Gets Real: Two partners are working to preserve Seattle’s LGBTQ+ history with ‘Come Out Seattle’

SEATTLE — For nearly 90 years, Seattle’s bar scene has provided a safe space for the LGBTQ+ community.

While many of the city’s original gay and lesbian bars have shut their doors, two men are working to preserve their memories.

“Everybody likes to say Shelley’s Leg was the first disco. And if you talk to anybody who is alive at that time, they say, ‘no, it was the Golden Horseshoe’, says Steve Nyman.

“Golden Horseshoe which easily held 1,000 people yeah and opened in 1961. The floor would go up and down. Because so many people were dancing.”

Nyman, along with Nathan Benedict have served as co-owners of ‘Union’, a bar on Capitol Hill, for the past six years. They’ve been life and business partners for 40 years. Their first experience with Seattle’s bar scene, dates back even further.

“A friend of his took us to Seattle to show us gay bars, we had no idea,” says Nyman. “There are two or 300 people in there, all gay. And I thought, ‘oh my God, we’re not alone.’ There are other people like us. And it was an amazing experience.”

That bar, a piece of his history, as well as Seattle’s. History is something both Nyman and Benedict are trying to preserve. They created the website ‘Come out Seattle’.

On the website, the men have curated an online catalog of LGBTQ+ spaces. Seattle bars, taverns, and social clubs that span nearly nine decades.

“For gay people, it was really the bars, the bars created the safe space where people anybody could come in, meet, grow, establish themselves,” says Benedict.

The website is an opportunity to relive that history. More than just photos and newspaper clippings, it also includes an interactive map of Seattle. The map shows the city’s changing landscape when it comes to LGBTQ+ spaces.

“Let’s say you move to Seattle in 1981,” explains Benedict. “You will be able to compress this [map] and be able to see exactly what was going on in 1981.”

He says the website is still a work in progress. They have the historical elements, but they want personal stories to be shared on the site as well. They’re asking the community to submit photos and memories.

“What we’re interested in is, what did it look like? How did it feel when you went there? Who did you meet there? What’s your interesting story? So, you can all do all of that kind of submission,” says Nyman.

He believes people made these spaces what they were and what they continue to be.

“One of my favorite things to do with this project, is to look at someone and say, ‘what was the first gay bar you went to?’ And see what they say. And they almost whatever their stories, and almost inevitably comes back to ‘It was amazing’,” says Benedict.

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