If you have photos or other historical material, please think about coming to Starlite or calling 212-363-0166 or 239-822-3550 to make sure we get a strong record of this half-century-old cherished landmark.

Volunteers also needed: Please call us if you would be able to help out by doing a short volunteer shift at the oral history and photo portrait station we will have set up in the bar all weekend.

Oral History Days and Starlite Portrait photos:
This Saturday and Sunday from 2pm to 8pm
Spread the Word!

On behalf of the Save the Starlite Lounge Campaign, we want to thank you for spending time with us during your Sunday afternoon in support of the Starlite Lounge. Your presence and contributions that day were not only helpful and thoughtful, but nourishing. It really let us know that the Starlite is so important to you all; that the fight is not just the Starlite family’s.

We wanted to remind you that TONIGHT is the Community Board meeting. The board will be voting on a resolution in support of fair negotiations between the property owner and the Starlite Lounge. We would like to have supporters participate in the Public Session portion of the meeting by making a brief statement in support of Starlite in front of the board.

The meeting will be held at:

St. Gregory’s RC Church
991 St. Johns Place (corner of Brooklyn Avenue)
(btw Nostrand and Kingston stops on the 3-train)

The meeting begins at 7pm, but we will be meeting at the 6:45pm at the meeting location and will be sitting together as a group. Please join us and be seated with “the stars.”

There we will get to hear from the Starlite family about the amazing 50-year history of this cherished community hub, and the current struggle to keep it open.

And yes, the Starlite really needs your help!
A strong show of community support right now can pressure Khaled Yafai, the new building owner, into doing the right thing and negotiating a new lease. Without your support, Starlite could easily fall victim to the relentless push of gentrification and historical erasure. Come lend your creativity and love to make sure this doesn’t happen on our watch!

No more evictions of black-owned businesses and vital community safe-spaces!

In addition to planning general outreach, tactical crafts, media and legal support, we will also be planning for a March 11th Karaoke & *Star* -themed rally. The March 11th rally will take place at around 6pm outside the Crown Heights Community Board meeting wherein a vote will be taken on a resolution to support the Starlite Lounge in its quest to secure a lease agreement from the new owner.

More information about both of these events coming soon! In the meantime, come cozy up over here at the Starlite. We are still open for business!

Thanks to everybody who spoke about what the Starlite has meant to them over time, and to all the neighbors who stopped by and gave testimony as well!

This Thursday, February 18th at 6pm outside of the historical Starlite Lounge community members will speak out against the bar’s pending eviction – including “Starlite Elders.” Come hear about the cultural, spiritual and historic heritage of this cherished Brooklyn meeting place from Starlite’s long-standing patrons.

For the last five decades, the Starlite Lounge has been a safe haven to members of our community and a space of significant historical relevance for New York City residents. This incredible run in Crown Heights is now being threatened as .  Despite a promise from the previous owners for a new lease, the building where Starlite is housed was sold without notice to Starlite.  Starlite was recently served with eviction papers without being given an opportunity to negotiate a lease with the building’s new owners. The proposed closing has brought together a diversity of community members to fight against this unfair eviction of an openly gay-friendly establishment in the heart of Brooklyn.

Starlite Lounge's clientele changes according to the time of day and week.

By Susan Dominus

The Starlite Lounge in Brooklyn is one of those institutions that have been around for so long, neighbors no longer stop to notice how incongruous their presence really is.

Why shouldn’t there be a bar in Crown Heights that is popular with white and black, gay and straight people, where gentrifiers and locals with long lineage drink the special punch next to one another on bar stools, where young, beautiful club types sweat it out to house music alongside 50-something veteran party organizers and standard-issue retirees who happen to live down the block? Doesn’t every place have one of those?

Most do not, and Crown Heights may not for long. The Starlite Lounge, a hot spot that has been a quiet part of Brooklyn’s gay history since the early 1970s, seems destined to close its doors now that the new management of its building is demanding that the bar vacate to make way for urgent repairs. (Besides, a building manager said, it lacks a lease. The bar’s owners counter that no one seems willing to negotiate with them in good faith.)

The forthcoming eviction might be technically fair, but it somehow does not seem right. Surely the annals of real estate law should provide some special dispensation for what the Starlite’s management identifies as the “longest black-owned nondiscriminating bar” in Brooklyn history?

