Schuler, 73, and other older members of the local LGBTQ community can recall the days when gay bars were disguised, when they socialized out of town for fear of being spotted by someone they knew and when they were subjected to police harassment. “I said, `Because there is one.’”Ĭolumbus may be known as a gay-friendly city today, but it wasn’t always that way.
“My partner at the time (now her wife) would ask me, `Why do you always want to sit by a window?’” Schuler said of the Short North establishment. When she began visiting the Union Cafe after its 1996 opening, Linda Schuler habitually chose a seat next to a window.
