It was a mainstay through the AIDS crisis: When everyone was in the same spot, race seemed to matter less, and white gay men started to come to Catch One, making for the kind of integrated crowd that would have never been seen in a disco club before. In its prime, Catch One’s attendance swelled to 1,300 a night and included celebrities like Madonna, Sharon Stone, and Janet Jackson.Īs the climate of the world shifted, Catch One changed too, but over the staggering 42 years it was open, it always remained a safe and inclusive place for the black LGBT community. Unlike her first club, Catch One’s intention was gay from the start. They got their aswer in 1973, when Thais-Williams opened Catch One. Even women were often turned away at the doors, leaving LGBT people of color still in search of a haven where they could safely be themselves. There were other gay discos in Los Angeles, like the famous Studio One, but even though gay was OK in those spaces, black still was not. It was clear, though, that queer people of color needed a specific haven of their own. In the words of Thais-Williams: “It was kind of a miracle, really.” The boundaries of age, gender, color, and sexuality would eventually disappear. But as time went on, the straight white people started to stick around later and later, until they ended up partying with the gays. Three very distinct groups came to her club at different times: White people would come during the day, blue-collar blacks in the evening, then late at night, LGBTs of color. When The Diner’s Club went on sale, she was able to do just that, turning the old spot into everything she wanted it to be and had never been - a mixed club. For years, every time Thais-Williams looked across the street she would think, “One of these days, I’ll own that place, and everybody will be able to come.” Black folk would often come to her store, complaining they’d been turned away from the club by white people who didn’t want black people drinking with them. Years before, Thais-Williams worked across the street from a place called The Diner’s Club. “I thought perhaps a little club,” she said, “where I could be involved with the customers.” But a liquor store felt too impersonal for Thais-Williams. “People are going to drink, no matter what,” her brother, who owned a couple of liquor stores, told her. She ended up owning a dress shop with her sister, but when the recession hit in the '70s, she knew she needed a business that would stay viable even when people were spending less. It took 14 years to get her degree, but Thais-Williams never faltered because she was convinced graduating was the only way she’d become a business owner. That desire led Thais-Williams to migrate to Los Angeles, where she juggled odd jobs while taking classes at the University of California, Los Angeles.

She had no doubt she would be an entrepreneur herself when she got older. She’d spend her shifts imagining all the ways she would run her own business. The accomplishment is extraordinary, considering that Thais-Williams grew up in a time when work opportunities were rare for black people, and those available mostly left black people banished behind the scenes, kept out of sight as they worked in the backs of stores.īut Thais-Williams had an uncle who owned a grocery store in San Diego, where she worked every Sunday from ages 9 to 16. Thais-Williams ended up founding and running the first black gay disco in Los Angeles - the historic and legendary Catch One. Her response to the absence of black LGBT spaces? Fixing the problem herself.

“Black women are on the bottom of the totem pole for everything,” she says now, making the statement as a fundamental fact that she’s come to reckon with, but which she also refuses to let define her life’s trajectory. Now 78 years old, Thais-Williams lived through a version of Los Angeles where gay culture wasn’t allowed to exist outside of the closet and black people weren’t allowed in white-operated underground gay spaces. That is the world Jewel Thais-Williams came up in.

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