screening of Hap Veltman’s San Antonio Country is free, though donations will be accepted for the Happy Foundation, which maintains an archive of local LGBTQIA history housed at the Bonham Exchange.I've heard that "The Annex" is Moderator cut: inappropriate, and then I just saw the below description printed at San Antonio Music and Nightlife - Bars and Clubsģ30 San Pedro Ave., San Antonio, Texas Tel. “I think on one level it’s just an interesting story about San Antonio itself,” he said.
I always told them it’s a great story, an interesting story, and gay rights is human rights,” he said.
“A lot of people I interviewed for the movie were surprised that a straight person would be interested in this subject. Mahoney’s sensibility echoes Veltman’s inclusive vision for his pioneering nightclub. “Obviously if you’re into gay rights or human rights this is a story you’d be into, but this also just a fun story. “One of the reasons I made this documentary is just to show a part of San Antonio that a lot of people aren’t familiar with,” he said. Now, he hopes his own interest will translate to a potentially wide audience. Four years, 10,000 out-of-pocket dollars, and many hours of interviews later, the San Antonio native has his hourlong documentary. “A gay man in the article mentioned that the best gay club in Texas, and maybe all of the U.S., was the San Antonio Country. Mahoney’s interest in making the film was sparked by an article he’d read in an Austin newspaper chronicling the two city’s gay histories. At the time, military police could arrest service members for being in known gay bars, Mahoney said. “There was a really thriving gay community in the ’60s and ’70s it was just sort of hidden from the rest of the city because they were afraid of harassment and beaten up for being gay,” he said.
The poster for Noi Mahoney’s new documentary on Hap Veltman, who opened the first gay disco in San Antonio in 1973. The owner told Alexander, “because if we get raided, I don’t want the police or the sheriff to take over the mic to order the patrons around.” “It just was a very professional, upscale atmosphere.”īucking custom, though, the DJ would have no microphone, on strict orders from Veltman. “Here was a huge place that was really done very nice, and all the staff were attractive, wearing bow ties and dress shirts,” Alexander said. In Mahoney’s documentary, photographs of Veltman’s club show a grand, multifloor space with soaring, vaulted ceilings, elegant furniture, a rose window, multiple rooms – including a neon-lit, mirrored space frequented by showy drag queens – and a dance floor complete with disco ball. We don’t care what your persuasion is,” he said.Īlexander described “The Country,” as many in the film refer to the club, as an “upgrade” from the previous selection of gay bars in the city, which were often windowless, dark, and small. “We wanted everybody to come and have a great time. This is a unisex bar,’” Alexander said by phone from Arlington, where he works as an events manager. But Veltman, a prominent gay personality in San Antonio at the time, intended the club to be for more than one community. “I had never been in a gay bar before,” Alexander said. Related commentary: Gene Elder Remembered: The Triumph of Imagination Over Suggestion The club’s first regular disc jockey, Jamie Alexander, also appears in the film. Many figures who witnessed firsthand that era in San Antonio’s history are present in the film, including Gene Elder, who started the nightclub with Veltman and who went on to run the Happy Foundation, named after the fuller version of Veltman’s nickname.