Appleton gay bar
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It attracts a good crowd early for fish fry (excellent cod and perch), and maintains the crowd into the late hours. Its grill makes for good eats most any time, with excellent burgers, fries, and sandwiches. The staff asked him to donate their pay from the night of the vigil to the Orlando victims, whose faces were printed large and taped to the bar's fenced-in back patio for the June 14 event.
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Over its nearly two and a half decades, the bar has been a hive for the LGBTQ community when it's time to celebrate good policy progress or a wedding reception.
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Travel from south, north, downtown, midtown, city, east, country, uptown, west, or central - driving directions from your address to the location of the new Appleton, Wisconsin gay watering hole.
It went strong for about 15 years, then fizzled out.
Rascals Bar & Grill has been the Fox Valley's steady rock in gay/ lesbian bars from November 1992.
Previous to Rascals opening, Appleton's main GLBT bar for many years was 1101 West (c1980-88), and then Pivot Club took over the lead when it opened in 1986.
Watch how you behave.' No matter where you are."
The same night as the Orlando shooting, Harper was with her wife in Neenah at Re Mixx, known as a gay-friendly bar but not a gay bar.
"As we were walking in, she went to put her arm around me, and I went to put her hand down, and I said, 'This isn't a gay event. It was a reminder of why Rascals was there.
"It was just to have a place for the gays to meet, and to meet each other," West said.
Single, dating, married? Every month, 15 to 30 people would read a book, then meet at one person's home for a potluck dinner and discussion.
Cleo's Brown Beam Tavern is a bar that's "always been friendly," Nitz said, and the bar was even listed as a gay bar from 1977 to 1982 at its old location (adjacent to its current College Avenue slot), according to the Wisconsin LGBT History Project.
Rascals, in its 24 years, hasn't been the target of anything more sinister than slurs shouted from passersby or statements made in the greater community, longtime patrons said.
"I haven't even cleaned up an egg in probably 15 years," West said.
And the bar hasn't only stayed open in the business sense; it has stayed open.
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Appleton, Wisconsin vacation? But since the Pivot Club closed in 1995, Rascals has firmly held the lead (with only passing competion from Diversions (1997-1999) (outside Neenah), and for a brief time, Crossroads (2000-2007), a smaller mostly-lesbian bar, and Ravens (2007-2013).
In 2000, original partner Glenn Paschen sold out to co-owner Todd West, who has owned the bar ever since.
Although on Saturday nights some of the crowd will travel to Green Bay for the larger (and wider variety of) bars, on Friday nights Rascals rules!
I ain't gonna live my life in fear."
Katherine Lymn: 920-996-7232, or klymn@postcrescent.com; on Twitter @KathLymn
Map your best Appleton, Wisconsin gay and lesbian night out. "It just turned into like a safe haven for them."
Harper came out as gay during the AIDS crisis, and lived through the discrimination of people blaming the disease on the gay community.
Watch how you act. "And for at least those of us that grew up in that time, there's always that in the back of your head that says, 'You're not safe. She said it was difficult then, and it's gotten better with protective laws and the legalization of same-sex marriage.
"But not all things protect the gay community," she said. He was in Harper's wedding.
Whether it's the June 11 mass shooting in Orlando or the U.S.
Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage, "or any other major event in my life," Harper said, "the first place you think of coming is here, to be with your family and friends."
The bartenders are a family themselves, said Todd West, who opened Rascals in 1992. What happens happens. Depending on your device, get turn by turn driving directions from Google, Apple, Waze.
"I don't like to think one incident, as terrible as it was, can take the progress of where we've come," he said of Orlando.
Nitz started the Lavender Reading Salon, an LGBTQ-themed book club, 25 years ago. That's changed quite a bit from the last 23 years."
Michael Nitz started going to Rascals when the Pivot Club, a gay nightclub in Appleton, closed in 1995.
Everyone knew about the Pivot Club, which was open for 10 years and had dancing seven nights a week — it even attracted The Weather Girls and "It's Raining Men" show during its heyday, according to the Wisconsin LGBT History Project.
"Right now it's the only gay bar in the area, so it's the only place where it's really comfortable to socialize," Nitz said of Rascals.
Every day.
"We just don't close," West said.
That applies to holidays, which can have a bittersweet benefit for those in the gay community who aren't fully accepted by their own families.
Rascals is similar to a gay and lesbian community center that a larger metropolitan area might have, Vosters said.
When organizers selected Rascals for the Orlando vigil, McKenney said it gave him pause, but only briefly.
"For a split second I thought, you know, is that really a good idea?" he said.
"Then I'm like, no, we're gonna come and celebrate peace and love and mourn the ones that died.