Andrews Inn
Photo by Jeremy Youst. Collection of Andrews Inn Oral History Project.
Photo by Evie Lovett
This is like 1980s. Late 70s, early 80s, and Bellows Falls was I mean, it's like it is today, except that there is this hotel that was sitting right on the main intersection there. That's beautiful. You know, it's a beautiful little town. And the Andrews Inn was like, it's like midway between—I don't know the midway—but somewhere between Boston and Montreal. And so it would gather gay men and women. Eventually, women. From all over New England and southern Canada.
It was very—the gay GLBT movement back then was sort of in its nascent form. It's very early on and we were all just struggling to figure out who we were and what it was and—it helped me come out. It really did. I was very closeted, except just to myself. And I was with a woman at the time. In fact, I'm going to have lunch with her today. We're—we're still really good friends after all these years. But she did not know that I was gay until I came out to her in the late 70s, and then started coming to Andrews Inn. And it was just so wonderful and it was so free and and it just helped me to feel more comfortable being different in that way. So it helped me to come out.
I think it was my girlfriend, you know, who said, "there is this—" yeah, I think it was just in passing she said, "you know, you ever hear about the Andrews Inn? It's where all these gay people go and they--" and that was before she knew I was gay, and I thought, "ooh!” And something sparked in me, and so I decided I was gonna check it out. And I did. And that's how I did. I walked in that place and I was like, "wow!" Mouth open. Yeah. What an incredible scene it was, you know. And at the time too—I had gone to other gay bars in Boston and New York and there was nothing like the Andrews Inn, it was just so, so alive and so raucous. So it was a lot of disco music, it was very loud. It was very raucous, and it was like a lot of dancing and bouncing and touching, and it was so alive. It was just the visceral feeling was just it was just so alive. It was energizing. And, you know, I would walk in the front—I can see myself walking into the front door being hit with this wall of sound and walking into the dance floor. And everybody was just bouncing up and down and against each other. And there's so much touch and joy. Oh, so much joy, because it was a place where an oppressed group of people could come and just let loose. — Michael Gigante