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And if it’s dead by day it certainly wouldn’t be expected to have life by night. There’s little reason to be looking at anything in this lifeless neighborhood on the northern rim of downtown Dallas. By day, one could drive this stretch of Harwood Street a hundred times without paying any attention to it, without ever noticing those letters, OP, next to one of the doors. The pale stucco of the building, broken only by a few dull green doors, is undistinguished. It was built first as The Old Plantation it is now called S-4. It’s as odd a business partnership as can be imagined, and enormously successful.Īt the time this photo was taken, the bar was called Village Station. The Old Plantation, on a new site, has risen from the ashes the two men, the owners, have pushed it to the forefront of the Dallas disco scene. That noisy swirl is making them a fortune.
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It’s as if they’re deaf to the thudding music and blind to the staccato lights, the swirling mass on the dance floor, the general frenzy of this jammed disco.īut, in fact, they see and hear it all better than anyone. Their conversation is warm but intense it’s as if they’re unaware of the chaos around them, the teeming activity at the bar. He fidgets with a bar straw and sips occasionally at his whiskey sour, orange slice and cherry clinging to the glass rim. He wears tight blue jeans and a smart striped knit shirt. His young companion, much younger, is a wisp of a man, almost frail, dark hair falling in a long sweep over his forehead. He mouths contentedly on a large cigar and downs his Canadian Club and soda at a steady pace. He wears baggy trousers and a rumpled short-sleeved cotton- sport shirt. His eyes are magnified behind thick-lensed glasses in pinched frames too small for his face. The older man is big, a fat man really, with a burly neck, heavy jowls, thin hair combed straight back. They haven’t seen each other in a while and they have much to talk about. May, 1979: The two men sit close together at the bar, their elbows planted on the counter.
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They had no choice: They turned, kicked through the ashes, and went back to work. In the nightclub trade – particularly, it seemed, in the gay bar business – one was forever flirting with extinction. Each knew this was often a brutal business. The thing had gone up so fast, had been so hot, that the huge steel support beams had melted into a twisted wreck.
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It had definitely been a torch job, and a highly professional one at that. The fire marshal’s inspectors subsequently ruled it arson. Around them were ashes and blackened rubble. The next morning, Sunday, the two men stood forlornly in the same place. They took one last look around, smiled at each other, and left. There was an established competitor just blocks away, but they were confident. It was going to be, they felt, the best gay bar in Dallas, the liveliest disco around. The two men had high hopes for their new nightclub here on Cedar Springs. Tomorrow they would put down the carpet and begin fine-tuning the place for their grand opening, just five days away.
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The bars were nearly complete, all the equipment installed the big dance floor was laid in the disco. It was late Saturday night and construction was right on schedule. January, 1976: The two men stood in the dim light and surveyed their new domain.