“Navy investigators would occasionally show up at The Corral looking for gay sailors you couldn’t be out in the service back then. “With the gay bars, those who went to them in the 70s, they would enter a backdoor,” Kristofik said. Gay bars also operated as rallying points and political headquarters where gay communities gathered in the name of advancing LGBTQIA+ rights. New London had its share of underground spaces during those decades, ranging from The Port of Entry Café, where Turning Tide, formerly Stash's, is now, to The Corral, a bar formerly located at the intersection of Bank Street and Montauk Avenue. Historically, gay bars functioned as underground meeting spaces throughout the 1970s and '80s.
Kristofik said talking about these spaces is helpful for older people to remember what they had, and for younger people to acknowledge, ‘“Hey, you led the way. One of the last remaining gay bars in New London, O’Neill’s Brass Rail, closed in 2020. The documentary also goes into Mickey’s Make Believe Ballroom, the Salty Dog and Frank’s Place. Still, a big piece of gay life in New London was its gay bars, starting with The Corral in the 1970s. OutCT is almost 10 years old, and there’s people now who are out in the community and don’t realize the stuff we did in the beginning.” But I discovered that there has been so much more over the years, so it’s great for that story to be told. “This project pulls two of my passions together, the LGBTQ community and local history, so my personal interest drove the project,” Kristofik said. What started as an idea for a quick, cut and dry video about New London’s historic gay bars became more.
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She plans for it to eventually be available for free online.
She is the former director of New London Landmarks, and with the help of Don Presley, a member of the group, has been conducting dozens of interviews of gay people in New London in an effort to capture their recollections and access their perspectives.Īlthough Kristofik classified herself as an amateur filmmaker before making this documentary, it is a feature-length affair premiering at the Garde Theater in October. Kristofik’s documentary, "Holding Space for Each Other: New London's LGBT+ Community," focuses on gay history in New London beginning in the 1960s. OutCT founder Constance Kristofik sought to memorialize it in a documentary coming out this year. New London has a long, vibrant, political, artistic, multi-varied history of gay life.