QuadraTails, Part One, cont

The original Quadra began its career as a dinner club around 1925,  at 901 West Hastings. By the 1930s it had moved to 1021 West Hastings, then by 1942, it had moved to Seymour Street. It went belly up sometime around 1972. After that it moved to the Homer Street location and became the Quadra Cabaret. Below is the Quadra Dinner Club, circa 1939 and after that, at its Seymour Street location shortly before it folded in 1972. (the sign is at back left)

By the time it was leased to be a gay bar any former glamour it might have had was long gone. It was a dump, with musty old carpets, banged up tables and chairs and a chipped cash register but with the lights down, the disco ball turning and Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" blaring it was magic, if only for a few hours a night. It was our Club 54 back in the day and sooner or later everybody wound up there. There were other gay bars in town, but none devoted solely to women, [men were allowed in but few came] and none that had the cross-section of women the Quadra attracted. On any given night you could have bankers and real estate agents next to drug dealers doing business in the washrooms. White collar, blue collar, musicians, entertainers, authors, artists, housewives timidly arriving from the suburbs, kids barely old enough to drink, seniors, couples, singles, you name it. The Quadra ran the gamut from bulldykes to fems to tops to bottoms and anything in between. Despite the vast differences, we were a tribe and that tribe convened, on a surprisingly regular basis, at the Quadra.

The Quadra, 1055 Homer Street, circa 70s I can't remember if it still had the big sign up when it was the women's bar. After the Quadra closed it became a straight bar called Club Soda, then it was The Big Easy, and last, The Starfish Room. None lasted long and certainly none had the history of the Quadra.