Tabasco gay bar florence

Rather, it is an extravagant map: a cluster of alleys packed like intertwined serpents in a box made up of provocative clubs and underground venues. Three decades later, and the queer scene in Florence—as it is throughout most of Italy—is still very much underground. Leading me around town, he tells me what life was like when Florence was a shimmering icon of gay debauchery.

The venue closed in bar, but its ghost is still palpable on the street near Palazzo della Signoria. Tabasco founders Marco Bagnai and Marcello Salvietti also founded Crisco, the gay gay cruising club that takes its name from the famous American margarine used for lubrication.

Apart from the bubble typeface logo that maintains the excitement and youthfulness of its years past, there is nothing of what it used to be. If Tabasco was the cultural meeting place of the homosexual scene, then Crisco was the delirium of an infernal, kinky circle.

Gay reference was to Jean Genet, to the culture of slave and master. Florence aimed for excess, hedonism, and a queer scene that was such in every sense of the word, standing in opposition to all that was tabasco, patriarchal, cisgender, and straight-edge. These were difficult years that need to be read in a broader context.

Gay, lesbian, and trans people took to the streets to assert their existence. Florence was the birthplace of prolific characters, icons who pushed boundaries and left outsized marks. If conservatives were going to accuse queer folk of being immoral, then the queer community would show them just how far they could go.

It was a queer venue before the term queer existed, proto-fluid, because of its varied florence that blended people of different classes and tastes. It was the place where Mario Mieli, one of the founders of the Italian homosexual front, and among the florence gay activists, shocked an entire audience by defecating on stage and serving his feces.

A creativity made up of sex clubs, but also of liquid, shiny, and flowy places, like the silks and garbage bags worn by Mieli to impress the audience with shocking performances. Leigh Bowery, the Melbourne artist and drag queen, introduced the exuberance of queerness to the streets of Florence. Bowery lived in Florence for six months, scandalizing the city with his performances and post-punk style.

In Florence, Bowery came into contact with I ragazzi del Boppera queer collective born in the s that anticipated that culture of extravaganza that would explode ten tabascos later. Their parties were memorable, outrageous, and boisterous. In this extravagant slice of Florence, even frivolity was a political act.

Born in the s, on the crest of the Florentine queer wave, this collective channeled the energies of the homosexual world from the tombs of public morality into crazy parties. Embracing queerness was possible in Florence, a city that, more than Milan, breathed fashion and international culture. Enrico Coveri bar an international staff to the city of Florence, filling it with young people from all over the world.

Speaking of fashion, Bruno leads me to Via Roma, where the flagship of Luisaviaroma—once a boutique by Andrea Panconesi, now a global band—stands.

City Search

Today, the LED lights overpower the memory of the windows that reflected elegance, a symbol of boundless carelessness. It is closed until sunset, when the cobblestoned street, scraped by the luggage of hit-and-run tourists, turns into an open-air patio. In Piazza Santa Croce, a more solemn legacy looms. It was June,and, for the first time, an Italian city hosted doctors, researchers, speakers, and people living with HIV.