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The FBI later found the charred remains of the two men on top of one another. However, when he realized his partner was still inside, he rushed back inside to find him. One regular, Duane ‘Mitch’ Mitchell, was among those led to safety by Rasmussen. Firefighters brought the fire at the Upstairs Lounge under control in 15 minutes – but too late to save many of those inside (Photo: Upstairs Inferno) He burned to death with the top half of his body hanging out of the window – to the horror of onlookers on the street below. Bill Larson, tried to crawl through the bars of one window.
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The greatest number of bodies were later found next to the windows – piled up against one another.
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Some people managed to push through some of bars, but many others didn’t. However, these had bars across them to ensure people didn’t accidentally fall through them. The exit was hidden behind the stage set. However, although he knew the location of the second exit, most of the customers did not. He managed to lead around 25 people to safety through a fire exit in the theatre room. One regular, Buddy Rasmussen, who’d previously worked with the Fire Division in the Air Force, had some emergency training. And it was the end of the beer bust, so people had had lots to drink,’ remembers one. ‘It was pandemonium instantly when the fire came into the bar. A regular, Luther Boggs, went to open the door to the bar, which was at the top of the stairwell leading down to the street. Those present remember that someone kept ringing the door buzzer incessantly. On the afternoon of Sunday 24 June 1973, the Upstairs Lounge was busy for its weekly beer bust. Many were in attendance on the fateful Sunday in 1973 when the bar was destroyed. The MCC soon moved into its own premises, but many of its congregants continued the tradition of attending the Sunday Beer Blast at Upstairs Lounge after their service. When a chapter of the MCC opened in New Orleans, it held its small services in the theatre room of the Upstairs Lounge. The Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) has been launched as a specifically LGBTI-friendly church in San Francisco in the 1960s. The theatre bar also made it attractive to another crowd. The live entertainment and Sunday beer bust made it more, ‘a gathering place of friends,’ according to one former regular. Regulars remember it as more like a social club than a cruise bar. One room had a stage, and the team began to host camp, drag melodramas that they dubbed ‘Nelly Dramas’. The bar was launched in 1970, when it was taken over by a gay, former sailor named Phil Esteve.ĭespite being a little further away from the district’s other gay bars, it built itself a loyal following. It was on the first floor of a corner building, at the top of a staircase – hence its name. The Upstairs Lounge was a gay bar on the edge of New Orleans’ French Quarter, at 604 Iberville and Chartres. The entrance to the Upstairs Lounge in New Orleans (Photo: Upstairs Inferno) What was the Upstairs Lounge? The award-winning film explores the full, tragic story – including interviews with former bar regulars and survivors. To coincide with this, a documentary, Upstairs Inferno, is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video. Indeed, decades passed before the city of New Orleans erected a permanent memorial to this tragic event.įebruary is LGBT+ History Month in the UK. It happened at a time when politicians were far less likely to condemn the deaths of LGBTI people. Despite this, outside of Louisiana, the world has largely forgotten about it. The arson attack on the Upstairs Lounge in New Orleans in 1973 killed 32 people. However, it wasn’t the first time that dozens of people have been killed in a gay bar in the US. Gay people across the world remember and mark the tragedy. Most of those killed were members of the LGBTI community. The 2016 massacre at Pulse in Orlando was, at the time, the worst mass shooting in US history.