(mellow music) - Gigi's has always been a place, it's predominantly gay, but everyone's welcome.

Everybody's welcome.

It doesn't matter who or what you are.

Color, creed, it doesn't matter.

Everybody's welcome except narrow-minded people.

(laughs) (upbeat music) - [Narrator 1] Gigi's is Detroit's oldest gay owned and operated bar located on Warren Ave just off of Southfield.

This year, Gigi's has celebrated a major milestone, 50 years in business, having opened in 1973, just four years after the Stonewall Uprising in New York City.

- People think that this is just a bar and it's not.

It's a community haven for not only the gay community, but anyone that feels different than their surrounding area.

We speak the language of love.

We don't ask at the door who you love, who you want to love, who you are, who you wanna be.

We just accept you for who you are and we offer you a place to be able to come and socialize and- - [Narrator 1] Co-owner Louis Mandujano bought the business in 2020, but before that, he had been a regular at Gigi's since the 1990s and even met his husband there.

- I have been coming here for over 20 years at that point when I was approached.

I had, at that point, been retired out of the army.

I spent a little over 30 some odd years in the Army.

Being in the military, I was under the don't ask, don't tell.

So it was very difficult to find a happy space for myself in the military.

And so this gave me an opportunity to come here and be free, be who I was and be who I actually felt comfortable being around.

And in the late '90s, I met my husband here and so I take great pride in what we try to do here, not only for my sake, but for the sake of the community and for the sake of all the customers that have walked these halls and continue to walk these halls.

(people laughing) We've gotta just remember where this establishment started.

In 1973, if you were female, you couldn't wear anything male.

If you were male, you couldn't wear anything female.

And so it was illegal.

You could have basically gone to jail.

And so a lot of that history that we have in the Miss Gigi's contest started as a Halloween gimmick.

And because during Halloween it was kind of, okay, you can be whoever you wanna be because for that night it's acceptable.

And that's how we evolved into a pageant, a contest.

And now to this day, we are one of the biggest contests in the Midwest.

- [Narrator 1] Nickki Stevens has directed the drag shows in Gigi's cabaret space for 31 years ever since she was crowned Miss Gigi's in 1992.

- The old show director who has now passed, which was one of the old owners, when I won on Sunday, October 10th, 1992, Monday, October 11th, she said to me, "you are now the show director."

So included in winning the title, I had to take over the shows.

(laughs) Miss Gigi's is the longest gay bar title in the nation.

We just... We're gonna be celebrating in October 50 year anniversary.

We know all of our old title holders and the ones that are able to, and the ones that are still with us come back each and every year.

Well, when I started here, we were going through the AIDS epidemic and you would be sitting next to somebody and two weeks later they would be gone.

We would, you know, put on shows and benefit shows for research and trying to find, you know, the cure and trying to bury, you know, some of our friends that, you know, their families had abandoned them because of their sexual orientation or whatever.

There was people dying that just couldn't even get buried.

They were in Wayne County.

And so we did all that, and trying to fight for our rights.

And it's come a long way, but there's more that can be done and needs to be done.

- I love listening to all their stories.

It's so empowering and it's so freeing listening to how it was back in the day to compare to now.

It's like the struggles and how much freedom I have now, it's crazy.

- [Narrator 1] Randy Marcos Santiago has been the bar manager for 15 years.

- The owner before his name was Paul Manduluzo.

I asked him one day, I was like, "why don't we ever put money outside?

Why don't we ever make the building look nice?"

And, you know, back then they would graffiti it, they'd throw bottles at the walls, they'd tear down...

They'd destroy the bar on the outside because it's gay.

It was so much hate back then.

He said they would never put money on the outside.

But now it's 2023 and we finally put flags up on the roof.

We're making it well known that this is what we are, and it's okay.

I've been here 15 years, I've seen people get thrown out of their homes, nowhere to go.

So they'll come to the bar to spend a peace of mind that no one's gonna hurt them here.

Only thing they'd have to worry about is where they're gonna go after the bar's closed.

They'd have to go to a friend's house from one person to another until they figure it out because their family don't anything to do with them.

I've known some people that committed suicide because of it.

It's really sad.

So there's never a stop to fighting for equality and all of that.

- One of the things that we pride ourselves is that we are one of the only establishments that allows 18 and over.

Not because we want to try and get anything out of them, but because we want them to have a safe space.

It's very difficult for an 18, 19, 20-year-old to find a safe space that they can go and find other people that accept them for who they are.

Once you come through the door, it is a magical experience.

You will experience nothing, but acceptance when you walk in through our doors and you will leave a very happy person because you obviously came here to enjoy yourself.

And I can guarantee you that's what you will do.

- Even though I work here, I still feel like I can be myself here, I don't have to worry about the hate out there like...

There's still hate out there.

I can't walk down the street holding my husband's hand and not have people stare at us weird or look at us funny.

I can't give him kisses outside of... At Bell Isle, we can't sit at the park and just hold hands because people are gonna look at us weird.

Here I can kiss him on the face, I can kiss him on the cheeks, I can be whatever.

But out there, it's still crazy to me that people still hate and like it's 2023, move on.

(upbeat music) - We're working hard to try and hopefully make this a historical site one day, I mean, it's 50 years, 50 years is about the same time that Stonewall has been around.

And we know that that's a historical site now.

So at one point I had a conversation with the governor of Michigan and asked her, I said, "how long or when has the last LGTBQ site been historical site in Michigan?

And there isn't one there, there aren't any.

And I think that this qualifies for it.

Yes, it is a bar, but it's more than a bar.

It allowed me to be who I wanted to be and enabled me to meet the person that I love now.

And that I live my life with.

- The ones that wanna criminalize us and everything else, it gives me a lot of joke material.

(laughs) But we go on with what we do, unapologetic.

This is, you know, for people that are looking for a good time and entertainment, everyone's welcome, come, come see me.

The crazy peroxide piranha.

(laughs)