Pro Shop Pub

Downtown Cleawaters late night place to be . Open Nightly until 3am. Tampa Bay areas after work gathering place with the longest running Happy hours. 11am. until 7pm. for over 43 years. CLEARWATER One of downtowns oldest businesses is a nondescript gay bar namedthe Pro Shop Pub. Drive too fast on Cleveland Street, east of Myrtle Avenue, and youll miss it a garnet outpost, brick and glass block, with o CLEARWATER One of downtowns oldest businesses is a nondescript gay bar named the Pro Shop Pub. Drive too fast on Cleveland Street, east of Myrtle Avenue, and youll miss it a garnet outpost, brick and glass block, with only Pro Shop in neon lights. Thats by design. The pubs obscurity was a defense mechanism. Decades ago, men who went there braved violent, bigoted attacks. The pub served as a sanctuary. But it was also something else. Birthed in the disco days of 1976, the pub served as a meeting place. It became one of the few places where its patrons could be themselves. Today, the bars gay and straight clientele will gather to toast the pubs 35th year. Dancers and DJs and a small sorority of drag queens will lead the festivities. Bar manager Steven Pearson sent out 300 invitations on the labels of eight-track tapes. They owe that celebration to the humble beginnings of a small, straight Michigan family a golf lover, his college-age sister and their mother, a spiritual Catholic. Julius, a tavern in New York Citys West Village, is believed to be Americas oldest gay bar. In 1966, activists there declared a sip-in, protesting state crackdowns on homosexuals in bars. Three years later, riots at another gay bar, the Stonewall Inn, sparked the modern gay rights movement. The Pro Shop Pubs history is much less revolutionary. In the 50s, the building held Wings Restaurant, a glass-fronted diner serving the Souths finest ice cream. In the hippie 60s, it became the Confucius Tea Garden. In the 70s, it was a sandwich shop named Kountry Kitchen. Each b