Jewel Thais-Williams, the founding father of the pioneering Black lesbian and queer nightclub Jewel’s Catch One in Los Angeles, has died. She was 86.
Thais-Williams’ dying was confirmed by KTLA and by a number of buddies and workers of the membership. No reason behind dying was instantly accessible.
For many years, the Mid-Metropolis nightclub — identified to regulars as The Catch — was L.A.’s hallowed sanctuary for Black queer girls, and a welcoming dance ground for trans, homosexual and musically adventurous revelers. Artists like Ella Fitzgerald, Madonna and Whitney Houston sashayed down Catch One’s winding halls, whereas the indomitable Thais-Williams fended off police harassment and led care applications through the peak of the AIDS disaster.
The Catch was singularly vital to the event of Black and queer nightlife in L.A., and belongs beside New York’s Paradise Storage and Chicago’s Warehouse in any account of an important nightclubs in America.
“It was a community, it was family,” Thais-Williams advised The Instances in a 2018 interview. “To be honest myself, I was pretty much a loner too. I always had the fears of coming out, or my family finding out. I found myself there.”
Thais-Williams, born in Indiana in 1939, opened Jewel’s Catch One in 1973. She didn’t have ambitions to open a generationally vital nightclub, only a extra resilient enterprise than her earlier gown store. Nonetheless, her expertise of being shunned as a Black girl by different native homosexual golf equipment bolstered her resolve to make the Catch welcoming for these omitted of the scene in L.A.
Jewel’s Catch One on West Pico Boulevard.
(Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Instances)
“I didn’t come into this business with the idea of it becoming a community center,” she stated in 1992. “It started before AIDS and the riots and all that. I got the first sense of the business being more than just a bar and having an obligation to the community years ago when Black gays were carded — requiring several pieces of ID — to get into white clubs. I went to bat for them, though I would love to have them come to my place every night.
“The idea is to have the freedom to go where you want to without being harassed. The predominantly male, white gay community has its set of prejudices. It’s better now, but it still exists.”
Jewel’s Catch One turned a sort of West Coast Studio 54, with disco-era visionaries like Donna Summer season, Chaka Khan, Sylvester, Rick James and Evelyn “Champagne” King performing to packed rooms. Celebrities like Sharon Stone and Whoopi Goldberg attended the events, glad for wild nights out away from the paparazzi in Hollywood.
Thais-Williams “opened the door for so many people,” stated Nigl “14k,” the Catch’s supervisor, doorperson and limo driver for 27 years up till its sale in 2015. “A lot of people that felt not wanted in West Hollywood had nowhere to go. But people found out who she was and put word out. She was a great friend and a shrewd businessperson who allowed people to just be themselves.”
The membership’s many rooms allowed for a variety of nightlife — strip exhibits, card video games and jazz piano units alongside DJ and stay band performances [along with Alcoholics Anonymous meetings]. The boisterous, accepting ambiance for Black queer partiers contrasted with the fixed surveillance, regulation and harassment outdoors of it.
“There was a restriction on same sex dancing, women couldn’t tend bar unless they owned it,” Thais-Williams stated in 2018. “The police were arresting people for anything remotely homosexual. We had them coming in with guns pretending to be looking for someone in a white T-shirt just so they could walk around.”
A hearth in 1985 claimed a lot of the venue’s prime ground, closing it for 2 years. Thais-Williams suspected that gentrifiers had their eye on her constructing.
“It’s very important not to give up our institutions — places of business that have been around for years,” she stated. “Having a business that people can see can offer them some incentive to do it for themselves. I’m determined to win, and if I do fail or move on, I want my business to go to Black people who have the same interest that I have to maintain an economic presence in this community.”
Thais-Williams’ AIDS activism was essential through the bleakest eras of the illness, which ravaged queer communities of shade. She co-founded the Minority AIDS Undertaking and served on the board of the AIDS Undertaking Los Angeles, which offered HIV/AIDS care, prevention applications and public coverage initiatives.
Together with her accomplice, Rue, she co-founded Rue’s Home, one of many first devoted housing amenities within the U.S. for girls dwelling with HIV. The power later turned a sober-living house. In 2001, Thais-Williams based the Village Well being Basis, a healthcare and training group targeted on continual ailments that affected the Black neighborhood.
Jewel Thais-Williams in 2015.
(Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Instances)
“Jewel is a true symbol of leadership within our community,” stated Marquita Thomas, a Christopher Avenue West board member who chosen Thais-Williams to guide town’s Delight parade in 2018. “Her tireless efforts have positively affected the lives of countless LGBTQ minorities, [and her] dedication to bettering our community is truly inspiring.”
After a long time in nightlife, going through dwindling crowds and excessive overhead for an enormous venue, in 2015 Thais-Williams bought the venue to nightlife entrepreneur Mitch Edelson, who continues to host rock and dance nights within the membership, now generally known as Catch One. (Edelson stated the membership is planning a memorial for Thais-Williams.)
“People in general don’t have appreciation anymore for their own institutions,” Thais-Williams advised The Instances in 2015. “All we want is something that’s shiny because our attention span is only going to last for one season and then you want to go somewhere else. The younger kids went to school and associated with both the straight people and non-Blacks, so they feel free to go to those spots. The whole gay scene as it relates to nightclubs has changed — a lot.”
After the sale, the significance of the membership got here into sharper focus. A 2018 Netflix documentary, “Jewel’s Catch One,” produced by Ava DuVernay’s firm Array, highlighted The Catch’s impression on Los Angeles nightlife, and the broader music scene of the period. When Thais-Williams bought it, the Catch was the final Black-owned queer nightclub within the metropolis.
In 2019, the sq. outdoors of Jewel’s Catch One was formally named for Thais-Williams.
“With Jewel’s Catch One, she built a home for young, black queer people who were often isolated and shut out at their own homes, and in doing so, changed the lives of so many” stated then-Metropolis Council President Herb Wesson on the ceremony. “Jewel is more than deserving to be the first Black lesbian woman with a dedicated square in the city of Los Angeles for this and so many other reasons.”
L.A.’s queer nightlife scene remains to be reeling from the impression of the pandemic, broader financial forces and altering tastes amongst younger queer audiences. Nonetheless, Thais-Williams’ imaginative and prescient and perseverance to create and maintain a house for her neighborhood will resonate for generations to return.
“Multiple generations of Black queer joy, safety, and community exist today because of Jewel Thais-Williams,” stated Jasmyne Cannick, organizer of South L.A. Delight. “She didn’t just open doors — she held them open long enough for all of us to walk through, including this Gen-X Black lesbian. There’s a whole generation of younger Black queer folks out here in L.A. living their best life, not even realizing they’re walking through doors Jewel built from the ground up.”
“Long before Pride had corporate sponsors and hashtags, Jewel was out here creating space for us to gather, dance, organize, heal, and simply exist,” Cannick continued. “We owe her more than we could ever repay.”
Thais-Williams is survived by her spouse and accomplice for 40 years, Rue.
