Writing in 2007, Boston Globe reporter Robert Sullivan recalled it as "a Combat Zone bar known for its sketchy clientele, banged-up piano, and year-round Christmas lights." The Playland Café was in a part of town that became known in the 1960s as the Combat Zone. It did include the Punch Bowl, the Touraine, the Melody Bar, and the Mardi Gras, all gay or "mixed crowd" bars. Oddly enough, the blacklist did not include the Golden Nugget. military declared Playland and ten other Boston bars off-limits to servicemen. The following year, citing concerns about teenage drinking, the U.S. During that time, one teenager was spotted in the Playland Café and 17 were spotted in the Golden Nugget, the strip club next door. In 1954, disturbed by reports of underage drinking by teenagers, authorities conducted undercover inspections of several Boston bars over a period of two and a half weeks.
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"Blue-collar truck drivers mingled with Harvard students." 1950s Īccording to historian Neil Miller, the crowd at Playland in the 1950s was surprisingly diverse for its time, both racially and in terms of class. One bartender, Jim McGrath, worked at Playland for 38 years. Since Boston's blue laws prohibited drinking at the bar on Sundays, at the stroke of midnight on Saturday employees would block access to the barstools and set out folding chairs, thus complying with the letter of the law.
A well-known lesbian performer, Marie Cord, frequented the bar and sang there.
Dancers, singers, and other performers provided entertainment.
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In the early days of the bar's operation, a mural on the wall depicted Playland regulars hobnobbing with movie stars. Over the years it was mentioned only a few times in the Boston Globe. When the bar closed in 1998, Staffier, who had run Playland for 40 years, said that it was not the "den of iniquity" it was reputed to be, and that arrests had been rare. According to Paul Staffier, when his father Rocco Staffier opened Playland in 1937 it was not a gay bar, but by the start of World War II it had begun attracting a gay clientele.