• Per article in the newspaper Northwest Gay Review, June 1977 written by W Holman “A Gay History – lest it be forgotten” sheds may stories on The Tavern and The Harbor Inn. It appears that on page 3 he cites that “The Tavern. Fame and its hospitable reputation quickly spread. Earwigs and cockroaches alone filled it to capacity. [further into the article] “to gain status and become the nucleus of present day organized annual pageantry: The Royal Court. [further into the article] Within the hallowed halls of The Tavern, Portland’s Gay Territorial Imperative – a Fantasy Kingdom – was created, to become the oldest court system on the entire west coast. [further into the article page 4] The Tavern and Harbor (Inn), as well as the Tel & Tel was home for the group, a protectorate. Stragglers and the unemployed or unencumbered gathered in the afternoon. By the time downtown businesses and offices closed, the Day Nurseries were busy. [further into the article] In Spring 1961, The Tavern moved to its present location. [further into the article] Six months after The Tavern had relocated and a year before the overly - zealous Columbus Day breeze pruned some prized trees and reshaped a few buildings) an Annual Charity Blowout was programmed. The charitable element involved diligent patronage of such exclusive milliners and couturiere as [Goodwill and Vinnie d’Paul]. Each year, racks of elegant finery were collected for the annual blast, which by careful calculation became somewhat legal: the festive fracas was Hallowe’en. Under protective costume guise, butch and bitch emerged, not necessarily in true likeness or in that order. Finery encased and released; drag lost its butch connotation in costume and costume provide the excuse for drag. Pure as driven slush, automated manikins donned their gay apparel, two months prematurely. The waterfront crow, each season began with Hallowe’en, to continue through the dawning of another year.

• About the same time (and for the ensuing four to five years), the city began to “closer investigate” the morals of one particular group of voters. Slowly, but too surely, authority began to agitate that ripening infestation Portland had tried to ignore. Lucy, with tambourine – her only weapon full of butts, ingloriously dumped the lot on the feet of an OLCC inspector who was parked at the bar. There was a closure. The Harbor’s topside was closed by downright meaningless edit: too much weight confined into one area, even though most of it was gas or gassed. Saunders’ Tel & Tell, still within spitting range of the Police Station, was closed periodically for frivols and various infractions. Eventually, the city refused license to dispense a bag of popcorn or a glass of soda water; the OLCC refused to enter the battle and issued liquor dispensering licenses. A customer had no choice but to drink only intoxicating fluids, nor could he quelch a hunger pang – in a business not legally doing business.

• [further into the article page 5] Because the City of Portland still refused to dispense license to serve food or beverages other than those containing alcohol, the Harbor met its demise. Law is law; the OLCC had not chose. The percentages of food sold against those of beverages purchased had to be maintained by law. As the only cocktail bar involved in the city’s harassing game of shell-and-pea, The Harbor was doomed because it could not function as a restaurant. The city got one of its prey-temporarily. The Harbor acquiesced but it was not amused; it opened its doors again in the northwest area. The Riptide accepted most of its previous customers but was definitely not interested in obvious clientele, in or out of drag.

• Per a paper called Chronology of Portland’s Gay Bars – author unknown, “The Harbor Club, 736 SW 1st St 1951-June 1965; liquor night club closed down by actions of the city; gay after 1 am; owner John J Honegger; only bar in Oregon that was off limits to navy personnel; now occupied by Paddy’s.”

