Lite's Out

Flickering Lite - Starlite manager Tim La’Viticus (left) and owner Dennis Parrat-King (right) join a regular for one last hurrah.
 
On July 31, New York’s gay firmament dimmed somewhat as Crown Height’s Starlite Lounge served its final drink. The closing heralded the loss one of New York’s historical queer watering holes and, by its owners reckoning, the oldest African-American gay bar in the city.
 
Though less well-known than larger  and flashier spaces like nearby Langston’s,  Starlite’s welcoming atmosphere (think Cheers meets Noah’s Arc) invited camaraderie between young and old, black and white, male and female. On any given night, the vibe at the intersection of Bergen Street and Nostrand Avenue was brilliantly improvisational. Sassy banter and gestures flew fast and furious among bartender Karen, barback Willie and the regular patrons, while bar manager Tim La’Viticus kept the machinery of commerce running smoothly.
 
Several regulars had been patronizing the bar since it opened in the 1960s, when safe spaces for gays were few and far between. And for gays of color, even rarer. Due to generational and cultural differences, many visitors were still not totally open about being “in the life” decades after Stonewall and Starlite provided a haven for them to let their hair down. Dishy gossip vied with defiant discussion over the latest issues in the fight for gay rights. Frank talk was a given. “Get out of my bedroom!” was a commonly heard declaration. Straight ally Dennis Parrat-King, whose family owned the bar, says, “For people in their 60s and 70s, this was their oasis. You should [have seen] the comings and goings. It was like Peyton Place,” he jokes. “We got all kinds of characters around here.
 
Despite a strong effort from the community over the past few months, the bar’s fate was sealed by ongoing conflicts with the building’s new owners, who bought it late last year. “They simply [didn’t] want us here,” says La’Viticus, who speculates their decision could have involved conservative religious beliefs. La’Viticus says the shuttering “is like losing a part of me.”
 
Crown Heights had a healthy respect for Starlite, said a distinguished elderly patron on one of the bar’s final nights. Its closing, he suggests, means the neighborhood “will lose its integrity.”
 
But there’s a chance this isn’t the last we have seen of Starlite. La’Viticus says he and the owners want to reopen in a new location—ideally still in Crown Heights—to serve their loyal and devoted clientele. “We want to find somewhere else as soon as possible,” he says.
 
But for now we mourn the loss of another piece of gay New York. Starlite was a true friend to the community, focused less on profits than people of all colors, ages and creeds. Take, for example, Willie, a regular from back when Starlite was just one of many gay bars near Atlantic Avenue. (He used to pick up pocket money as a barback.) At 67, Willie takes pride in both his age and his history of survival—a history that was intertwined with that of the bar. With the Starlite closed, even if only temporarily, those of us always obsessing over the next hot party or brand-new nightspot would do well to remember Willie’s words: “All the friendship means more than the bars that come and go.”  N


E-mail thestarlite@gmail.com to offer support and get updates on Starlite’s reopening.