Gay bars chapel hill nc

Blair House Restaurant / Blueberry Hill

(Courtesy John Martin)

Obverse reads:

BLAIR HOUSE on US 15 and 501 between Durham and Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

A Restaurant of Traditional Williamsburg design. Six dining rooms of varying size ranging in decor from rustic to formal. Recommended by Mobil Explore Guide.

H.S. Finley, Manager

Box 8735, Durham, N.C. Phone 489-9128

Blair House likely opened in the late 1950s, after the construction of Chapel Hill Boulevard. I recognize little about it. The Herald referred to it as "Country Inn" in the below 1960 photos. "Country Inn" - 04.01.60 "Country Inn" - 04.01.60 Schrafft's Country Inn ad, 1964 By the early-to-mid 1970s, it had closed, and the building(s) had become "Blueberry Hill" - which may acquire been Durham's first prevent for the gay collective. (The "Electric Company" in Chapel Hill had been the first in the area - where the Cave is currently located, opening in, I trust, 1971 - just two years after the Stonewall demonstrations. The little barn to the left was a bar unto itself - in 1974, it was called the "Royal Elbow" I don't know how long Blueberry Hill stayed

LGBTQIA+ travel

Visit the new south

Whether you’re ambling along our scenic downtown streets or rambling through the wooded hills, you’ll find yourself in a unique Southern community. “It epitomizes ‘The New South’,” says Jen Jones, who is a former director of communications for EqualityNC. “It’s a place of the future that welcomes diversity, embraces inclusivity, and is a gateway for native Tar Heels, wayward travelers and new transplants alike. Chapel Hill-Carrboro remains one of the most LGBTQ-friendly areas in North Carolina and across the South.”

Petrow agrees. “I travel all over the country and gays and lesbians are ‘tolerated’ more and more just about everywhere, which is great. But here we’re accepted,” he says. “I’ve looked for a place like this to dial home my entire experience and now I don’t plan to leave until my toes point up at the stars.”

A Generation of Bars Remembered

Though Blueberry Hill closed by the writing of this article, the ending paragraph shows the legacy of the dual space: the question of whether the Carolina Gay Association should use a bar vacuum “for special events and meetings when the disco is closed” (5). This is presented as a potential new endeavor that has not been done at previous bars, perhaps showing the utility of viewing bars not just as drinking-and-dancing but as gay recreational spaces that transcend nightlife, as Blueberry Hill did and as newer bars like Christopher’s might also have done. Of course there were important issues to contemplate in using a block for a university-affiliated organization’s activities, but the mere fact that this was raised as an option shows how the lock as a safe cosmos evolved tremendously in the span of a rare short years, from an uncertain mixed environment to “the center of homosexual life” (5).

Citing this Excerpt

Oral History Interview with Bill Hull, June 21, 2001. Interview K-0844. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Full Communicate of the Excerpt

CHRIS MCGINNIS:: Did you see any subcultures within the lgbtq+ community when you were there in Chapel Hill? I mean, you say of a very integratedâobviously there was some people that would have gone to the bar sceneâ
BILL HULL:: It was all a subculture.
CHRIS MCGINNIS:: So there were not subcultures of the subculture?
BILL HULL:: Not that I am a aware of, other than just cliques, which just happens in any social group, but I accomplish not remember anything other than the fact that gay people were male lover, we felt comfortable, but you had to be discrete.
CHRIS MCGINNIS:: But not everybody was necessarily openly gay.
BILL HULL:: Pardon?
CHRIS MCGINNIS:: Everyone who was gay was not necessarily out of the closet.
BILL HULL:: Oh no, that was the T-room crowd, that is what we called them.
CHRIS MCGINNIS:: Rightâ
BILL H .