NARRATOR

Kevin Dale McKeown compares the daytime and nighttime crowds at the White Lunch. Though they occupied the same space and at the same foods, they were worlds apart.

KEVIN DALE MCKEOWN

The little old ladies and their grandchildren who went for tea or lunch at the White Lunch at two in the afternoon, I’m sure, had no idea what was going on there at two in the morning because it was quite a different scene.

Certainly by the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, the White Lunch on Granville was where a lot of the gay scene, the bar scene, the drag queens, the junkies would hang out after the bars closed, after the, the booze cans had thrown them out.

And that’s where you’d find us at two, three, four o’clock in the morning, waiting for the street sweeper to come up Granville Street to herald the dawn.

NARRATOR

Jamie Lee Hamilton spent many late nights there as a teenager.

JAMIE LEE HAMILTON

It was a fun place to hang out. We were loud. We partied the night away. You know, they’d have all these booths, and we’d be dancing on the tables, just carrying on, like screeching around the place. It was really, really wild.

But I guess the manager of the day wasn’t comfortable with us being there. She couldn’t really pick on the gay guys, so she went after the trannies, the transgendered, those of us who were very young, and you know, and she basically kicked us out and said, ‘cause we were too loud, we were dressing too slutty, that and until we learned how to become proper ladies, you know, we had to stay away.

Which was sad, because a place was being taken away from us that we could congregate, be safe, and have fun and live out our lives. And be in the company of others: community.