Chumleys’ Manager, Jimmy Hanosek, was navigating these dark times, cultivating the sense of family, the diversity, and the esprit de corps that are our signature. It was a reckoning for the local community, acknowledgement of loss that Chumley’s had already felt keenly, intimately. In 1993, more than 10,000 people visited campus to witness the AIDS Memorial Quilt. “Cha Cha’s” was code for Chumley’s, if you wanted to leave another bar to be with your gay friends. You’ll hear people who went to Chumley’s in those early days tell of pacing the block for half the night, hoping nobody would see them enter. Definitely small and dark, but still, on the main drag in the very center of town. In those days, most gay bars in small towns were hidden. They served soups and sandwiches and cold beer to a professorial crowd. Liz Pierce and husband Joe Schrantz opened our little pub right in the center of town and across the street from the University. It was against this backdrop in 1984, that Chumley’s was born. In 1986, as the Nittany Lions won the college football National Championship, the Penn State women’s basketball coach bragged to the Chicago Sun Times that she forbade lesbian athletes in her program. In town, gay bars which had been thriving began to struggle, then fail. Gay groups on campus like HOPS (Homophiles of Penn State), which had fought hard for recognition in the ‘70s, had disbanded because of a lack of membership.
