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To make money, Chernoff said, Tracks had to be promoted as a place for everyone: "We had to fill the club." Still, some from each group came on various nights. Sundays brought in black gays, and Tuesdays were reserved for lesbians. Fridays and Saturdays were primarily white gay men. Because of the type of music played, Thursday nights attracted college students, many of them heterosexual. But all types of people went to Tracks, although different groups tended to go on certain nights. Most nightclubs tend to draw a certain type of crowd. A rival club across the street, the Lost & Found, closed. In its first year, when the nightclub offered a discount cover charge, the lines once stretched for several blocks. Tracks became popular very quickly, with more than 2,000 people crowding inside on a weekend night. The sound system was so massive and loud that it would attract deaf students from Galludet University, who moved to the rhythm of the vibrating floor. He turned the warehouse into a mega-club with more than 500 lights hanging from the ceiling. "Remember Economics 101, supply and demand?"Ĭhernoff bought the largest building he could find-21,000 square feet of space that had been the distribution center for the now-defunct Washington Star newspaper. "The clubs were woefully inferior, but every club was packed," Chernoff said. Only a handful of gay dance clubs existed in the District, and a few bars set a small space aside for dancing. He rarely drinks, doesn't dance and can't tell good techno music from bad.īut while visiting Washington in 1984, Chernoff-a former real estate broker who owned a club called Tracks in Denver-saw a business opportunity. Chernoff, 57, who looks a bit like Danny DeVito and talks with a Brooklyn accent, dislikes nightclubs. The man who created Tracks, businessman Marty Chernoff, may seem like an unlikely person to run one of the city's most successful nightspots. We have more of a willingness to participate in society because society has more willingness to accept us." "There's more visibility now in the community.
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gay magazine that focuses on arts and entertainment. "Back then, there were fewer options for people beyond bars," said Randy Shulman, editor of Metro Weekly, a D.C. The club's rise and demise reflect the expansion of social life for gay men and lesbians in the city. And never before had so many gays and straights, women and men, blacks and whites, met under one roof to dance. Never before had the city seen such a huge club, one on a par with those in New York or Miami. The closing of Tracks marks the end of an era in D.C. "Without Tracks, I would be a closet case," he said. Short and others will remember Tracks for how it helped them with their own transformations. Over the next several years, the run-down, industrial area lined with bars and clubs will be revitalized and turned into a business district as the Navy Yard expands. SE, proudly painted purple inside and out, will be demolished to make way for a seven-story office building for Navy contractors. Soon after, the cavernous warehouse at 80 M St. People from across the country have called and e-mailed the club to lament its passing. On Saturday, Tracks will hold its final party, a bash expected to draw as many as 4,000. He was already meeting gays elsewhere in the city and said he no longer needed to be at the nightclub to feel special.īut in the past month, he and others have started coming back to mark the final days of a place that for most of the past 15 years was a hub for many in the area's gay community. Last year, he stopped going to Tracks every week.
#HISTORY OF GAY BARS IN DENVER HOW TO#
It took nearly three years of learning how to dance at the club off South Capitol Street for the baby-faced Short to gain the self-assurance to tell his family he's gay. On the catwalk, there is little inkling that by day the 21-year-old is a struggling office worker. Here under the mirror ball, the regulars at Tracks nightclub know him as "Shawn Allure." He's the guy with the outrageous costumes, glass-smooth moves and the captivating confidence. His black cape flows behind him like a billowing parachute. As lights flash around him, Shawn Short steps onto the dance floor, strutting and posing for the admiring crowd.