"There's three giant Rubbermaid containers of shows and contests we had here, on VHS tapes," Noxon says. Mostly, though, the good memories are all around them - like the old sign, which now hangs in the bar. "That was sort of a slap in the face to me." (Corpuz says she doesn't know the history of the sign's removal.) Today, Space's smaller sign hangs from Pegasus's former signpost. The Cultural Trust "said they wanted to sterilize - I think they said sanitize - the area" from its seamier days. "This has been tough to run a business without any way to advertise that you're here," adds Noxon.
"We get 20, 30 phone calls a night: 'We can't find you. "Our sign at one point was quite famous," says DeCecchis. They also made Pegasus remove its large red-and-black Pegasus sign, which had hung over the sidewalk for years. The Trust bought their building in 2003, replacing the street-level Condom World and an adult bookstore with Space art gallery. Noxon and DeCecchis didn't always feel entirely welcome, they say.
"They were a great asset in the Cultural District," she says. Pegasus' closing is a loss to Pittsburgh too, says Pittsburgh Cultural Trust spokesperson Veronica Corpuz. "Any time we lose a site where kids gather, it's a loss to the program," says Persad head Betty Hill. Noxon and DeCecchis, as well as original owner Morrow, "have always been willing to help out nonprofits, and the drag community." "Pegasus has been a staple venue for outreach services," she says. She's been at the bar twice a month since 1997.
Today, Lyndsey Sickler uses Pegasus to offer oral HIV testing, free condoms and safe-sex advice to 18- to 25-year-olds as part of the LGBT organization Persad's Youth Empowerment Project. He calls it the movement's "Independence Hall." "It was also at Pegasus that the first organizing committee was formed for the Pittsburgh AIDS Task Force" in 1985. "Maybe more important, it had a key role in education" about AIDS here before local officials got involved, he adds. "Along with the other bars, it was a key player in getting AIDS research going in the city," says Anthony Silvestre, who was hired that year to head the recruitment effort and is today co-investigator of the study. Most crucially, the Pitt Men's Study began its investigation into the causes and effects of AIDS in 1984 by recruiting male subjects from local gay bars, including Pegasus. They certainly did." Pegasus in particular, he says, "had many shows were fundraisers for different gay and lesbian organizations." "In the early days, I felt that the bar owners made a lot of money off of our community, and I thought they ought to give back. "Every new organization that would spring up would come to the bars and say, 'Would you donate to this? Would you donate to that?'" says Jim Fischerkeller, who began volunteering with Downtown's Gay and Lesbian Community Center in the 1970s, when it was just a phone line in someone's home, and was its chairperson from 2000 through 2005. Pegasus has also been the first choice of local nonprofits trying to reach young LGBT people to promote a cause. "When people from out of town think of a gay bar in Pittsburgh, they all know Pegasus. "It was my first gay bar, from when I came out - 1993," says Shawn Collins, who has been a DJ here since 2001. "Seeing this place, hearing about it, has helped a lot of people," he adds. "It's been a great place for youth" to come out and to meet other LGBT people, he says. Manager Rodney DeCecchis, the bar's longest employee at 15 years, isn't so sure places like Pegasus have become obsolete. Still, the decision to close "was tough - Rodney and I shed some tears over it."
We got it." Numerous other bars and clubs in town welcome a gay clientele, he points out, and "The Internet has taken a bunch of our customers" as well. "But from what I see, we don't need it any more. "It was always a cause," he says of Pegasus's spot in local gay history. The Eagle was closed temporarily over the summer. Noxon also owns the North Side's Eagle, another fixture in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community here. Five years ago, he bought it from original owner David Morrow, who died earlier this year. But once you reach the bottom, the entire bar is visible: the alcohol-free section on the right, for the club's college-age patrons the dance floor in the middle and the main bar on the left, marked by a large crescent-moon statue with puckered red lips.Įxpenses are "too high here, especially for a basement," Noxon says in explaining the bar's demise. The entrance to the Liberty Avenue bar, marked only by a red Pegasus figure, leads down a set of steep stairs.