Notable drag club Glade to be memorialized with plaque for PRIDE Month
By Diane Ako - KITV News Jun 13,2024
HONOLULU (Island News) -- June is PRIDE Month across the nation. In honor of Hawaii's own queer history, some LGBTQ community leaders will soon be unveiling a plaque and a walking tour highlighting areas of town that have special meaning to the queer community.
The Glade Show Club in Chinatown, “where boys will be girls”, was a very popular female impersonation bar on Hotel Street. It was open from the mid-60s until 1982.
Brandy Lee, now 81, was an original showgirl. She describes the culture back then.
“Going on the streets, you could get busted, you could get beat up. There was a lot of hatred that was put out towards us,” she recalled, the emotion still very present decades later.
Notable drag club Glade to be memorialized with plaque for PRIDE Month. Courtesy Lei Pua 'Ala Queer Histories of Hawaii.
But The Glade was also revolutionary.
“It really became a sort of a refuge, like our ‘Stonewall’ here in Hawaii. And that site still exists. It's now the Maunakea Marketplace,” LGBTQ community leader Dean Hamer, co-founder of Lei Pua 'Ala Queer Histories of Hawaii, explained.
He’s referring to the June 1969 Stonewall Uprising, six days of clashes between police and LGBTQ+ protesters over police raids of The Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City. Many consider it a catalyst for gay rights.
Lei Pua 'Ala Queer Histories of Hawaii will be dedicating a plaque there. It's the first stop on its new Hawaii Queer History trail “to document and memorialize all the different places in Hawaii where queer people have been, where queer people have made accomplishments, where our LGBTQ communities have had important events,” said Hamer.
The trail has six sites on Oahu, one on Kauai, and one on Hawaii Island. Site descriptions are on an app called Bloomberg Connects.
Lee says she's glad society is finally accepting of LGBT lifestyles.
“We were just not given the rights as everyone else, and now that the doors are open, they can go to school and they can get good jobs and everything like that. I feel so happy,” she stated.
The public is invited to the plaque dedication on June 28 at 9 a.m. at Maunakea Marketplace, 152 N. Hotel Street, in Chinatown.
The plaque has a QR code linking to Lei Pua 'Ala Queer Histories of Hawaii’s website. The website has a link to the Bloomberg Connects app. The app has information about all the sites on the walking tour. Search for it under “Lei Pua 'Ala Queer Histories of Hawaii.”