The little gay water cooler

Sipping a Heineken while observing the Friday night clientele at Paddy’s in Ventura, you will, according to the bar’s owner Frank Roedel, likely find “a mixed bag of wax.” The two male mannequins sheathed in bridal white behind the counter and the rainbow banner garlanding a window make obvious the establishment’s orientation, but that’s where homogeneity ends. The crowd there is as diverse as any you’ll find in Ventura, with young and old, gay and straight, and several shades of skin milling around the historic building as disco music and strobe lights pulse in the background.

Occasionally misidentified as an Irish pub, Paddy’s (named after Roedel’s Irish grandfather) holds distinction as the only remaining gay bar in Ventura County, despite having been one of several in the area during the mid-’90s. On April 11, it celebrated its 14th anniversary and its 11th year in its current location at 2 W. Main St. But besides serving the estimated population of 40,000 gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered individuals within county limits, Paddy’s has earned a reputation as a comfortable place where you are welcome, says patron Stephanie Standley, “no matter what your deal is.”

Paddy’s boasts a pool room and a dance floor off the main bar area, a lower bar and party room, and an outdoor patio, a versatile setup that allows them to host regular events like karaoke on Wednesday and Sunday nights and dancing on Fridays and Saturdays. On a given night, the clientele appears about evenly split between men and women. Straight women, Roedel says, are relieved to have a bar they can come to without being hit on. And on a weekday afternoon, you will find old-timers and regulars nursing drinks at the bar.

On Friday evening, customers congregate under colored lights on the patio. Friends greet each other with hugs. Inside, small groups sit at tables on the hardwood floor as a Fantasia music video plays on three large screens. “Who’s Your Paddy?” T-shirts and a display of photographs for sale by local artists decorate the walls. A large bulletin board near the entrance holds advertisements for roommates, stop-smoking classes and free HIV/AIDS testing.

Paddy’s comfortable atmosphere might be due to the fact that it feels more like a community center than a bar. Unlike straight bars which may host weekly gay nights, Paddy’s has evolved into what Chrisopher Haynes, a dancer at Wildcat Lounge in Santa Barbara, calls “the little gay water cooler.”

“We all come here,” he says. “We swap stories and catch up. You meet a lot of locals and nice people.”

Over the years, Roedel has made a point of offering financial support to events like the VCRA-sponsored AIDS Walk and the Gay Pride Parade. As a central hub, the bar fulfills a practical purpose, says Jay Smith of the Ventura County Rainbow Alliance (VCRA).

“Paddy’s serves as a social outlet, a go-to place for the LGBT community,” he says. “There’s resource materials … It’s something more than a neighborhood bar. It’s a welcoming community.”

The Bears Ventura, a local gay men’s organization, holds its monthly meetings here. In February, they threw their fourth annual benefit drag show in the lower bar. Proceeds went to Let California Ring, a pro-gay marriage group, and a memorial fund for Lawrence King, the Oxnard student recently killed in what is being labeled a hate crime.

“Ventura, for being so small compared to the San Fernando Valley or West Hollywood, has only treated me and my customers with respect,” Roedel says. The bar, however, still plays a critical role in fostering a tolerance not always found elsewhere.

Danny Dauria has worked as a Paddy’s bartender for one year. With short dark hair and piercings, she’s friendly and competent, and Roedel says she has been a hit at Thursday’s Ladies’ Night.

Dauria also works at Outlaws, a grill and saloon in Camarillo where she has occasionally received rude comments from customers who ask if she is a boy or girl. Her co-workers there have helped defend her and kicked out such discourteous patrons.

At Paddy’s, she says, “People don’t have to worry about someone hating on them because they’re gay.”

Roedel has owned a number of bars, both gay and straight, during his lifetime. His first cocktail lounge, called the Three Clubs, was located in Hollywood nearly 40 years ago. Since then there have been three bars in the Valley, one of which he co-owned with his brother and sister. Paddy’s is the largest.

“We run them all the same,” he says. “The conversations [at a gay bar] are definitely different, but that’s about it. We run them as neighborhood-type places, and everyone seems to have fun.”

Though the gradual dwindling of Paddy’s competition has been cited as evidence of the county’s unfriendly attitude toward gay establishments, Roedel says the reality is simply that the level of business is too low to support a second bar.

“There happen to be a lot of gay people in Ventura, but a lot of them are homebodies,” he says. “They may come out once a month. … The people that do come out, there are just enough for one bar.”

Roedel attributes his survival over the years to honest, affable employees and a reasonable price structure. Paddy’s does not accept credit cards, an inconvenience that nevertheless ensures prices remain low. A bartender who prefers to go by Timmy notes the consistency of its hours. And the generous square footage, he says, guarantees that “you still get the small-town Ventura feel, but it’s big enough that you don’t have to stare at the same wall all the time.” That appeal transcends the aesthetic: one man in a wheelchair appreciated the wide hallways and accessible restrooms.

Paddy’s has managed to remain relatively free from the drama that often plagues other bars. Smith, who has known Roedel for years, calls it “a no-nonsense kind of club.” Roedel admits his bar tends to be calmer than other establishments, where he says fights are more likely to break out over girlfriends or sports. In 40 years, he has never had a major problem; he claims, “I’m not in this business for aggravation.” He is on friendly terms with the local police, who have told him that Paddy’s clientele gives them the least trouble of anyone.

That may be partly due to the bar’s familiar, unpretentious atmosphere and what Smith calls its “message of inclusiveness.” Haynes, for one, acknowledges that other bars in the area may be more posh, but “there’s no sense of intimacy.”

Yet for all its strengths as a neighborhood hangout, Paddy’s has seen its business diminish in recent years with the rise of the Internet.

As Smith explains, “bars used to be the only social outlet for gays and lesbians to meet other people like themselves.

Now, people don’t need to meet face to face out in public — they’re doing it in cyberspace.”

Still, he says, were Paddy’s to one day disappear, “it would create a huge hole in our community. … A lot of regulars have been coming for years. It’s a community within a community.”   

Paddy’s is located at 2 W. Main St., Ventura, 652-1071. For more information, visit www.paddysventura.com.