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She also had trust issues, friends said, which originated in her childhood.īorn in 1947, Bauman grew up in Chicago, where she studied dance. Like some who attended Shelly’s Leg, Bauman herself was swept up in the party scene, drinking heavily and using drugs.
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The bar lasted for more than a year longer, but the crowds were never the same and the disco closed in 1977.
GAY BAR SEATTLE WASHINGTON WINDOWS
No one was injured inside the bar, but its front windows were blown in and the DJ’s booth and turntables burned. In mid-December 1975, an oil tanker was driving south on the elevated portion of the Alaskan Way Viaduct - above the bar - when the tanker collided into the guardrail, unhitching the 4,800-gallon trailer, which exploded and poured fiery gasoline onto a passing freight train below and more than 30 cars parked in front of Shelly’s Leg. Shelly’s Leg had a meteoric rise in popularity, but it was erased from the scene almost as quickly as it appeared - and in much the same explosive fashion. “This was a bar for the baby-boomers, for the youth.” “This was not your dad’s gay bar,” Brown said. The existing gay bars catered to those who came of age in the 1940s to 60s. It was also a gay bar for a new generation. “Shelly’s was so visible,” Brown said, adding that gay bars at the time were nondescript and dimly lit, not calling attention to themselves. Though there were gay bars in the area, Shelly’s Leg was different because it was more upfront than the gay bars that preceded it - it was known for its sign inside that read, “Shelly’s Leg is a gay bar provided for Seattle’s gay community and their guests.” “It really did signal the end of that old homophobia where people of the same sex couldn’t dance together.” “For so long in the history of Settle’s gay community, dancing had been the enemy,” Brown said, adding that same-sex dancing used to be punished and older taverns in the area prohibited dancing. Michael Brown, professor of geography at the University of Washington, said that Shelley’s Leg was not just significant for being Seattle’s first disco, but its role as a dance hall for gay people was a symbol of homosexual liberation.
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With that money, she and some friends opened a bar in Pioneer Square, named for the lost leg that paid for the place. She underwent nine months of operations and recovery and her left leg was amputated, according to Levine and “Gay Seattle: Stories of Exile and Belonging.”īauman won $330,000 in an out-of-court settlement in 1973 after suing the parade sponsors, the man who brought the cannon and the city for ignoring the loaded weapon in a public event. A nearby doctor who intervened saved her life and she was rushed to Harborview Medical Center. A cannon in the parade blasted into the crowd, hitting Bauman on the left side of her pelvis. as an exotic dancer when she went to Seattle’s first Bastille Day Parade in Pioneer Square in 1970 at age 22. She was a notorious party girl, keeping her friends awake at night and kicking anyone who got in the way of her and her wheelchair.įriends said the red-haired, green-eyed woman who fancied herself a Bette Davis look-alike couldn’t have been any other way.īauman had been living in Seattle for about a year and a half after moving throughout the U.S. She also had a penchant for fancy shoes, even though she had one leg. Though Northwest baby boomers remember her as the disco owner in Pioneer Square - sometimes stopped and recognized at Bremerton grocery stores - friends describe her life as “tragic,” filled with drinking, drugs and health problems, cared for at her Bremerton duplex for the last eight years of her life by her neighbor, 64-year-old Monte Levine.īut she never let her limitations get in the way of a good time.īauman loved the lush images of the musical “Moulin Rouge” and was known for pausing movies on close-ups of Val Kilmer. 18 at age 63 of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease after a nomadic life of dancing and partying.