• Per the GLAPN - A Walking Tour of Downtown Portland: A Century of Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Historic Sites June 1999: “The premiere Lesbian and Gay bar of the 1950s was the Harbor Club which was so notorious that it was declared “off limits” by the U. S. Navy. This was a cocktail lounge with a brazen mezzanine level where boys could sit in the dark and kiss and do ‘other things’ which upset the powers that be in the city. Amazingly there were no known raids of any gay bars in Portland that we have been able to document, although on one occasion the police and fire department did clear The Harbor Club at the instigation of a city council member. Council Earl in 1964 recalled going up into the balcony one Saturday night a year before, with the Fire Marshall Inspector, and Vice Squad Sgt. Fred Sutterfield. He remarked, “…from what I saw in my rapid inspection, I was quite disgusted. I had a big, long flashlight in my hand which I was willing to use if I had to.” The bar also attracted a significant lesbian crowd, and local artist Pat Ware remembers hanging out here in the early 1960s with some of the members of the Florists, the woman’s national softball champions which was largely a lesbian team. After the Tavern Licensing Controversy, the city succeeded in closing the Harbor due to the fact it was the only (one) of the eight gay establishments* that had a Class A dispenser license allowing it to serve liquor. Because of OLCC regulations requiring a certain percentage of food sales with every Class A license, the city soon found an ingenious method by denying food permits to The Harbor. The OLCC although it continued granting Honegger a liquor license, was forced to finally close his establishment in June 1965. He quickly relocated at his new local uptown in The Riptide [949 SW Stark Street]. * Note: Those eight bars were The Half Moon/The Tavern, Harbor Club, Old Glory Restaurant, Derek's Tavern, the Transfusion Inn, Milwaukie Tavern, Model Inn, and Mama Bernice’s.

• Duane Frye’s full interview was again printed under GLAPN’s Reflections section of the 1993 Portland Gay*Lesbian*Bi*Trans Pride Parade & Festival June 20-21, 1993, page 11 and 19. Here is the balance of the interview: There were other gay places at that time as well. The Cupboard located next to the Broadway Theatre, a beer bar and later named the 19th Hole. The Pantry wasn’t strictly gay but had a mixed clientele and frequented by many gays as they could buy cocktails there and also have dinner; however, it didn’t last too many years. Bob Saunders opened the Tel and Tel Tavern on Oak Street and I worked there a short time as beer tender. Later, it was sold to Derek and went by that name until it became The Family Zoo. The Harbor Club and Dahl and Penne were liquor bars and very popular and. Had huge crowds. The space was somewhat limited at the Harbor club and there were often long lines waiting to be allowed in, so as not to flaunt the fire code. Leo Kennedy owned the Half Moon Tavern, and it was a popular meeting place until the property sold and is now Riverside West. I worked there part time for at least six years and also when it moved to Second and Yamhill. Many years later it was destroyed by fire and never restored.

• Per the book The Queerest Places [A guide to Gay and Lesbian Historic sites] by Paula Martinac 1997 – cites the following, “For help in compiling the Portland listings, many thanks to Tom Cook, president of the Gay and Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest. For more sites associated with gay Portland, see “From Silence to Celebration! A guide to Portland’s Historic Gay Sites,” a publication of GLAPN. Don Horn reached out to Tom Cook, and he states that the name of the document was changed to the GLAPN A Walking Tour of Downtown Portland: A Century of Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Historic Sites June 1999. Per Paula’s book, she writes, “Harbor Club, NE corner of First and Yamhill Streets: This was one of the best-known gay bars in the city from 1946-1965. The navy declared it off limits to sailors, the only bar in town to receive that dubious honor.”

• Gay/Lesbian Capstone Archives Course: The Resurrection of the Transfusion Inn, Did it Exist? James S. Loos Prof. Mussey December 4, 2000 The paper was about The Transfuion Inn, however Harbor Club is mentioned: The relative chaos of the Transfusion may have been balanced by another property queer drinking establishment just a few blocks north called The Harbor Club. Though part restaurant and part lounge, the Harbor featured an upstairs area, accessible only through a stairway obscured by a thick curtain. After mounting the stairs, one would have to pass oven an enclosed mezzanine and finally into the line of people waiting to get into the secret queer bar. Sally describes the Harbor as “the Grand Daddy’ of gay bars.

