History of Gay and Lesbian Life in Wisconsin - Businesses - Bars and Clubs outside Milwaukee

 
Stop Lite
Location: 302 E. Wilson Street, Madison WI

Opened:
Closed:

 c1969
c1975
Clientele:

Female/ male
Beer Bar

 

  
       
 

Stop Lite was owned by Jack McManus. According to a contributor, it was popular with lawyers at lunchtime, and lesbians by night.

"All them girls hanging around down here, but they ain't our kind of girls," said the lawyers, but Jack said "the girls have to have someplace to go". Reportedly the lesbians made the bar so profitable it was no longer a tax write-off.

The bar was never listed in Wisconsin LGBTQ periodicals, however was listed in a few national gay guides. (The 1975 Damron Guide listing included codes indicating "Mixed or partially straight / Girls but seldom exclusively / Raunchy types; hustlers, drags and other 'downtown' types").


Listings in early "Gay Guides": (For more information on the Guides, click here.)
1970 International Guild Guide
    Title pg   Editors note   Codes
1973 Guild Guide
    Title pg   Editors note   Codes
1974 Bob Damron's Address Book
    Codes
 

Credits: according to the memories of contributor DJ Wippenfurth;
Web site concept, contents, design and arrangement by Don Schwamb.
Last updated: November-2024.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.