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One Saturday night around closing time, while Cheo sat at the downstairs bar, Figueroa floated downstairs dressed as his drag queen alterego, Mimi. One downstairs regular named Cheo was among the most vocally homophobic, using Spanish slurs against his fellow customers.īut the Rainbow Eye team was determined to win him over - along with the rest of the Sammy’s Place regulars. “Are they going to like me? Can I say hi?” “For the first couple months, it was weird, like, I don’t know that person,” he said. Regular bartender Figueroa started performing drag upstairs at Rainbow Eye, despite being jittery. “When three left, three could come in, and they waited,” Melendez remembered.īut downstairs, Melendez said, “the shit hit the fan.” Upstairs, staff were constantly trying to hold the bar to its 75-person capacity. The scene on that opening night was whiplash-inducing - a line of LGBTQ Philadelphians stretched for an entire block down North 5th Street. On Halloween night of 2008, Melendez and Torres welcomed the first customers to the upstairs bar they called Rainbow Eye. “I was nervous…shit, scared,” Melendez said of opening her own gay nightclub.
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A New York gay bar called The Stonewall Inn catalyzed the modern LGBTQ rights movement in the United States.Īt times, acts of homophobic violence have also infiltrated these spaces. Historically, they’ve existed as one of few safe spaces for queer and trans people. Gay bars are more than just a place to drink and dance. There’s nothing where minorities can go.” “And then I said, you know what? This could be something. “I had a lot of close friends that were in the same situation,” Melendez said. Her mother stopped speaking to her for a year, and her customers were skeptical, at best. Sammy's Place owner Iris Melendez Kimberly Paynter / WHYY Opening night at Rainbow EyeĬoming out as an adult in the Latino community wasn’t easy for Melendez. That worked for Melendez, because she did too. She said, ‘I belong to the pueblo,’ meaning the community.” “You know when you’re really in love and you ask your partner, ‘I’m yours, who do you belong to?’ And you expect them to say, ‘Honey, I’m yours too.’” Melendez said. “We clicked,” Melendez said, and nine months later they were living together down the street from the bar. That woman was Northeast Philly resident Brenda Torres, a project manager at the neighborhood PGW facility. “You know, she stalks, but then I was hoping she stalks.” “It was like a Romeo and Juliet kind of shit thing,” Melendez recalled, laughing. She was a soft butch, with dark hair slicked back. On the block, hundreds of people drank and danced around a pig roast in the middle of the street. But six years later, at her annual Mother’s Day block party, she met another woman. Nothing ever blossomed between Melendez and her DJ. Melendez swears she didn’t, but the conflict became such a force in their relationship that in 2001, they split up. The couple hired a lesbian DJ to spin at Sammy’s Place, and Melendez’s partner suspected she had a crush on her.
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When Melendez opened the bar, she was with her son’s father. “I believe that there is no greater feeling than falling in love. “I guess, to me, love is about the soul,” Melendez said. The gender of her next partner won’t matter. Melendez lights up when she imagines falling in love again. She’s single now, but she’s had serious relationships with both men and women. If you ask her how she identifies, she’ll assert, “I’m just Iris Melendez.” A ‘Romeo and Juliet’ moment at 5th and Jefferson