Description:The ‘Gale’ has been the enduring feature at the very forefront of Birmingham’s gay club scene. In existence for 35 years and now in its fourth location, it has won numerous gay entertainment awards. It is a uniquely managed business that is owned by its 600 members, with all profits being reinvested in the club.
Extract from oral history interview:
“...the Nightingale club was the big main club and the Jester was open, Partners was open I think…might have been two or three gay pubs but they weren’t particularly well publicised as far as I know although that might have been me. The way I became involved on the Birmingham gay scene was through the Birmingham Friend Group…they ran a social evening on a Friday night in a pub called The Holloway on Holloway Head and that was kind of a non-threatening gay environment to go and meet other people and chat and then sometimes you’d go onto some of the pubs afterwards and some people used to go on to the club after that…I became involved in setting up a support group for gay men locally and had quite a lot of people from Birmingham, Coventry, Leamington… we used to meet twice a month and try to do things which were basically supportive or creative so either discussion groups or music making or art, all different things, tried to create an alternative environment for groups of gay men…we had up to about 20 sometimes to the meetings”. [MS 2255/2/102]
This extract comes from a longer interview undertaken as part of the Millennibrum Project in 2000. Transcripts and listening copies of the full interviews are available in Local Studies and History on floor six of Birmingham Central Library.