Hello and welcome to Queer's Fact.

I'm Hamish.

I'm Alice.

I'm Eli.

And we're a queer history podcast coming out in the first and 15th of each month looking at people, places and things from queer history across the world and throughout time.

In this episode, we'll be talking about Shelley's Leg, Seattle's first openly operating gay bar and an icon of the gay scene.

And this is also our first place episode, so get excited for that.

Music is also our first place episode, so get excited for that. We have a couple of content warnings for this episode. We have one use of a slur

in a quote. We have mentions of destructive fire, and we have intense descriptions of

blood and gore. So if that's not something that you feel comfortable with, we have plenty of other content that I'm sure that you'll enjoy.

Shelley's Leg was a bar and disco operating out of the Pioneer Square area in downtown Seattle

from 1973 until 1978. It was not only Seattle's first gay club, but it was also its

first disco of any kind, and it was a massive deal.

Really?

Yeah, first proper, like, disco in the very early days of when disco started to be a thing

with disc jockeys and DJs, there's a review in the Seattle Times where somebody has to

awkwardly explain for their review of the club what a disc jockey does.

It never heard me until this very second that that's why it's called a disco.

Yeah, sort of. It comes from discotheque, which means record library, a place where there

are a bunch of records and then you play them and people dance and get drunk and have a great

time.

Okay.

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