The Starlite has sat in the same location, at Bergen Street and Nostrand Avenue, since at least the 1960s, according to its current owner, Linda King, who inherited it from her brother, a popular D.J. who died in 2004.

It was in the early ’70s, when a well-known Crown Heights resident named Mackie Harris bought the bar, that its distinct cultural history began.

Back then, it was one of the few gay-friendly bars in the neighborhood. “The Seville was for the upper-, upper-class experience, and the Starlite was sort of for the ‘Brokeback Mountain’ types,” recalled Bob Mack, who frequented both and worked at the Starlite as a manager. “We’d go over to the Seville in our furs, and then put them in our cars and head over to the Starlite.”

Nowadays, the Starlite is not exclusively a gay bar; its personality changes with the time of day and week. At 3 p.m. on a weekday, the typical patron is a straight, black older resident from the surrounding blocks. Karaoke night on Thursdays draws a mixed-race crowd of straight and gay patrons. And Fridays offer a drag show (the star’s “a real J. Lo,” according to Willie Rowe, 66, who has been working at the bar for 40 years).

Saturdays starting around 11 p.m., the bar fills with a mostly gay clientele, and by 2 a.m. one recent Sunday, it was packed with young women, two of them nuzzling each other’s necks, and men of all ages circling their hips with abandon to old-school, creatively spun house music.

Every neighborhood bar feels like a safe haven to its regulars; in Crown Heights, that cliché has a more literal meaning. “It’s a place I can come and not be bothered by homophobic people,” said Timothy Yates, a young publicist sitting at the bar, who added that he had been taunted with gay slurs in the neighborhood.

And it’s not just a safe place for gay people; it’s a safe place period. Said Mr. Mack, “People like that there was no fear there.”

He could remember only one episode, back in the early days, when the bar really got violent: A woman hunting down her husband at the bar threw a rock through its window. “We kept her out with mops until the police came,” Mr. Mack said.

On restaurant and bar review Web sites, stories abound about the Starlite’s homespun, small-town feel: a bartender’s generosity with cigarettes, employees who express concern for patrons whom the police appear to be harassing at a bodega across the street.

“If someone’s had too much to drink, we’ll make sure someone follows him home to make sure he gets there safely, whether he likes it or not,” says Tim La’Viticus, the current manager.

It’s nice to think that, amid the dollar stores overrunning the neighborhood, some new local spot is in the process of developing its own quirky personality, an odd amalgam influenced by location, historical moment and management charisma, fermenting over time until it, too, will have shaped Crown Heights in some profound way.

But for now, lovers of the Starlite worry that the bar, and what it has to offer, is irreplaceable. “I feel bad,” Mr. Mack said. “The kids aren’t going to have anyplace to go.”

Brooklyn’s oldest gay bar may be forced to close following the sale of its Crown Heights building. The Starlight Lounge — which also claims to be the city’s first black-owned gay bar — might be evicted because the new owner of the property apparently wants the building “empty.”

Starlite Lounge manager Tim Leviticus told Gothamist that the future of the watering hole at the corner of Bergen Street and Nostrand Avenue is uncertain at best. “Without us knowing, the old landlord sold the building — not even giving us the right to purchase it,” he said. “We haven’t met the new owner yet, but we’ve heard he wants the building to be empty.”

The Starlite Lounge has been a Crown Heights fixture since the 1960s, serving gays and non-gays. In recent years, the venue has become a destination for neighborhood folks looking for a casual daytime hangout, as well as revelers who frequent the dance parties and karaoke nights, according to Leviticus. “No one in the neighborhood is happy about it because this is the only place where they can come to relax,” he added.

Rumors of the possible closure have already hit the Brooklynian messageboards, where commenters have called it “terrible news” and “a real loss for Crown Heights.” “i would be soo so so so sad to see them leave,” another poster wrote. We haven’t succeeded in getting through to the new owner of the building or the previous landlord, but when we do we’ll follow-up

Starlite Lounge, gay-friendly redoubt since 1959, faces eviction by new landlord

BY SAMANTHA STARK

Fridays are Lady Jasmin’s night at the Starlite Lounge in Brooklyn. The resident drag queen at this Crown Heights mainstay performs Jennifer Hudson and old-school R&B songs with gusto — sometimes crying, doing backwards summersaults, and hurling her silver stilettos across the stage.

