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Gay bars in chapel hill

LGBTQIA+ travel

Visit the new south

Whether you’re ambling along our scenic downtown streets or rambling through the wooded hills, you’ll find yourself in a unique Southern community. “It epitomizes ‘The New South’,” says Jen Jones, who is a former director of communications for EqualityNC. “It’s a place of the future that welcomes diversity, embraces inclusivity, and is a gateway for native Tar Heels, wayward travelers and new transplants alike. Chapel Hill-Carrboro remains one of the most LGBTQ-friendly areas in North Carolina and across the South.”

Petrow agrees. “I travel all over the country and gays and lesbians are ‘tolerated’ more and more just about everywhere, which is great. But here we’re accepted,” he says. “I’ve looked for a place like this to phone home my entire animation and now I don’t plan to leave until my toes point up at the stars.”

Blair House Restaurant / Blueberry Hill

(Courtesy John Martin)

Obverse reads:

BLAIR HOUSE on US 15 and 501 between Durham and Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

A Restaurant of Traditional Williamsburg layout. Six dining rooms of varying size ranging in decor from rustic to formal. Recommended by Mobil Travel Guide.

H.S. Finley, Manager

Box 8735, Durham, N.C.  Phone 489-9128

Blair House likely opened in the late 1950s, after the construction of Chapel Hill Boulevard. I know small about it. The Herald referred to it as "Country Inn" in the below 1960 photos.     "Country Inn" - 04.01.60   "Country Inn" - 04.01.60   Schrafft's Country Inn ad, 1964   By the early-to-mid 1970s, it had closed, and the building(s) had develop "Blueberry Hill" - which may contain been Durham's first bar for the gay community. (The "Electric Company" in Chapel Hill had been the first in the area - where the Cave is currently located, opening in, I believe, 1971 - just two years after the Stonewall demonstrations.    The small barn to the left was a exclude unto itself - in 1974, it was called the "Royal Elbow"     I don't know how drawn-out Blueberry Hill stayed

Citing this Excerpt

Oral History Interview with Bill Hull, June 21, 2001. Interview K-0844. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Full Text of the Excerpt

CHRIS MCGINNIS:
Skillfully, why don't you describe the Pegasus and tell me about Glen Rowan.
BILL HULL:
Glen Rowan was one of the most gentle people that I have ever known in my whole life. Experience is—the world is diminished (cliché) by his not creature with us anymore. But, he really came into Chapel Hill and decided that he was going to be an openly homosexual man in an openly gay exclude that didn't strive to hide itself in trying to be a Galifinakis front for coins. He really strived hard to build it friendly to anyone who wanted to be in there. It was basically gay people. He never questioned anybody as to why they were there, as the Electric Company, did. You almost had to prove to be gay to get in there.
CHRIS MCGINNIS:
Really? How interesting, but that wasn't even owned by a gay person.
BILL HULL:
But they wanted to produce certain that homosexual peop

A Generation of Bars Remembered

Though Blueberry Hill closed by the writing of this article, the termination paragraph shows the legacy of the dual space: the ask of whether the Carolina Homosexual Association should use a block space “for special events and meetings when the disco is closed” (5). This is presented as a potential new endeavor that has not been done at previous bars, perhaps representing the utility of viewing bars not just as drinking-and-dancing but as gay recreational spaces that transcend nightlife, as Blueberry Hill did and as newer bars like Christopher’s might also possess done. Of course there were important issues to consider in using a bar for a university-affiliated organization’s activities, but the mere fact that this was raised as an option shows how the bar as a safe space evolved tremendously in the span of a several short years, from an uncertain mixed environment to “the center of gay life” (5).