir-owners.jpeg)
- Gay bar grand rapids full#
- Gay bar grand rapids code#
- Gay bar grand rapids free#
- Gay bar grand rapids windows#
Formerly known as Whispers, the bar was also forced to shut down and rebrand following the strip club closures earlier this year. Stephanie Shults is the general manager of the Penalty Box, which sits next door to Heartbreakers. He is unfazed by the news that the character is fictional. “Rocky Balboa is the greatest American that ever lived!” he yells over the music. The retro-heavy playlist is dominated by well-worn rock hits of the ’70s and ’80s, and while “Eye of the Tiger” played to the bar’s smattering of patrons, Jeff Dick, a manager and bartender at Heartbreakers, extolls the virtues of the man behind the song.
Other than the cornhole table folded up in the corner, there’s little that distinguishes Heartbreakers from the town’s group of straight bars. He wanders in and out of the bar, unsure if he wants to stay. “Is this Michael Jackson?” he repeatedly screams over “Billie Jean,” too drunk to realize how loud his question is. At 10 pm on a June evening, a man is yelling about the music selection. The handful of patrons are many of same people who frequented the strip club.
Gay bar grand rapids free#
The whiteboard sign out front still advertises ladies’ night: “4 the Ladies Free Drinks.”
Gay bar grand rapids windows#
Its front windows are covered with boards, designed to prevent having bricks thrown through them.
![gay bar grand rapids gay bar grand rapids](https://fastly.4sqi.net/img/general/600x600/YCtM2jqkorSHYpHtx4NUCcaceDR0wjUOFG8AIQ044rQ.jpg)
The bar is filled with heart-shaped benches, where strippers once got up close and personal with male patrons. When Heartbreakers reopened in late May, the stripper poles and stages were replaced with a rainbow-colored beer pong table, but the memory of the bar’s former life looms heavy over the space. Heartbreakers is a club in search of its own identity Heartbreakers, a gay club in Williston, North Dakota. If the shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando reminded us how important safe spaces are, North Dakota is proof positive. Something that seems ordinary, a local watering hole catering to queer clientele, can be particularly revolutionary when you have few other places to go. Winnipeg, Minneapolis, and Sioux Falls are a day’s journey. If Williston residents want to go to a gay or lesbian club elsewhere, they have to travel all the way to Billings, Montana, five hours away. Heartbreakers stands in the middle of downtown Williston - and when it opened, it became the only LGBTQ bar in North Dakota. North Dakota is a state that's not only legislatively hostile to queer folks but also geographically difficult to live in. Heartbreakers, however, illustrates the challenges of running a gay bar in a state where there are few resources for LGBTQ people, let alone gay clubs. “For us to try to compete with the other establishments in town, we have nothing new to offer,” Holbrook told the Williston Herald. Jared Holbrook, the owner of Heartbreakers, announced that it would be rebranding as a gay club following the shutdown. In January, the Williston City Council decided to revoke the erotic dancer licenses of the town’s two major strip clubs in hopes of “cleaning up” the city. The Times reported that since the oil boom, Williston had become “unsafe” for the women who live in the city - according to the Times, some women couldn’t even shop “at the local Walmart without men following them through the store.” The men, mostly oil workers who came to the area for work, compared it to being in prison.
Gay bar grand rapids full#
That club closed in 2013, shortly after a New York Times article chronicled the town’s demographic crisis: Williston, with a population of just 14,716, is young and full of men - 60 percent of residents between the ages of 18 and 34 are male. Heartbreakers, formerly a strip club, promised a new beginning for Williston. While Williston residents gather for the annual Upper Missouri Valley Fair, complete with wrestling and a performance from the local hypnotist, the town sits silent, as if it’s waiting for something. But since the oil dried up near the end of 2014, there’s less to go around these days. During the oil boom that blessed the region in the mid-2000s, that train brought prosperity to the town, with workers arriving to claim the spoils of overflowing black gold.
Gay bar grand rapids code#
The small bar, which holds 70 people at fire code capacity, is tucked away near the Amtrak station in Williston, North Dakota. It’s Saturday night, and Heartbreakers is empty.