“You gotta see the show,” the regulars at the self-described “oldest black-owned non-discriminating bar in New York” tell the young hipsters who seem to be venturing through the doors these days.

Since opening in 1959, the Starlite Lounge on Nostrand Avenue and Bergen Street has served as a modest safe space for gay, lesbian, and transgendered people of color and their friends in Central Brooklyn. Older gay and straight neighborhood residents throw birthday parties at the Starlite, and gather at the bar after funerals. More recently arrived condo-dwellers pack the house for Thursday night karaoke.

But a recent change in the building’s ownership may force the Starlite Lounge to end its half-century run.

Bar owners Linda King and her husband Dennis Parrott said they were surprised last fall when they started receiving letters ordering them to leave. For years, the Starlite’s landlords were the same family, a father and son team who run the funeral parlor next door. Last August, a real estate company, 1080 Bergen LLC, bought the building.

A complaint citing severe structural damage in the bar’s basement and beams was filed in December, according to the city Department of Buildings. Real estate agent Khaled Yafai, who represents the new landlords, said the Starlite must vacate so the building can undergo repairs, which could take up to six months.

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Once renovations are complete, Yafai said, the company plans to rent the storefront to the highest bidder. The Starlite pays about $2,500 a month in rent, Yafai said, and he estimates the market value for the space is about $3,000. Yafai said King and Parrott could apply in competition with other candidates. The Starlite, he said, currently does not have a valid lease.

King and Parrot admitted to being late with rent when the economy tanked last year, and said they did not push when the old landlord was too busy to negotiate a renewed lease. Now they’re calling for new protection for long-term commercial renters — and are refusing to move.

“As far as we’re concerned,” Parrott said, “it’s business as usual. We have an obligation to the people here.”

In a neighborhood with a history of violence, where the KFC restaurant counter up the street is shrouded in bulletproof glass, patrons say the Starlite is a refuge.

Thick yellow light from the bar’s large windows glows like a pinball machine on quiet Nostrand Avenue. Longtime neighborhood resident Patricia Scantlebury, 66, said it comforts her to know people are inside when she walks down the street. If the Starlite closes, “you’ll get off the bus at 10 o’clock, and it’ll be dark here,” she added.

Other patrons say they like having a gay-friendly bar in their neighborhood.

“I’ve always said this area is like Chelsea for people of color,” Patrick Saunders, 30, said. “I walk by the Starlite every day. It makes me feel empowered.

The area surrounding the Starlite has seen its fair share of homophobia. Bar manager Tim La’Viticus said the bar’s all-female security team buzzes customers in at the door, like at a jewelry shop, because people used to shout derogatory statements inside. Last spring, a teenage boy, Omar Willock, was convicted of stabbing a 20-year-old gay man, Roberto Duncanson, to death for flirting with him, just blocks from the Starlite.

Homophobia doesn’t stop customers from coming to the bar, and it didn’t stop Lady Jasmine from running down the block in a skin-tight blue evening gown during a recent performance. In a particularly emotional chorus of “And I am Telling You” from “Dreamgirls,” she pushed through the bar’s emergency exit, danced down the street, then diva-walked back in, to cheers.

As Gay City News went to press, 1080 Bergen LLC and the Starlite were scheduled for a court hearing February 4.

Yafai said he doesn’t understand why the Starlite won’t just move.

King’s eyes well up whenever someone mentions relocating. A former high school guidance counselor, King never thought she would run a bar, much less go to court to save one. But when her brother William “Butch” King, a DJ and the Starlite’s beloved previous owner, died suddenly in 2004, she took over the bar to honor his memory.

“Those are my brother’s speakers,” she said, pointing to the corner of the dance floor. A portrait of William King hangs on the wall near the front entrance, and customers occasionally talk to it.

“I understand that sometimes you get on the dance floor and you just want to dance and dance and dance, and it don’t last,” Starlite regular Ronald Gamble, 55 said, eyeing old friends deep in conversation. “But if you take the substance out of the neighborhood, the people are gonna die.”

Thanks to Krissy Mahan / Dykeumentary for the inspiring and informative video!