“AIDS changed a lot of things it made the gay community become more empowered,” Brown said.

Gay people stayed under the radar back then, and much remains to be learned about gay life at the time.

Michael Brown, a UW geography professor, and Larry Knopp, professor and director of interdisciplinary arts and sciences at UW Tacoma, are piecing together how policies relating to alcohol and public health shaped how gays and lesbians in Seattle carried out their lives during the pre-AIDS era, before 1983. Northwest Lesbian & Gay History Museum Project Inside the gay bar The Golden Horseshoe, which was on Second Avenue South near Pioneer Square.