• Liquor licensing at that time disallowed dancing-even to jukebox music unless certain “cabaret” style licenses were purchased. The cabaret licenses-being much more expensive – excluded smaller tavems, parlors, and bars from encouraging more intimate atmospheres as well as allowing the few larger clubs to monopolize amore upscale crowd – straight or gay. Whether the OLCC had any hidden agenda in its exorbitant pricing of liquor permits for dance halls remains a mystery but does indicate the amount of power and force held by the commission. The Transfusion tavern did in fact have women bartenders, did function as a lesbian space and was located in an area of downtown Portland known for several queer friendly bars. Before 1959 and the emergence of the Transfusion Inn, 1139 SW 1st had been the home of Mt Shasta/Restautaunt. According to the Portland City Directory at the Oregon Historical Society, Mt. Shasta occupied 1139 from 1936 on up to 1959 [per Portland Director 1936 through 1965) The the reasons for Mt Shasta’s departure remains a mystery, the businesses of SW 1 in the forties, fifties, and sixties does give some indication as to the physical make-up of the neighborhood and does allow forsome inferences to be made about the people in that time.

• The Harbor was always packed - and though no dancing was allowed, the operator of the bar (a woman) would allow same-sex dancing as long as she felt that no “agents” (Oregon Liquor Control Commission investigators) present… OLCC had the power to shut an operation down indefinitely on reasons of “lewd conducts to sanitary conditions. Monitoring of dancing in such places was not only an act of caution by operators of certain establishments but it was also one of immediate survival…Though upscale, hidden, and relatively peaceful in comparison to the transfusion Inn, bars such as The Harbor Club indicate that a wide variety of queer establishments existed within a geographically small place. The Transfusion – straights and gay, socially permitted drugs and illegal ones-seem to embody the meaning of transfusion – the act of passing from one to the other”. In an area and when queer still meant closeted – in places like the Transfusion Inn – Portland was emerging, rearranging and finally, transforming into something “other”.

• “Dark and busy,” Cole says of the bar on SW First, a worn relic of the 19th-century waterfront. (The navy once declared it off-limits to sailors ashore.) “Mysterious,” Cole continues. “Everyone went to the upstairs bar, and you wouldn’t know it was there from the street. We didn’t have a flag then, you know. Anything in the world went on in there.” This was a cocktail lounge with a brazen mezzanine level where men could sit in the dark and kiss and do “other things,” which upset the powers that be in the city. Amazingly, there were no known raids of any gay bars in Portland that we have been able to document, although on one occasion the police and fire department did clear the Harbor Club at the instigation of a City Council member. Councilman Earl in 1964 recalled going up into the balcony one Saturday night a few years before, with the Fire Marshal Inspector, and Vice Squad Sgt. Fred Sutterfield. He remarked, “…from what I saw in my rapid inspection, I was quite disgusted. I had a big, long flashlight in my hand which I was willing to use if I had to.” There were reported controversies with the Harbor Club, however. It was cited for an illegal liquor sale (Oregonian, May 12, 1948, p. 19); and there was a serious fight between a man being evicted and the owner and a bartender, leading to a skull fracture and hospitalization of the owner, Donald McAlpin (Oregonian, Dec. 7, 1955, p. 35). The bar also attracted a significant lesbian crowd, and local artist Pat Ware remembers hanging out here in the early 1960s with some of the members of the [Erv Lind] Florists, the women’s national softball champions, which was largely a lesbian team.

and there was a serious fight between a man being evicted and the owner and a bartender, leading to a skull fracture and hospitalization of the owner, Donald McAlpin After the tavern licensing controversy, the city succeeded in closing the Harbor Club due to the fact that it was the only of the eight gay establishments that had a Class A dispenser license allowing it to serve liquor. Because of OLCC regulations requiring a certain percentage of food sales with every Class A license, the city soon found an ingenious method by denying food permits to the Harbor Club. The OLCC, although it continued granting the owner a liquor license, finally closed his establishment in June 1965. He quickly reopened at his new locale uptown in The Riptide. This brass ship wheel is believed to have been from The Harbor Inn, then moved to The Riptide which then lastly ended up at Embers.

