![discovery gay bar little rock discovery gay bar little rock](https://threebestrated.com/images/ClubSway-LittleRock-AR.jpeg)
When Jones was in the third grade, the family moved to Hot Springs. Eventually, the family moved to Malvern, where Jones’ father had taken a job at a Reynolds Metals Co. While those who don’t like him might call him a control freak, an optimistic person might see it differently: He is a man who believes his mission in life is important enough to sweat every detail, even window measuring, and so he does.Ī native of the tiny town of Sparkman, Jones was born in a plank shack with no indoor plumbing in June 1946, the son of a sawmill worker. These clubs continue to work as a crucial melting pot of gay and straight, now that attitudes have changed. That’s all in addition to the fact that he has somehow - by sheer force of will - opened and kept alive clubs that served as some of the only safe spaces for LGBT people to congregate and socialize in the days when gay people were openly and proudly hated. But any cross or catty word ever said about him must be balanced with the good: He is a man who fought prejudice in heels and a pageant gown decades before it was OK to be gay in America who attended the first national gay pride march in Washington, D.C., helping carry the banner for Arkansas with friends who are now all dead who bankrolled, often out of his own pocket, some of the first outreach and financial assistance to Arkansans dying with AIDS. The first result when you Google “Norman Jones, Discovery” for instance, is a blog post by a group called “Fed Up Queers” from 2009, discussing what they call a “No To Norman!” protest - it would be the “first of many” the lone post states - apparently organized because Jones’ club Backstreet, now called Triniti, started charging a $15 door fee to patrons between the ages of 18 and 21. You don’t run clubs for 40 years, and especially LGBT clubs, without pissing people off, and Jones has surely pissed some people off. Inside those walls, Norman Jones sees even the sparrow fall. If home is the place where you feel most in control of your own time and destiny, Discovery surely is his home. He speaks as wistfully as Norman Jones gets of wishing he could clone 25 copies of himself, so he could do everything without having to rely on others who might not do it his way. And then, maybe, he will haunt the place, restored - if the universe is kind - to the fresh-faced drag queen beauty who won the first Miss Gay America crown back in 1972. No, when he goes, it will likely be at Disco. Though he has been telling people for years that he will eventually retire to Florida and while away his days on a beach with the waves lapping at his toes, talk to Jones or anybody who is around him on a day-to-day basis and you’ll know the smart money is not on him breathing his last into a margarita straw in Fort Lauderdale.
![discovery gay bar little rock discovery gay bar little rock](https://wehco.media.clients.ellingtoncms.com/img/photos/2009/11/24/disco_t1000.jpg)
“I’ve got to handle this,” Jones said, then rushed off, his face set like a man about to do battle with fire. In the middle of our interview, for instance, on an afternoon when Discovery was a hive of activity as his most trusted employees prepared for another summer weekend, Jones excused himself after being told workmen were there to measure a window.