Longtime Cedar Creek Lake gay bar turns straight, sends drag queens packing
DAVID WEBB | Contributing Writer
davidwaynewebb@yahoo.com
GUN BARREL CITY — For three decades, a gay nightclub featuring drag shows operated on Cedar Creek Lake, but that tradition ended this fall when the straight owner transformed the last remaining LGBTQ venue into a sports bar with the moniker Bullet.
Michael Zmolik, who bought the bar Garlow’s from gay Cedar Creek Lake resident Michael Slingerland about two years ago, announced in September that the 13-year-old bar would be transformed into a sports club to include daytime hours.
Then the turquoise building with rainbow accents was painted black and renamed the Bullet Bar for a grand opening on Oct. 30.
Garlow’s Facebook page promoting Saturday night drag shows was replaced by one for the Bullet Bar, showcasing attractive female bartenders described as “hot.” The page also announced ladies’ night on Thursdays and a daily happy hour from 2-7 p.m., in contrast to Garlow’s evening-only operation. Live music performances such as a “Texas Country Showcase” became the touted entertainment.
The billboard in front of the bar that also once promoted the drag shows took on a more risqué tone as well: “Not enough letters, cum drink with us at happy hour.” That later changed to “We meant whiskey, y’all are perverts” after the bar apparently received complaints.
The transformation from gay to straight may have pleased the straight patrons of the bar who had represented a sizable portion of Garlow’s customer base since it first opened, but it outraged the drag show performers. The bar’s management suggested the performers continue with the drag shows for four more weeks to “say goodbye,” but the cast instead voted to walk away immediately.
The drag show’s director, Carmella Riata DuBuque, claims the plan to turn the bar straight had been in the works ever since Zmolik bought the business. “Though they tried to mask becoming a sports bar as meeting an unfilled niche out here, it is clear that they no longer cared to have any sort of affiliation with the LGBTQ community,” DuBuque said.
DuBuque said that when Slingerland turned the operation over to Zmolik, a debate began as to whether it should continue to be identified as a gay bar, ostensibly because the new management wanted it to be known as a bar for everyone.
“More times than I care to recall, I explained that the moniker of gay bar (or LGBTQIA+ bar) identifies as a place for everyone,” DuBuque said.
“That classification allowed for LGBTQ people to know that they had a safe place to go and be themselves.
“Now, there is no such place. To have a gay bar in an area like this, one must have a passion for creating a safe place for our community.”
Bullet Bar general manager Steven Marsh denied that the management of the bar wanted to rid themselves of the LGBTQ community. He joined the bar’s staff a few months after Zmolik purchased the bar from Slingerland.
“I met a kind man, a framer/homebuilder by trade, a smart businessman and a straight man, very happily running the neighborhood gay bar. Michael bartended every night — quite a few on his own — and took excellent care of our guests,” Marsh said.
Marsh added that Zmolik bought a business with which “he is free to do with whatever he wishes.”
He seems to confirm DuBuque’s suspicions that a plan for change had long been in the works: “As the few of us came onboard to run it with (Zmolik), we all talked of what our futures were here,” he said. “Our conclusions were that we had stalled out with the look and feel of the building, and it needed new life, new equipment, a new vibe. And we wanted it to be more successful than it was.
“We were in no way failing or closing. We were running a bar that we didn’t create, and we wanted to run one that we did create.”
Marsh noted that Saturday nights are the “prime real estate” in the bar business. “My first call in my new role as GM was to take that time back from the drag show,” he said. “It was and always has been great. I loved it, had a blast, and I killed it. The opportunity to start over fresh was the only way to make all our plans to come to fruition.”
Some of the LGBTQ patrons did take offense to the decision to rebrand the bar, Marsh acknowledges. He alleges that DuBuque waged a campaign to stir up resentment about the transformation of the bar. He called the event a “small ripple” that subsided. Only a few of the LGBTQ patrons refused to return to the bar, he said.
“Our hearts are with our entire community and especially always with the LGBTQ+ friends. We changed our bar. We did not and will not allow any discriminatory practices or speech in this building. We never will. This was not an exclusionary act,” he said.
DuBuque said the performers feel like they were unappreciated, then discarded when they were no longer of use to the bar’s three straight owners, whom she identified as Zmolik, Zachariah Taylor and Scott Sellers.
An atmosphere of “homophobia and misogyny” pervaded the operation, and the performers were treated unfairly, DuBuque contends.
“We were the reason that people were willing to pay a $10 cover on Saturday nights. The entertainers only received half of the money from the cover. The bar willingly paid a straight man and his band $300 weekly to come in on Sunday nights when the bar was virtually empty, and no cover was being charged.”
A gay bar had operated in the rural area in one form or another for 36 years, according to Slingerland, who worked as a bartender at another Cedar Creek Lake gay bar called Friends before opening Garlow’s in 2010.
Friends, which operated for 15 years, closed in 2011 during a devastating drought that lowered the lake level drastically and ruined many businesses. The Friends location also was turned into a straight bar.
Slingerland, 73, listed Garlow’s for sale in 2014, saying that he planned to hold out for a buyer who would maintain it as a gay bar. But he took it off the market a few months later when it had not sold.
The sale of the bar to Zmolik came about because “he offered me more than it was worth,” he said. He maintains that LGBTQ residents and visitors are welcome in all of Cedar Creek Lake’s bars and have been for a long time.
Still, even though he is retired and through with the bar business after recouping his investment in Garlow’s, Slingerland is wistful about the loss of a gay bar in the area after so many years of there being one.
“It’s not what I would have done with the bar,” he said. “I’m sad, but I’m not shocked. Everything ends and everything changes.”
DuBuque said she and the other performers were left without a venue, but they are trying to find another. They have even offered to perform at private parties to keep their acts alive. “I fought long and hard to keep us out here, and I’m not done fighting.”
Editor’s note: Dallas Voice has continued to be distributed at Bullet Bar through the sale of the bar and the change in name and audience.
