A sports bar in downtown Detroit’s Broderick Tower recently rebranded as an all-inclusive queer nightclub, dubbed Flaming Embers. But staff at the revamped hangout, formerly known as Detroit Sports Bar and Grille, say the queer community is now being shut out.
A source familiar with the matter tells Metro Times that several workers cut ties with the establishment on Wednesday after being told the Flaming Embers space would revert back to a sports bar because the owners “changed their mind completely.”
An employee who spoke to Metro Times under the condition of anonymity says they were told to remove an LGBTQ+ pride flag from the window and refused. That’s when they were informed the bar, located at 1570 Woodward Ave., was changing direction.
“We were really excited to bring a space of inclusion to Detroit right downtown, and apparently it was too much and we were ruffling feathers all the way to the top,” the employee says. “From inception, it was about being a queer space, but the building manager told us to take down the pride flag, which is completely rude and against everything that we started here. It’s a slap in the face to the city. It’s a slap in the face to everyone that put effort into it.”
Detroit Sports Bar and Grille’s rebrand to Flaming Embers was first reported by the Detroit News in April. Following the Detroit News article, employees say they were told not to speak to the media about it being a “queer space” under the orders of real estate developer and owner Michael Higgins.
The club’s name comes from a restaurant called Flaming Embers that operated in the space in the early 1950s and closed in 1993.
“Even though we got a lot of positivity from [the article], I think they were completely weirded out by the use of the word ‘queer,’” the employee says. “We had to explain that the word queer has been reclaimed and we use it for identity.”
A request for comment from Higgins and management at the Broderick Tower was not returned.
Staff say they were asked to stay on board and run the space as a sports bar, but they refused, saying “that’s not what we signed up for.”
“The queer community deserves a space and I feel so bad for young generations right now that don’t have that space in Detroit,” an employee tells us. “We should be a functioning city with a strong queer community and everyone together, not just a gay bar, which is typically white male.”
In 2015, a club that billed itself as a gay sports bar called Briggs Detroit opened in the former Tom’s Oyster Bar downtown. At the time, its owners said it was the first gay sports bar in the city since a spot called TimeSquare closed in the early ’90s.
Briggs closed in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Subscribe to Metro Times newsletters.
Follow us: Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter
