The trial of the “backrooms” of the Le Manhattan club, a symbolic moment in the history of homosexual struggles

“Let no one move! » The light of the projector pierces the darkness of the “backroom”, in the basement of the Manhattan. It starkly sheds light on the antics of the customers of this bar at 8, rue des Anglais, in the heart of “la Maube”, the Maubert district, in the 5^e district of Paris. Stupor. Is it a new game? A real police raid? “It was stunning. We were between us, in the dark, and suddenly I hear: “Police!” At first I thought the cops were there for a narcotics story. Then the light came…”

Lyonnais Michel Chomarat was in Manhattan on the night of May 25 to 26, 1977. Communist father, Catholic mother: he is a pure child of the post-war period. He was then 29 years old, working for an industrial company in Roanne, in the Loire, and taking advantage of a business trip – a communication fair – to spend the weekend in the capital. “I think the police had been in the middle of our antics for a while, he says today in his apartment in the district of the Prefecture, in Lyon. In any case, they were in civilian clothes, young and beautiful…” Michel Chomarat is 73 years old and we guess that he lived well.

At the time, Paris adopted the American fashion for leather bars“leather bars”, such as the Daytona, rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, or the Keller, in the Bastille, whose famous billiards finds, it seems, other uses than that for which it is intended.

In Manhattan, the dress code at the moment, it’s the disco outfit of the Village People group: perfecto, jeans, mustache if possible. This night in the spring of 1977, Michel Chomarat posted himself around midnight in front of the door of the club, open until dawn. ” Who are you ? “Who are you from?” » It’s the ritual here: every evening, a voice, behind the peephole, questions the customer who has just rung the bell. “Okay, come in! »

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Inaugurated in 1974, the Manhattan stands out from other bars by offering inexpensive drinks. It must be said that you don’t come here to sip a Vittel-strawberry. Besides, Michel Chomarat rarely lingers at the bar and goes quickly to the basement. Three await him there “bubbling cellars like a cauldron of hell”, detailed a Parisian guide of the time, seduced by “the extraordinary racial, social and hormonal eclecticism of the clientele”. Michel Chomarat corrects the columnist’s enthusiasm: “Let’s be honest. I loved it, but it was murky, damp; it stank of poppers and sweat. »

“Collective sex”

” Police ! » The small commando equipped with flashlights and a projector is led by Inspector Duval, “specialized in public outrage”, will specify later Release, always committed to the defense of sexual minorities. always according to Liberated, the inspector intervenes “denunciation”. Jealousies have run high between club owners since the nightlife developed at full speed: at the end of the 1970s, Paris had 86 gay meeting places, not to mention 65 saunas. The Narcotics and Pimping Squad has been notified that the Manhattan is receiving “individuals engaged in collective sexual intercourse”. Two discreet incursions in the spring had proved futile: no “outrage” on those evenings. But the investigators had taken the opportunity to locate the places…

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