Narrated by New Orleans own New York Times best-selling author Christopher Rice, Upstairs Inferno (96 min) is a mesmerizing mix of crime drama and human connections that captures the heartbreaking feelings of unconditional love and overwhelming loss. With unique access (on-camera interviews from survivors, witnesses and friends/families of victims) and a fresh perspective (incorporating long lost artifacts, newsreel footage and photographs that haven’t been seen in decades), Upstairs Inferno vividly examines this oft-forgotten story and is considered the most authoratative film about the tragedy and its aftermath. Despite the staggering historical significance, few people know about the tragedy. The fire permanently altered lives and was the root of many lifelong struggles. The devastation was compounded by the homophobic reactions and utter lack of concern by the general public, government and religious leaders. There were also the delayed injuries: lost jobs, fear, public ridicule and severed families. The tragedy did not stop at the loss of lives. The primary suspect was never charged with the crime. One-third of the New Orleans chapter of the Metropolitan Community Church were killed in the blaze, including two clergy. The fire ultimately killed 32 people and severely injured countless others. On June 24, 1973, an arsonist set fire to the Up Stairs Lounge, a gay bar located on the edge of the French Quarter in New Orleans, Louisiana. The plaque that commemorates the fire is as unassuming as the bar once was, a bit of history hidden in plain sight that largely goes unnoticed.Watch Upstairs Inferno now on Amazon Prime Today, the door that led to the Upstairs Lounge remains. The Archdiocese of New Orleans, which largely ignored the fire at the Upstairs Lounge, released an apology. New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, son of the mayor at the time of the event, memorialized the fire at the Upstairs Lounge almost as if to make good since his father decided not to return from vacation after the tragedy in 1973. He cites Skylar Fein's work, "Remember the Upstairs Lounge" as an important node in the memorialization. Ryan attributes the more recent revisiting of the Upstairs Lounge by historians and scholars to a collective desire to bring justice to the situation after the 40th anniversary in 2013. Many people didn’t claim their gay relatives’ remains to lay them to rest. Additionally, the anti-gay sentiments that caused Stonewall weren’t to blame for the events at the Upstairs Lounge - the person who set the fire was likely a gay man - and the shame of homosexuality persisted.
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Gay liberation groups and safe spaces existed, but “radical politicization had not found its way to New Orleans,” Ryan says. The fire at the Upstairs Lounge did neither of those things for New Orleans. The Stonewall protests in New York City galvanized gay people and gay rights’ activism. “The fact that I didn’t know about this, I knew other people must not know about this as well,” he says. He wondered how he’d never known about the incident even though he’d spent a good amount of time in gay spaces and around gay people in the French Quarter. Ryan heard about it for the first time shortly after the 40th anniversary in 2013. The fire at the Upstairs Lounge is an important moment in gay history, but many people, gay or not, don’t know about it.
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No one was ever arrested or charged for the fire, but the man who was booted from the Upstairs Lounge is widely believed to be the arsonist. Nobody in the city could figure out if that many people had died from fire in New Orleans before. In the aftermath, the Times-Picayune likened the scene to Hitler’s incinerators on its front page. As the fire department tried to quell the flames, it became apparent that there were still several people inside the building, trapped behind bar-covered windows. On the other side of the bar’s main entrance were flames.Ī bartender was able to get some people to safety through the emergency exit in the back, but the bar itself was a fire hazard.
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But that night, there wasn’t a car waiting.
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A while later, someone incessantly rang the bar’s doorbell, usually a signal that a patron’s ride had arrived to escort them home. Patrons reported a man in the restroom for “bothering” people, declining to go into specifics, and he was removed from the bar. The bar got crowded and the crowd got intoxicated. June 24, 1973, a Sunday, the Upstairs Lounge hosted an all-day drinking event. The Upstairs Lounge was situated in the heart of the French quarter in an unassuming spot, as gay-friendly bars were at the time.