Ah this reminds me very much of C-Street bar in Champaign Urbana Illinois, where I went to school at U of Illinois. It had the largest gay bar in all of central Illinois, a Mecca in a soybean field, where everyone from all the other smaller towns like Danville, Springfield, Blommington-Normal,and Decatur, it had the biggest sound system in Central Illinois, it was two levels, actually bigger than any bar Ive been in Chicago, and the entry age was 19, and the drinking age 21, but everyone knew someone older to get them a drink and fake IDs were rampant back then, and it was gay, lesbian, drag queens, trans, older folks but then by the mid and late 90s, it became "cool and progressive" for straight kids to come, so more and more straight people would come

They also had drag shows on Sunday night

Since it was a college town of 100,000 you either knew or recognized almost everyone