The bar also attracted a significant lesbian crowd, and local artist Pat Ware remembers hanging out here in the early 1960s with some of the members of the Florists, the women’s national softball champions, which was largely a lesbian team. • Listed in the Directory 43 2nd Edition Travel Guide - 1964 After the tavern licensing controversy, the city succeeded in closing the Harbor Club due to the fact that it was the only of the eight gay establishments that had a Class A dispenser license allowing it to serve liquor. Because of OLCC regulations requiring a certain percentage of food sales with every Class A license, the city soon found an ingenious method by denying food permits to the Harbor Club. The OLCC, although it continued granting the owner a liquor license, finally closed his establishment in June 1965. He quickly reopened at his new locale uptown in The Riptide. The building that housed the Harbor Club is still around, and is home to Paddy’s, Portland’s oldest Irish bar, and is one of the most popular drinking spots for sailors from the U.S. and Canadian navies when the Rose Festival Fleet docks here every spring. The Harbor Club (now Paddy’s Bar & Grill), 736 S.W. First.

Pat Ware, a Harbor Club customer, remembered "it said harbor in neon and it has a risque look to it. Like people wouldn't go into it unless you knew what kind of bar it was and that kind of thing. It was very dark and so forth." 38 also cited in the paper The Harbor Club, like many gay bars, had a customer base of various sexual orientations during the day but was almost entirely queer and predominantly male between 1 and 2:30 a.m. Queer customers often built long lines outside of the Harbor Club after taverns licensed only until 1 a.m. closed.76 and “[Dorothy McCullogh] Lee's increased action against gay bars were part of her reformist attack on vice throughout the city, rather than direct manipulation of elections or distraction from scandal. Gay bars during Lee's administration included the Harbor Club, Music Hall, Back Stage, and Rathskellar Beer Parlor. A lesbian clientele gathered at the Buick Cafe, while a mixed crowd went to the Back Stage and Music Hall. 75 also cited in Gay Bars, Vice, and Reform in Portland, 1948-1965 “This illustrated councilors' definition of gay bars as undesirable but not essentially threatening the city. For example, the city council had no questions for Johnnie Honegger, owner of the Harbor Club, in 1952 and voted unanimously in favor of his liquor license renewal. The council's unanimous approval of the renewal requests of Olga Polechrones and Roy Cope also demonstrated the return of council inattention to gay bars. Polechrones' Model Inn and Cope's Old Glory were later targeted as "homosexual hangouts" in the 1964-65 city crackdown.” https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3978&context=open_access_etds

per Gay Bars, Vice, and Reform in Portland, 1948-1965 Beka Smith, Portland State University https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3978&context=open_access_etds and it should be noted, that the Harbor Inn/Club sold magazines per From Gay Bars, Vice, and Reform in Portland, 1948-1965 Beka Smith, Portland State University https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/2961/ “However, letters to the editor and oral history show that some Northwesterners read early gay rights magazines. Rich's Cigar Store in downtown Portland sold approximately 15 copies per month of One magazine in the 1950s. 242 Marc Thorsen remembered distributing Mattachine magazines in three or four newsstands and gay bars, including the Harbor Club, in the 1950s. This suggests that there was at least a small group of gay rights supporters in the area. Tom Cook, "OSU Professor Starts Early Gay Magazine," Alternative Connection 3 (January 1994 and 243 Marc Thorsen, "Fighting Oppression in 1950's Portland: A First-Person Account," http://home.teleport.com/-glapn/ar04015.htm1, 12 February 2002.

Also, “The police argued that owners did not control customers' behavior. "The patrons openly practice their activities," the bureau reported about Mama Bernice's queer customers.415 They particularly criticized the Harbor Club, as "the number one establishment in the City of Portland where persons of questionable moral habits, both homosexual and lesbian frequent. .. It is considered the most disorderly of all the 'gay' establishments in Portland."416 The police described "males openly kissing each other, fondling each other, with no attempt to cover these activities."417

