Backstreet gay club atlanta ga

Mr. Charlie Brown, activist and drag performer (1949–2024)

People in Atlanta used to party until the sun came up. Eventually, that party would end in with the closure of Backstreet, the club club to hold onto atlanta hour liquor license. One thing that never went away was the legendary status of Mr. Charlie Brown. She was the ultimate drag queen, and she taught countless other baby queens the art of drag.

For 50 years, Charlie Brown entertained Atlanta backstreet nobody else — mixing jokes with sharp barbs — and helped make the city an epicenter for queer life. Born Charles H. Dillard in Siloam, Tennessee, inhe spent the first two decades of his life like many other closeted, Southern gay boys. After graduating high school, he moved to Nashville to go to business college.

Dropping out of college, Dillard realized he was in danger of being drafted into the Army for the Vietnam war. He decided to join the U. Air Force inwhich seemed a more palatable option compared to the Army. Dillard said in his oral history that he wound up in an all-gay barracks during basic training and would perform campy drag for his fellow nelly soldiers.

A co-worker arrived to take over the front desk duties and saw that Dillard had left the check-in system in shambles. Now, over 50 years later, reading the news coverage of the drag ban in my home state of Tennessee, I feel sick to my stomach. The hate-filled bullies are no longer lurking in the alley waiting to beat us up.

Inthey work at the state Capitol. She was immediately offered a job performing at the club, and this was the moment that set her on course to become the queen bitch of Atlanta. At this time, Atlanta was becoming known as the place to be for queer people in the South. By the time Charlie Brown moved to the city, Atlanta Pride had been officially launched, and more and more LGBTQ people were coming out and living an openly queer life.

Brown would go on to perform drag at many clubs around Atlanta untilwhen Backstreet brought on Charlie Brown as the headliner of her own cabaret. But like I always say here, fuck it. Atlanta used to be a major party destination. The city was known for its hour clubs, and people especially queer people traveled to Atlanta just for its wild times.

By many accounts, it was the Charlie Brown Cabaret that made the club famous. Between numbers, Charlie Brown would walk around the room with a microphone in hand. The DJ would play the gay song from Jaws as Charlie wandered the room and casually read the audience members about their looks, about how country they talked, about if they were lesbians with long or short nails and so forth.

All the strippers came after the strip clubs closed.