Meet the People Keeping Michigan's Queer Nightlife Alive
Michigan’s queer bars and social clubs have been adapting to survive for a century — and they’re not done yet
Across the country, headlines have been mourning the death of the gay bar. In Michigan, the story looks different.
It’s true queer spaces all over the country are encountering hurdles in their success. I don’t think it’s at a “heartbreaking pace,” as Mathew Rodriguez recently wrote for Them. Rodriguez pointed to declining service industry sales, falling foot traffic and young people going out less. Those trends are real — over the past two years, more than 12% of nightclub partners in the U.S. have permanently closed, and a 2025 survey found that 61% of 18- to 30-year-olds reported going out less frequently than the year before, with rising costs cited as the leading driver.
But recent data shows Gen Z is spending more on going out overall, and Eventbrite has tracked a 92% increase in sober-curious gatherings, events that blend music, wellness and community in ways traditional bars never did. This generation isn’t abandoning social life — it’s reimagining it, gravitating toward niche, alternative experiences over mega clubs. So what, in all of this, is sadly trendy to say about our changing queer nightlife and what is actually true?
The story worth telling is evolution, not loss, with an eye toward preserving what the past built. Entire underground worlds, formed in resistance to political attacks and economic shortcomings, shaped how we gathered then and how we gather today. I’m writing to document what’s still alive, not to eulogize what’s closed.
Michigan, it turns out, is one of the strongest examples of this.
For a century, all aspects of queer life impacted nightlife in Michigan. We can go back as far as Ruth Ellis, one of the oldest out lesbians in history, who moved to Detroit in 1937. Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas visited Ann Arbor in 1936 to spread a gospel of artistic, queer freedom. The Ballroom scene of Detroit survived HIV/AIDS and is rumbling underground still today. And long before any of that was visible, there were speakeasies — bars you’d find only if someone trusted you enough to point the way.
The Woodward Bar & Grill, which opened in 1954 on Woodward Avenue, embodied what many of these spaces would become: a lunch spot for the GM workforce by day, a discreet haven for gay and queer Detroiters by night. Over the decades it became one of the most prominent Black LGBTQ+ spaces in the city, before a three-alarm fire in 2022 destroyed it — a loss still felt in the community. Two bars that opened in its wake are still standing. Gigi's, the oldest gay-owned bar in Detroit, opened in 1973, four years after Stonewall, and has been home ever since to the Miss Gigi's pageant, the longest-running gay bar drag title in the country. Menjo's followed a year later in the Palmer Park neighborhood — reportedly the first club in Detroit where DJs mixed records live — and still displays the original 1976 disco ball that a teenage Madonna once danced under.
Art Smith, founder of an astounding archive of gay bar history, lives this philosophy through Gaybarchives, which challenges mainstream mourning and embraces the kind of nostalgia I’m searching for. The Facebook group has over 56,000 members and millions of engagements over the past month, where users share and comment their memories. Smith also gathers and recreates iconic memorabilia, designs and images of closed spaces throughout the country. “It’s kind of like when you watch those old family movies at home and you think, Oh, that was such a great time with grandma and uncle Jay, and whoever,” he told Pride Source. “It just brings back so many memories.”
While posts on the page can range from sadness to disappointment, some members embrace gratitude. Chris Stommell posted a memory of the Flamingo bar in Pontiac in the ’90s, reflecting on a poet he met and her impact on him. “We’d talk for hours, sharing stories of our then difficult efforts to find a future we could each inhabit in a rough world,” he wrote. In an interview with Pride Source, Stommell reflected further on that era compared to today. “Until the late ’90s, the typical gay bar existed hidden in plain sight — in an industrial park, an abandoned strip mall, the edge of town,” he said. “They had discreet or no signs, metal doors with doormen who made sure you were gay before they let you in.”
This discreet camaraderie spread from Saugatuck to Grand Rapids to Detroit and beyond in the ’80s and ’90s. Bobby Johnson, previous owner of Club 67 in the ’90s and current owner of The Apartment Lounge in Grand Rapids, remarked on his past in the gay service industry and the current state of queer nightlife. Club 67 was the local “discotheque,” Johnson told Pride Source. “It was the place everyone went to party, we were freaking wall to wall,” he said.
Like Stommell, Johnson worked at and visited spaces hidden in plain sight. “There were a million abandoned buildings, and we traveled together in packs, because it was the way to be safe,” he said of the bars tucked into unexpected venues. Johnson tends to look forward rather than back. “We are growing and changing as the community does. It’s not mournful, it’s that our world is changing, and we need to continue to change with it,” he said.
Secret celebrations and sneaky queer joy are our history, and of course we don’t need to be as hidden in plain sight as we did in the past, but there are still necessary adaptations. Some spaces are changing their branding and menus of drinks and events alike in accordance with evolving perspectives in the community. Uplift in Ann Arbor has gone furthest with this rethinking. The space identifies as a queer bar rather than gay, a deliberate choice co-owner Saharsh Hajela said is rooted in the belief that inclusion begins with language.
“I don’t think spaces that are labeled as gay are intentionally exclusionary,” he told Pride Source, but letting people know from the start that there’s no expectation of who they should be or how they should express themselves changes who walks through the door. That expansiveness extends to the bar menu, too. Uplift stocks extensive nonalcoholic options, following a broader shift in how customers, especially younger ones, want to socialize. “We live in a day and age in which labels are becoming less important,” Hajela said. “The spectrum of how you view yourself and how you view others is so broad, and that’s been very freeing for everybody.”
The Apartment Lounge has followed suit, and Johnson made some jokes about how far things have come. “Back in the day, if you came in and said, hey, I’m looking for something nonalcoholic, we’d be like ‘soda.’ But now we have 10 nonalcoholic cocktails,” he said, nodding to the changing dynamics of club culture with more youthful visitors.
Fixed addresses aren’t the only game in town. Queer social clubs are gathering all over Michigan, embracing a nomadic existence that constantly brings in new people to the scene.
Lesbian Social Detroit is one of the clearest examples. Founded in 2017 by Chelcea Stowers, a photographer who noticed a lack of quality lesbian nightlife events in the city, the group started as a pop-up party with hopes of creating a safe space downtown. It now hosts regular events at some of Detroit’s most visible venues, including a residency at the Godfrey Hotel’s IO Rooftop Lounge in Corktown, and celebrated its eighth anniversary in November 2025 at ORA Detroit.
The gatherings range from concert after-parties to booth nights at the bar Bloom to a Pisces celebration at Godfrey’s last March. Stowers told Pride Source that keeping the format flexible has been central to the group’s staying power. “I think keeping it limited to once or twice a month at different venues keeps it fresh,” she said.
Stowers described Lesbian Social Detroit as a “disruptor” to the typical nightlife scene and wants her events to be part of an overarching “resurgence” of Detroit. “I love how my events have brought diversity to the scene because typically things are separated,” she said. They are showing venues there’s a “market for our community; we come out and have a great time, with no incidents. So I think it’s a win for everyone.”
What Stowers is building isn't so different from what Johnson built in Grand Rapids, or what the Flamingo bar offered Stommell in Pontiac — the thread runs all the way back to the speakeasy doorman checking credentials in an abandoned strip mall. The venue changes. The need doesn't. And even after the lights go out, the queer joy remains.
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