“…Schrunk asked that OLCC increase surveillance of the bars. Schrunk's request was apparently not granted, as gay bar owners and customers claimed that the city and state did not take further actions against gay bars after OLCC's decision.431 Schrunk vowed to close gay bars in subsequent years by using Portland's police to monitor and record activities and increase arrests, but this was not implemented.432 The city withheld the bars' food and non-alcoholic beverage licenses for a period of months.433 This succeeded in closing only the Harbor Club, because the Harbor was the only bar that served hard liquor. OLCC was forced to close the arbor because hard liquor licenses required food service. The Harbor, however, reopened in the Northwest as the Riptide, although former customers alleged that the Riptide was less welcoming of obviously queer customers.434 According to writers and gay bar customers Staley, Burkart, and Holman, the city relented and granted food licenses to the other six bars when councilors heard that the owners planned to sue the city as a group. 435 From Gay Bars, Vice, and Reform in Portland, 1948-1965 Beka Smith, Portland State University https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/2961/

Per Sister Paula Nielsen in her book “The Trans-Evangelist, page 98, “In the mid-1950s, there was a notorious bar, the Harbor Club on SW 2nd Avenue & Yamhill Street. The Harbor Club housed a street-level restaurant and bar which catered to straights and gays, while upstairs was a bar frequented exclusively by gays at nighttime…Harbor Club was off-limits to soldiers and sailors. Nearby was a tavern at SW 1st Ave & Morrison St, The Half Moon. [Page 123] in the late 1950s, I hung out at the Harbor Club and the[Half Moon Tavern. During the city’s annual Rose Festival celebration, several Navy ships docked at Portland’s waterfront. The Half Moon would be jam-packed with Canadian sailors. Sometimes military men would patronize the Harbor Club in civilian clothes. Most of the military men went to gay bars to find sexual encounters. However, a few would lure gay men away from the bar, their buddies waiting outside to rob them and sometimes beat them up. In those days, there was a strong bond between masculine women and effeminate men. Many of them hung out at the Harbor Club, forming strong friendship bonds. It was there that I met a lesbian couple, Jacki and Esther. Jacki (the “e” was intentionally left off the end of her name) was the butch (masculine) partnering their relationship. On page 185”1973, Portland had more than just two gay bars where homosexuals could be open. Besides the bar scene, other I munity activities for gays and lesbians were forming. While conservative as it was in the 1950s, Portland was still on its way to becoming a progressive city. The old gay hangout, the Harbor Club, was no longer Since its closure in 1965, many other bars catering to gays had come into play.” And on page 100, “After turning 21 and going to the Harbor Club, I ran some guys who could pass as straight, whom I had known in high school. I was surprised to see them in a gay bar, but they were not surprised to see me there. One of them told me about activities that went on in private places on the campus of Gresham High school, back when I was a student there, that I had no idea even existed.

-    Per an interview with Duane Frye that was printed under GLAPN’s Reflections section of the 1993 Portland Gay*Lesbian*Bi*Trans Pride Parade & Festival June 20-21, 1993 page 11 and 19. who frequented the Music Hall at this time, recalls: “There were other gay places at that time as well. The Cupboard is located next to the Broadway Theatre, a beer bar and later named the 19th Hole. The Pantry wasn’t strictly gay but had a mixed clientele and frequented by many gays as they could buy cocktails there and also have dinner; however, it didn’t last too many years. Bob Saunders opened the Tel and Tel Tavern on Oak Street and I worked there a short time as beer tender. Later, it was sold to Derek and went by that name until it became The Family Zoo. The Harbor Club and Dahl and Penne were liquor bars and very popular and. Had huge crowds. The space was somewhat limited at the Harbor club and there were often long lines waiting to be allowed in, so as not to flaunt the fire code. Leo Kennedy owned the Half Moon Tavern and it was a popular meeting place until the property sold and is now Riverside West. I worked there part-time for at least six years and also when it moved to Second and Yamhill. Many years later it was destroyed y fire and never restored.

Per paper written by Matthew Baker for Professor Schuler’s Historiography class, March 1, 2005, entitled Closeted Nightclubs: Why Doesn’t Portland’s ‘Gay Community’ Recognize the Gay Bar Culture?

