Despite the cold and rainy atmosphere last Tuesday night, students and members of the community prepared themselves for a taste of historic gay life in Kansas City.
Whether it was the chilly weather or the fact that the mode of transportation was called "PUMPERS 69," students were eager to step onto the bus and see the sites that make Kansas City's history so rich.
This experience is not new to UMKC, as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) Office held a tour similar to this one in 2005. Dr. Thomas Poe, chair of the Department of Communication Studies, served as the tour guide again because of his success last year.
The tour started off with a history session provided by Poe. The first major LGBT organization at UMKC started with a group of six or seven students who sued the university in the late 1970s. He also talked about the thriving gay bars in Kansas City. As he shared funny experiences and interesting aspects such as the Jewel Box, a club that showcased drag queens, he also reminded students of the terrible discrimination that homosexuals faced.
"You couldn't even mention the word 'gay' back then," said Poe.
When it was time to finally load the bus and explore the city, Poe gave everyone a firsthand glance of all the bars and meeting institutions he had talked about earlier by pointing at them and describing their significance.
Throughout the tour, students and observers alike learned about places such as the Buttonwood Tree, the Kontiki Room and the Redhead, an abandoned donut shop where many people would go to party after all the bars were closed.
Or as Poe described it, "Imagine the worst high school prom with a blue Hawaii theme."
The tour also gave others a chance to learn more about the area around them. The Plaza, for example, was well known for having a large gay and elderly community. This led to the humorous nickname many older women gave homosexual men in the '70s and '80s: Plaza boys.
Behind all the funny stuff was a sense of seriousness involving Kansas City's "scandalous" history. Poe made a point that all of these institutions and historical landmarks the students saw were really just places for people to have a sense of community and belong.
Shawn Grey, a Kansas City resident, said there should be more activities like this.
"Young people don't understand what they have now and take a lot of things for granted," Grey said. "It's very good to put something like this together because we need to know where our roots are, where we come from, and how we came."
Christian Rose, a work-study assistant in the LGBT Office, shared what he learned from the tour.
"Even though there were a lot of sleazy gay bars in the past, there was still a viable political movement started from those bars that made Kansas City the forefront of gay rights," said Rose.
When asked what was the one thing that he remembered most about the tour, Rose said: "The bus was off the charts!"
After all, it was equipped with disco balls.
vmai@unews.com
