Anisa Khalifa

You’re Taking a Walk on the Broadside. Welcome! I am Anisa Khalifa. This tour is brought to you by The Broadside, a podcast about our home in North Carolina at the crossroads of the South.

It's a weekly program from WUNC, Durham's Public Radio Station.

You're at stop number three of five stops around downtown. Check all of them out on the map right below this audio player on your phone. This story is about a special club that was quirky, a bit grimy and foundational for the inclusive arts scene that Durham is so well known for today.

Charlie Shelton-Ormond

It's a Saturday night in the early 2000s, and we're outside the front door of Boxer's Ringside bar, a four story club on Main Street.

Kym Register

Ringside burned bright and burned really hard. Like it was just a flame of artistry and wildness and queerness in downtown. It was beautiful.

Charlie Shelton-Ormond

So let's step up to the front door and dive into Ringside’s weird world.

Kym Register

When you get in, it was kind of a maze. Like, where would you go?

Charlie Shelton-Ormond

First, you'd go up some narrow wooden stairs. On up to Ringside’s second floor, and that's where you'd find a crucial part of any club, the bar.

Michael Penny

You would have drag queens next to skinheads yakking it up. You know, it was just, it was so diverse.

Charlie Shelton-Ormond

This is Michael Penny, the owner and architect of this bohemian paradise.

Michael Penny

I did all that work myself. I built all these balconies and staircases and stuff.

Charlie Shelton-Ormond

Michael says, the second floor with the bar was really a big balcony. And if you peered over the railing and looked down at the first floor, you'd see Michael's pride and joy.

Michael Penny

I wanted a dance floor. I needed a dance floor.

Charlie Shelton-Ormond

So first floor was for dancing and a place for bigger-name bands to perform. Second floor, bar and mezzanine. Now let's venture up to the third floor and enjoy a show.

Michael Penny

This sort of Victorian stage with velvet curtains and stuff. And in there we had bands, we had plays, we had drag shows.

Charlie Shelton-Ormond

Today, Durham's music scene is strong. Several local bands have made a national name for themselves, but back in the early 2000s, music in the Bull City was nowhere near what it is today.

Kym Register

Chapel Hill was the place to go for live music. I mean, Durham had no venue.

Charlie Shelton-Ormond

This is Durham musician Kym Register.

Kym Register

And Ringside definitely helped further the music scene here and just like opened up their doors for all kinds of art, but especially music.

Charlie Shelton-Ormond

A space for bands to play was great, but Kym admits it was a little janky.

Kym Register

I remember we played a show there and the rickety part was that there was like a hung speaker that fell during our show.

Charlie Shelton-Ormond

Oh my gosh.

Kym Register

And they were just like, “keep going!” And so we were like, okay. So we just kept playing throughout with like sound was coming from beneath our feet kind of.

Charlie Shelton-Ormond

And finally, if the first three floors weren't your speed, you could make your way up to the fourth floor for a slightly calmer scene.

Michael Penny

I had great DJs and they would be playing, uh, cool, laid back sort of music, jazz up there. So you had a very chill area upstairs.

Kym Register

It was like a library with like old antique furniture that you just lay on. And old Victorian, dusty, dark, very time capsule, like you're walking into another era.

Charlie Shelton-Ormond

So on a good night, if the stars aligned, you'd have something happening on all floors. Each with a different flavor.

Michael Penny

And people would just gravitate between all the floors, you know.

Charlie Shelton-Ormond

Each floor represented something unique about Durham, things the city is known for today, all packaged inside this divy club.

The third floor with its bands and plays was a DIY bedrock for Durham’s arts and culture scene. Second floor with the bar and mezzanine, a place to build community.

Kym Register

I know that many people who are in politics in Durham now definitely bartended there.

Charlie Shelton-Ormond

Got their start?

Kym Register

Yeah.

Charlie Shelton-Ormond

And then on the dance floor, the heart of Ringside beat strong, as a space for queer liberation. A beat that still cascades across the city.

Kym Register

Durham has this legacy of being radically queer. I just think remembering these queer spaces as queer spaces too, even though they were welcoming to everybody. Like at their roots, like started and run and perpetuated by queer people, I think that's really important.

Charlie Shelton-Ormond

Ringside closed its doors in 2007. But its legacy lives on in other queer-run spaces downtown, like The Pinhook, a music venue owned and operated by Kym Register. Today the sign for Ringside hangs on one of the walls inside The Pinhook as a memorial to Durham's iconic club.

Kym Register

It reminds us to keep it raucous and keep it wild and weird and queer.

Anisa Khalifa

That story was made by Charlie Shelton-Ormond, a regular voice on The Broadside, a podcast from WUNC about the culture, history, and interesting quirks of North Carolina. You can listen to our weekly episodes anywhere you listen to podcasts.

This project is made possible thanks to the support of Discover Durham.

You can learn more at wunc.org/walking.