12 OCTOBER 19-25, 2023 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | bush. There was no need for the awkward and clichéd “What are you into?” query. What you were into was your fashion statement. While the early Triangle wasn’t a sex club or a back room, a few patrons sometimes got carried away...particularly in the basement bar. The Triangle was shuttered many times over the years, sometimes several times in the same year, for “lewd and lascivious” violations witnessed by plain-clothes vice offi cers. The gay grapevine worked well to alert patrons when cops had closed the Triangle, and when it reopened. According to one source, the Triangle’s fi le at the Denver Department of Excise & Licenses was stuffed full of violations. If Young or his bartenders knew Vice was in the bar, they signaled patrons. Seaton was at the Triangle one night when the cops came in. “The lights popped on, and there was complete silence for a moment, and the cops circulated through the bar. I don’t remember anyone being arrested,” he says. Sometimes it was more dramatic. Ac- cording to an account of an August 1, 1976, raid, Denver police entered the busy bar to determine whether the number of patrons exceeded fi re-code capacity. Young came on the loudspeaker and ordered patrons to leave by any of three exits, and to resist the police. Then he played “God Bless America” full blast. The cops arrested Young for in- terference. Young was arrested again during a Sep- tember 1982 raid for refusing to allow police offi cers to inspect the bar for liquor-code compliance. Some patrons were also arrested after being observed engaging in anal sex and masturbation. Ironically, given the Triangle’s reputation for promiscuity, all but one of the half-dozen former regulars I interviewed — all over the age of seventy — had found a long-term partner at the Triangle. All but one had also lost a long-term partner to AIDS. While AIDS appeared fi rst among gay men on the coasts, its arrival in Denver wasn’t far behind. In pre-internet years, gay men who traveled packed the Damron Guide, “the little black book of gay travel,” with hundreds of listings and ads for gay es- tablishments across North America. Because many gay men incorporated sex-hunting into their travel itineraries, the yet-unknown, undetectable and unnamed virus quickly spread from city to city through gay bars and bathhouses. The profound impact that AIDS had on the leather community can’t be overstated. In 1982, a year into the AIDS epidemic, Young closed the Triangle’s basement soon after science confi rmed that the disease — fi rst called Gay-Related Immune Defi ciency (GRID) — was sexually transmitted. For many gay men, it was too late; by then, they were already infected with HIV, and some were getting sick. Gay bars and bathhouses realized that their survival depended on cooperation with public-health authorities to encourage prevention. After more than a decade of post-Stone- wall sexual liberation, many gay men re- luctantly but abruptly adopted “safe-sex” guidelines. Others had a harder time down- shifting, believing the threat would soon blow over. No one could have guessed that thirteen years would pass before there was a treatment that would begin saving lives. Ronald Reagan’s America didn’t give a shit. My own relationship with the Triangle was complicated. I grew up in a family of teetotal- ers, so going to a bar, or even knowing anyone who did, was not part of my upbringing. I began drinking in college, but didn’t fre- quent bars much because I couldn’t afford to. My fi rst gay bar was the Flame in Ann Arbor, where I came out after quitting grad school at the University of Michigan. It was a dump, but a festive one, the only place in town where gay men could regularly fi nd each other. In 1976, my then-partner-now-husband Bob Janowski and I landed in Denver. We sometimes went dancing at the Broadway and the 1942, and sometimes went to beer busts at the Southtown Lumber Company (now Li’l Devils). I’d mastered the gay-bar basics, but the Triangle was like the gay- bar equivalent of graduate school. I was a preppy, happily partnered young profes- sional already running Denver’s brand-new Gay Community Center by 1977. Part of our mission was to provide alternatives to gay bars. I had a reputation to think of, and the soupçon of sleaze that was part of the Tri- angle’s mystique kept me from crossing its threshold. Friends and colleagues urged me to “see and be seen” out in the community. It was part of my job to connect with other leaders, and one of them was Young, a hero in the eyes of Triangle patrons. I don’t recall my fi rst visit to the T. It was probably a Sunday afternoon beer bust with some friends. Eventually, I worked my way up — or down, actually — to a few late-night, last-call prowls through the body-to-body friction-fest that culminated on weekend nights. The commingled smells of smoke, beer breath and man sweat became the fragrance of lust. A time or two, I got tipsy enough to sloppy-kiss strangers, an act that could have gotten me arrested just a few years earlier. The main fl oor was wild at times, but tamer than Don’s Alley, the basement bar where sexual shenanigans took place — at least until 1982. When I was at the commu- nity center, and later in the early ’80s, when I wrote for Out Front, there were times I had to talk to Young. The man intimidated me. He was gruff and manly in a blue-collar, no-nonsense way. We moved in different spheres and viewed the community through different windows. I was an activist with an idealistic vision. He was a hard-nosed busi- nessman who sold booze for profi t. I had no idea what he thought of me — or if he thought of me at all. Why would he? A lot more people were buying what he was selling than what I was pitching. We talked a few times about matters I don’t much remember — a dona- tion to a fundraiser, a comment for a news article; the conversations were always quick and to the point. It was clear that he wasn’t someone I ever wanted to rile. My boss, Phil Price, Out Front’s publisher, told me about the few times he’d been on the receiving end of a pissed-off Don Young phone call. The 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York City had unleashed a tsunami of gay activ- ism across the nation. During the 1970s and early 1980s, the lesbian and gay movement in Denver burgeoned. (The transgender component of the movement came later.) The growth of lesbian and gay bar culture proliferated alongside politi- cal and social progress, but most bars remained relatively unengaged in community or- ganizing, other than hosting fundraising events organized by various groups. From their perspective, there wasn’t much need to build a community, because bars were already the heart of the community. What more could you need? A lot, as it turned out. As early as 1971, some activists were creating “alternatives to the bars.” One of the success- ful early groups was the Gay Coalition of Denver (GCD), founded in 1972. The GCD, which got Denver City Council to repeal several anti-gay ordi- nances in 1973 (see story, page 15), spearheaded various non- bar activities such as weekly coffeehouses, coming-out rap groups, political discussions and other activities away from bars. Some activists began to see the bar-centric gay life as harmful. In 1974, the GCD’s newspaper, The Rhinoceros, concluded that “the bars play an overly dominant part in gay city life” and called for “places where gays might meet without the tensions of cruising and alcohol.” Ironically, the GCD depended on gay bars to dissemi- nate fl iers attracting people to its activities. Excessive drinking helped many gays and lesbians drown shame, loosen inhibitions and momentarily escape an internalized sense of worthlessness. If youth growing up in the post-World War II era learned any- thing at all about homosexuality, they knew it bore the stigma of being sick, sinful and against the law — even unpatriotic. Society’s major institutions deplored homosexuals. The 1950s Lavender Scare promulgated by Senator Joseph McCarthy and FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover led to the fi ring of thousands of suspected homosexuals from the federal government, including the military, based on fears that gays could be easily blackmailed by Communist spies. In Denver, as elsewhere, local politicians, police and newspapers fretted about the “ho- mosexual menace” and “moral rot.” As they grew into adults, younger gays and lesbians realized they’d been taught to despise the kind of person they were discovering them- selves to be. The burden of leading a hidden life — except when getting wasted late at night in a gay bar— led many to addiction and its often tragic consequences. Activists believed it was time Hanky Panky continued from page 10 continued on page 14 COURTESY OF BILL OLSON Jim Kane, president of the Rocky Mountaineers Motorcycle Club, in 1970, and Clark Thompson (right), who owned the Triangle from 1998 to 2005, at the 2000 Pride parade. PHIL NASH