bar became a hive of activity where students mixed with dockers and glamorous transvestites and transsexuals mixed harmoniously with lesbians and gay men. By the close of the decade, the various groups had separated as heterosexual 'New Romantics' had begun to take over. After a brief close, re-opening and boycott due to rampant misogyny, the bar finally closed when Sadie died in the late 1980s. 1980s Interviewees from Our Story Liverpool recall memories of the vibrant 1980's gay scene which included Jody's, The Curzon, Lisbon, Paco's, Reflections, Scarlett's and Sadie's. Most of the venues were based on or around Stanley Street, tracing the embryonic stages of the present day gay quarter. Scarlett's and Reflections both served as a meeting place for members of Friend Merseyside, a Liverpool-based LGBT support group which operated a weekly coffee bar, befriending, counselling and switchboard service in the city centre. In spite of the modest freedoms afforded by the bars, interviews reveal how homosexuality was still seen as taboo in mainstream society and how copies of the Gay Times were still being stocked in brown paper bags at the News From Nowhere bookstore, even by the late 1980s. Interviews in the Liverpool Echo describe how the 1980's AIDS epidemic impacted Liverpool's predominantly underground and tight-knit gay scene. Due to misconceptions about HIV and AIDS that existed at the time and the stigma towards the gay community, many people started to withdraw from social contact. As a result of lost interaction and gatherings, a dramatic drop in the number of people frequenting the gay bars and clubs plus a large number of local gay men dying from the disease, interviewees describe how the 'scene went quiet'. It was not until the late 1980s with the arrival of medication to treat HIV and AIDS such as AZT that the social scene started to recover and ultimately evolve to become more mainstream with the greater incorporation of heterosexual people. Due to the hysteria over the AIDS epidemic as well as anxieties surrounding the infamous Section 28, which prohibited local authorities from intentionally 'promoting homosexuality', Liverpool City Council chose to cancel a grant to a gay play being performed at the Everyman Theatre in 1988. Following widespread opposition to Section 28, a co-ordinated 'Liverpool Against the Clause' campaign organised protests in nearby Manchester, whilst debates were had on the extent to which one was liable to be prosecuted for