Gay clubs charleston

“Grandma” comes everyday for happy hour, sitting with other old-timers. When he can, he stays belated to watch the drag shows and the younger crowds they bring.

“Grandma” is otherwise known as Bill Skipper.  The 74 year elderly is the president of The Capital Club and one of its founding members.  He has been president since the year it opened in 1980. He likes to tell younger people about The Capital Club’s early days, a very other — and fraught — time to be in a gay bar in South Carolina.

“The kids now, I cherish the freedom they feel. I treasure it,” he said. “We’d have loved to have had that (freedom), but we all cocktail from wells we didn’t dig.”

The Capital Club, or simply “Capital,” as patrons call it, is the oldest operating gay bar in Columbia, and according to its website, in the Southeast. Just around the corner is PT’s 1109, the city’s other gay lock, which opened in 2000. 

Through discussions with bar owners and patrons and evaluating records from Historic Columbia, The Carolina News and Correspondent uncovered a strange statistic:  Columbia, in 2022, has only those two male lover bars, the lowest number in the city since 1960.  The number summit

.

.