Back Door
Madison
Summary
Its opening was advertised in the April 1973 issue of GPU News, which promoted "three levels of entertainment" and named proprietors Rodney and Jack. Over its run the venue served variously as a bar, restaurant, piano bar, and dance club, and became a social hub for Madison's gay and lesbian community in the 1970s.
A customer-and-employee appreciation gathering first held in 1973 grew into a city-wide fundraiser for Madison LGBT organizations known as the MAGIC Picnic (MAGIC stood for "Madison Area Gay Interim Committee"), which continued into the early 2000s. The bar closed at the end of October 1977, with a "Good Bye To OZ" closing week and an invitation-only final party on October 31. Its closure coincided with the opening of the larger Going My Way bar earlier that year.
Owner Rodney Scheel went on to open Rod's, a landmark Madison bar of the 1980s and 1990s. The Back Door at 411 Galloway Street in Eau Claire opened in March 1991 in space that had briefly housed the Breadline cafe. It was among the first openly LGBTQ bars in the Chippewa Valley and appeared in statewide guides such as In Step before closing in March 1992.