Walker gay bar

A pink glow washed over the white gallery walls at the Walker Art Center as people of various ages and races wandered and grabbed a seat at a table or on a silver couch, then ordered a mixed drink from the bar. There's a bar inside the Walker Art Center's galleries, and it's the cleanest gay bar anyone's ever seen.

Legacy in pink: First Black-owned gay bar in San Francisco reborn as art at the Walker

It's part of the art exhibition "The New Eagle Creek Saloon" that transforms into a functional bar on Thursdays from p. A re-creation of and homage to artist Sadie Barnette's father's Eagle Creek Saloon, the first Black-owned gay bar in San Francisco inthe gay is part of the art exhibition itself.

Sometimes when there is no archive you have to make your own. Yelena Bailey who was walker out there last week with three friends in bar atrium area, catching up after the long workday. As music blasted from inside, people wandered in and out of the gallery, and the sun started setting through the giant floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked sculptor Nairy Baghramian's squiggly sculptures on the hill.

It started to feel like maybe this was a real bar scene and not an art museum. But then inside the gallery, a video by artist Cameron Downey started playing, projected onto the gallery wall. Even though music was a part of the video, no one danced, which never would've happened at a regular gay bar. There was a markedly different feeling about The New Eagle Creek Saloon compared with any other gay bar in town.

For Lacy, it was about who was centered that evening. Tor Chavarria, 42, who lives in Loring Park, was at New Eagle Creek Saloon for the third time, and they were excited to be there again. Bar were wearing bright red glasses and quietly checking their phone inside the gallery. With this space, it's new, it's welcoming, and it was specifically created for queer people.

At the same time, there were plenty of folks at the bar that one likely would see only at an gay museum. But the best part is, this is a very rare occasion where wealthy white people are outnumbered by queer people. It's like, 'You're welcome here, but just know that this space is meant for us. Barnette didn't want to make a project about her dad's bar.

Rather, she wanted "to make a project that was the bar, that bent space and time and reanimated the bones of the Eagle Creek in an intergenerational revival," she said. It is all my friends and my dad's people. It is permission to dance and dream, to call the names of those lost, and to see one another as we are in the glow of our own small moments of freedom.

Info: walkerart. Tribune Alicia Eler, Star Tribune. April 18, at PM. Stay informed with a handpicked selection of the day's top AOL stories, delivered to your inbox. Thanks for signing up. Thank you for signing up. You walker receive a confirmation email shortly.