Before downtown Durham was condos and craft cocktails, there was Buddies — a low-key, high-heart gay bar tucked at 401 South Gregson Street, just off the tracks and a world away from pretense.
Opening in 1984, Buddies became a cornerstone of Durham’s LGBTQ life through the final years of the Reagan era and into the early ’90s. It wasn’t flashy. It didn’t need to be. It was a jukebox-and-pool-table kind of place. A cheap-beer, shoulder-to-shoulder, everybody-knows-your-name room that offered something rare in North Carolina at the time: consistency.
