Before Stonewall, There Was Starlite

In 1959, before the Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village, Mackie Harris, one of New York City's first openly gay black entrepreneurs, opened the Starlite Lounge, a gay bar on Nostrand Avenue in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

There weren't many places that gay people could go in those days, and they came from all over to the Starlite, which went from being a neighborhood hangout in the 50s and early 60s to being the hub of the gay black community.

The funky Starlite mix included gay people of color, who flocked to the drag shows on Fridays and house music nights on Saturdays; a hip multiracial crowd of Karaoke-loving neighborhood newtimers; the local oldtimers who had hung out at the bar for decades.

Two filmmakers, Sasha Wortzel and Kate Kunath, are making a feature-length documentary film, to be released next year, about the fight -- which the filmmakers have joined -- to revive the now-defunct Starlite.

This month, the filmmakers and owners co-hosted a Starlite reunion, which drew hundreds of old regulars.

The bar owners have mounted a campaign to re-open the bar on fundraising website IndieGoGo and are looking for a new Crown Heights location.

But the Starlite is closed, a big black hole, on a corner where people walking home late used to feel a little safer because the bar was still open.

The article from the Daily News.