“Well, obviously there's not a no-touching policy,” he said. While the crowd is a little younger now, and you may not have seen a drag show there back in the '30s, he says that a lot about the White Horse has actually stayed the same over the years. “A whole different crowd has come in, and they keep telling their friends and we get more and more business.” “The whole place has been rejuvenated and reborn since the pandemic,” said Davis. Ever since, the White Horse has been teeming with life. They celebrated in style with a “RuPaul's Drag Race” viewing party. The beloved bar finally made its miraculous return in mid-April, now with a parklet built outside and a plastic barrier separating bartenders from bar patrons. Fortunately, the White Horse made it out OK - thanks to “adequate reserves and a patient landlord,” said Davis. For almost the entirety of the past 15 months, the historic watering hole sat dark. The establishment had never been closed for a single day, he said, until the pandemic. “I hadn't planned on buying it, it just kind of happened,” he said, chuckling.
“I knew of the place since I was a young person, because it was a Chinese restaurant,” said Davis. It once connected to a restaurant (in the space that is now the dance floor), which Davis recalls going to as a child. Many Telegraph Avenue neighbors had no idea the White Horse was even a gay bar. If they did, he’d hit them with the ruler and say, “No touchy.” “They could also close the gay bar just for physical touching, and things like that would put you right out of business.”Īccording to the White Horse website, rumor has it that in the 1950s, a bartender would walk around the bar with a ruler to make sure no one was getting too close to each other. “Back then, they would pass you off to jail and your name would be published in the paper and you would be fired ,” said now-owner Chuck Davis. in Oakland, is the oldest continuously operating gay bar in the United States.
At the time, same-gender sex was a felony. The place feels so bubbly and carefree now, it’s difficult to imagine the secretive, fearful atmosphere of the White Horse in its early days. It’s familiar and unpretentious in the way only old bars can be - in fact, open since 1933, it claims to be the oldest continuously operating gay bar in the country. “It’s making me emotional.”įollowing California’s recent reopening, Oakland’s White Horse is the sort of place people flock to. “I can’t believe there’s so many people,” she says, shaking her head in disbelief.