Fire in the French Quarter: The Up Stairs Lounge - Part 2

Episode 127

In Part Two of Fire in the French Quarter: The Upstairs Lounge, we look at what happened after the flames were extinguished. Survivors faced the threat of being outed, victims and their families were met with cruelty and rejection, and investigators began trying to determine whether the fire had been deliberately set. As police chased conflicting leads, strange confessions, and a can of lighter fluid found near the bottom of the stairs, a clerk at a nearby Walgreens gave them their first potentially significant lead.

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Eternal gratitude to our Inner Sanctum patrons, Melanie Curtis, Beth Charis-Molling, Laura Pisciotta, and Jason Wolfe for helping us bring light to the stories others would rather leave in the ashes.

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Background music by Not Notoriously Coordinated 

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SOURCES:

Delery-Edwards, Clayton. The Up Stairs Lounge Arson: Thirty-Two Deaths in a New Orleans Gay Bar, June 24, 1973. McFarland & Company, 2014.

Fieseler, Robert W. Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation. Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2018.

Camina, Robert L., writer, director, and producer. Upstairs Inferno. Camina Entertainment / Upstairs Inferno, LLC, 2015. Documentary film. Narrated by Christopher Rice.

The National WWII Museum. “Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation.” Conversation with Robert W. Fieseler and Ed Lengel, PhD. September 9, 2020. YouTube video. https://youtu.be/6A13PovoDAQ?si=7GnzAeQBCgEfE1it