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Downtown Austin bar accused of turning away gay customers

An Austin bar is accused of turning away gay customers.

Courtesy photo

KVUE -- At the end of a downtown Austin street lined with rainbow flags sits a bar called Red Room (with no affiliation to the Red Room Lounge). "It's been a gay bar. They opened up on Fourth St. as a gay bar," said former Red Room bartender Josh Moon.

On Friday, July 19, however, Moon says that all changed when the owners brought in a new promoter. "They pulled all the bartenders in the back and they said, 'Well, we're not going to call this a gay bar anymore, we're going to call it a straight bar,'" Moon said.

Gay patrons say on that night, they were kicked out of Red Room.

Speaking via a lawyer, the owners tell KVUE a private party rented the bar for the night and it was the private party that kicked people out, which is within their legal right.

However, Moon says a Facebook invite for the night in question does not mention a private event, instead calling it a "grand opening" that would last for the next several weekends. "I think they were going to make it a continued thing and bring these people back every weekend, because that's how they made it sound to us," says Moon.

The owners say there was a new dress code enforced that night, but Moon says it was enforced unfairly. "They said no shorts, no hats, no this ... But then they were letting people in with shorts and letting people in with hats. They were turning gay people away just for being gay."

He says he went to find security and heard the "door guy say word for word, 'This is not a gay bar anymore, you're not welcome. You can't come in.'"

That's when Moon decided to leave, and he was fired the next day.

"I can't morally respect myself and be okay with this and stay here and work for you when you're turning all of my people away. You opened up a bar on Fourth St. in the gay strip. You can't do this to people."

The lawyer for the owners say they want to remain an open and inviting bar for everyone. They also say they regret what happened that night, and they will be more careful in the future when hosting private events.

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NOTE: Red Room Lounge at 306 E. Third St. is in no way affiliated with the Red Room bar mentioned above.

Read the full story on KVUE.com.

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More Foraging

Free 'food forest' in East Austin expands with thousands of new plants

Angelina Alanis at Festival Beach Food Forest

Photo courtesy of KVUE

Angelina Alanis gives a tour of the garden, which is open to anyone.

In East Austin, there is an edible forest garden called Festival Beach Food Forest where anyone can walk around and harvest free produce, nuts, medicinal plant leaves and herbs. And over the summer, it grew to several times its size.

The forest has fig trees, peach trees, grapevines, asparagus and more that's not in season right now. You can grab passionfruit and plants like yaupon holly, with leaves that can make a caffeinated tea, rosemary and lemon balm.

"[Lemon balm] is part of the mint family," said Angelina Alanis, communication and partnership coordinator for Festival Beach Food Forest. "It has a lemony taste but it's good for a nervous stomach. I'm prone to anxiety so I always grab a hunk."

The food forest is located right next to Interstate 35 and Lady Bird Lake on 29 Waller St., near a part of town that's known for being a food desert, lacking grocery stores.

"There's as much as a 20-year life expectancy difference between parts of East and West Austin, and a lot of that comes down to food access, health care access and also access to nature."

Alanis said for the past nine years, the volunteer-based grassroots project been helping with the issue and just recently expanded in the summer from two-thirds of an acre of city parkland to over 3.5 acres.

"We're going to have hundreds of new trees," said Alanis. "We've already planted 150 new trees in the area and then thousands of plants on the ground."

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They also plan to add a community kitchen and a pavilion to do things like cooking classes or informational sessions.

Read the full story at KVUE.com.

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