We didn’t think we could put a sign in front of a gay bar.” I can remember a guy who had a bar just south who said, ‘You can’t do that! The gay bars can’t have signs!’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m gonna do it, anyway.’ That’s what got me, how oppressed this community was. It was owned by a former Pittsburgh Steeler, and they had a sign outside – it was a Pepsi sign that said Railroad Exchange. “The Sun Tavern had been the Railroad Exchange, and I found it because that’s where the anti-war people hung out. I’d never done it before, we were all scared,” Redburn said in an interview with QSaltLake Magazine‘s JoSelle Vanderhooft in 2008.
Redburn bought the Railroad Exchange Saloon on the corner of 400 West and South Temple and opened the Sun Tavern as a gay bar on Feb. Joe Redburn, the owner of several Salt lake City LGBT clubs over the years starting with the Sun Tavern in the 70s, died Tuesday at the South Salt Lake Men’s Resource Center homeless shelter.
