If you got banned, you were banned for life! For a while, Martha would refuse to let people leaflet or pass out free Empty Closets in the bar. The original owner was Martha Veltree she was murdered in the early ‘90s at another bar she owned in the South Wedge. Joe Baker, EC editor in early ‘70s: “The first (Court St.) building was torn down long ago. Billy Giancursio did a print in 1976 of me, himself, and Pam Barrale dancing at Jim’s after a night of work on the EC.” “But we did work in the basement of Jim’s and in the second floor above Friar’s on Monroe Ave. Mains, first openly gay elected official in NYS: “The cage wasn’t at Jim’s that was at a space we leased on University just east of Culver (truly bizarre).
One rumor has it that Tim Mains, when Empty Closet editor in the mid-1970s, worked from an iron cage in the basement of Jim’s. Jim’s is legendary in our community’s lore. The police raids ended in Rochester in 1973, thanks to then-Chief Gordon Urlacher. The bar was a gay community institution in the days when police raided gay bars every weekend, and gay men and lesbians had nowhere else to gather. Jim’s ads first appear in the 1973 Empty Closets, advertising a Halloween party. But Jim’s seems to be the now-vanished bar most often cited by veterans reminiscing about the early days. (originally on Court St.) was one of the pre-1975 gay bars in Rochester, along with Fernand’s (later the Bachelor Forum), Dick’s 43, Friars and other places.