…was during the war “that some of the earliest exclusively gay bars developed (Per historian Peter Boag). Portland would become, at least during the war, home to many servicemen and women at a time when “vice and gay bars … operated unchecked” a situation “aided by city and police corruption” (B. Smith Beka “Gay Bars, Vice, and Reform in Portland, 1948-1965.” MA thesis. Portland State U, 2002). Portland’s gay bars, following the pattern already established earlier in the century, were “clustered in areas with high levels of other categories of crime and vice … where they were less likely to draw … hostility” (B. Smith).

The new working-class gay community which developed would meet challenges in Portland in the two decades following the war, challenges set forth primarily by two mayoral administrations. The first of these, Dorothy Lee’s from 1948 to 1952. The second was Terry Schrunk from the late 50s through the 60s and, more specifically, his efforts in 1964-65 bars downtown. His admitted aim was eradicating “sexual deviance” in the hopes of revitalizing a central city economy which had fallen into recession (B. Smith 1). Ultimately, each of these anti-gay bar efforts would meet with very limited success. The only bar that Schrunk was able to shut down was the Harbor Club; its owner moved his as the Riptide, the first of “several bars to colonize… SW Stark Street.” [David Grant Kohl‘s book A Curious and Peculiar People]

One aspect of this lessening division is the appearance by at least the early sixties of gay bars in the central business district men. One of these was Derek’s Tavern, which Portland police noted as being “frequented by homosexuals of higher class and means” (Smith). However, gay bars, both working and middle class, “varied little in location”, a pattern which was relatively unique to Portland (B. Smith 100). The fact that gay bars had begun to appear in the district and were beginning to cater to the middle classes suggests that, despite attitudes toward homosexuality which continued to be hostile, the middle-class gay community felt a need, or at least the ability, to present a more public face.

It was not until 1971 that Portland’s first “homophile organization, the Second Foundation, was founded. Its first president, Dave Fredrickson, “was a landscape architect with the Port of Portland” [Per Dave Kohl]. He was middle-class; he was also in the closet, unable to “breathe a word of his “weekend activities” to his [work] colleges. [D Smith]. The new society found the relative complacency of the gay bar culture to be a hindrance to their efforts toward greater equality. In 1973, the foundation’s then-president remarked that “it is hard to get the backing of the gays…They’ve never been hassled, so it is hard to explain to these people that there is a problem” (Peter Boag “Does Portland Need a Homophile Society”).

However, before the Second Foundation could realize its goal of creating a community center, it held its meetings “at Zorba the Greek’s, a popular gay nightspot just off the South Park Blocks”(Kohl). In fact tension within the community, during the 70s the bar scene and political movement could not avoid each other. The Oregon Journal, a local newspaper at that time, printed a series of articles on August 30th and 31st of 1972 on Portland’s gay community.

Per https://www.pdxmonthly.com/news-and-city-life/2018/05/in-1964-portland-tried-to-crack-down-

on-the-city-s-gay-scene-here-s-what-happened

By ’64, Schrunk had launched a Committee for Decent Literature and Films (!), and heated rhetoric swirled in city council meetings. Boag’s OHQ article culls some transcript gems: the police testified of women who “caress, kiss and fondle each other in public” at the Model Inn. Most riotously, 1 a.m. at the Harbor Club saw a huge crowd “packing it, with standing room only. From then on, all activities, such as males openly kissing each other, fondling each other, with no attempt to cover these activities.”

Schrunk and the council decided this would not stand (though one commissioner astutely noted that “these people are not going to disappear”). After a series of hearings in November and December, the city moved to shut down six bars, pressuring the OLCC to revoke their licenses.

After Harbor Club was closed down, Johnnie Honegger purchased the business [Michael’s Steak House 1963] located at 949 SW Stark. This location had many businesses over the years [Rosini’s/Rosini’s Supper Club Years: 1956-1959; Pantley’s Pagan Hut 1959-1960; Bali Hai 1960-1962; Showcase 1962; Julie’s 1963, then Michael’s Steakhouse. Johnnie purchased it on June 24, 1964, per The Oregonian, and renamed the place The Riptide.