Pro Shop Pub

Info

CLEARWATER — One of downtown's oldest businesses is a nondescript gay bar named the Pro Shop Pub.

Drive too fast on Cleveland Street, east of Myrtle Avenue, and you'll miss it — a garnet outpost, brick and glass block, with only 'Pro Shop' in neon lights. That's by design. The pub's 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 bar's gay and straight clientele will gather to toast the pub's 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.

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Facilities

Bar
DJs
Drag queens