John’s bar scene and began with the live band/dance venue Outer Limit on Topsail Road. The New York experience inspired his involvement in the St. “It was the first time I saw people I could associate with who were similar to myself,” Clark said. “Young and cute,” Clark said of how he managed to get through the door.
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The sidewalks night after night were lined with people desperate to get in.
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… It was just like the movie,” Clark said of what it was like to visit Studio 54, the haunt of avant-garde artist Andy Warhol, the fashion crowd and the who’s who of society. In New York, Clark’s eyes were opened to gay people on the streets and lots of venues, a scene that in the later 1970s included the iconic Studio 54, the legendarily opulent, over-the-top, celebrity- and indulgence-fuelled club. … I dated girls and lived the rock star life with the band,” he recalled. Being in a band and very social, I was sort of accepted. John’s) and homophobia was under the surface. “I got to see another gay life compared to what it was here. Clark went to visit Gaines in New York City.Īround the era of the Stonewall riots - the advent of the gay rights movement that began with a protest over police raids at the Greenwich Village bar - it was a world away from what it was like to be a young gay man in St. … We didn’t tolerate anybody being rude to ourselves or our customers.”Ĭlark was a saxophonist, a keyboardist, a flutist and a manager with the seven-piece rock band Garrison Hill, which included American serviceman Tony Gaines, who had been stationed at Argentia. If they wanted to wear a lampshade on their head they could do it. (For the customers) it was their safe spot and they had support and acceptance and they could be themselves. It wasn’t easy to do it at the time, to expose yourself as being gay at that time and have an openly gay business on Water Street. John's first openly gay bar, Friends, in the 1970s. You could be who you want to be,” Clark said during an interview with The Telegram in his St. From then on, there were several of Clark’s bars - gay and dance clubs - that fostered tolerance. John’s in the 1970s, ‘80s, ‘90s into the ‘00s, there’s a good chance you danced or drank in one of Eric Clark’s bars.Īnd if you were straight in the 1980s, you’d be lined up on Water Street trying to get into hotspot Club Max.Ĭlark took a bold step with his longtime business and onetime life partner, Duncan Morris, to start the first openly gay bar to St. If you were looking for a place to be out in St.