New Gay Square

It was announced last night on the news that the new square in town - which has been under construction for the last year or so - is almost completed and is going to get an exciting new name.

The square used to be a very busy 2 way street with parking space for both cars and bikes, a stop for the Hope On-Hope Off tourist bus, a taxi stop and a bus stop for normal city traffic.  On the square is a wonderful monument of Viking horn blowers.  

All of this falls in the shadow of the amazing town hall tower.  On this square – one of the corner buildings had a bar or pub or who knows what – plain jane and non-descript.  

It was converted years ago into a swanky joint named - Alexandra Bar - after Prince Joachim’s wife.   A wonderful busy business woman with a father from Hong Kong and a mother from Austria.  She was an amazing woman and everybody loved her.  She picked up the Danish language as easily as cotton candy melts on the tongue.  The bar was not a hit and I can’t understand why.  It was a really groovy bar both inside and out and talk about ‘location location location’ – this was it!  Prince Joachim and Princess Alexandra have 2 boys but later divorced.   

Meanwhile…. Just a few streets away, deeper into the old down town area, was the most trendy gay bar/café called Sebastian.  The owners of the joint, Wally and Claes, must have hit the jackpot when they sold it.  The new buyer must have lost his ass because the place died at almost the same moment the new owner stepped in.   

Sebastian Bar and Cafë

So where were all the fags to go?  Somebody got smart and opened another gay café/bar called Heaven – at the end of the street and around the corner.  It did really well because it was also in a great location with lots of atmosphere.  It was a place to people-watch with good food. It was thee place to go until Wally and Claes of Sebastian bought the dead Alexandra Bar and made it the newest (several years old now) gar bar/café in town called Oscar.   Oscar was a huge hit when it opened and several years later, it still is.  It’s such a hit that Heaven, which later died as well, moved next-door to Oscar to suck up some of the overflow. Little by little, Oscar, and now Heaven, have been creeping out into the parking area with patio tables and chairs to accommodate their overflowing eating/drinking/clubbing guests.  

Oscar Bar and Café

Then last year the bulldozers came in – no, not dykes, Caterpillars – to scrape away all the asphalt and cobblestones to make way for a new square.  And every square has got to have a name - right?.  So they came up with a really good one and announced it on tv last night: Axgil Plads.  Ok – Plads – Place – Plaza – all of them are just another word for square.  But what the funk is Axgil?

 

   

It’s a made up last name from two guys first name – one guy named  Axel Lundahl-Madsen, and the other guy named Eigil Eskildsen.  They took their first names and combined them to make a new last name for themselves.  Who are Axel and Eigil? They are the worlds first 2 gay guys to ever get married. Here you can see them sitting in a horse drawn carriage in front of the town hall where they got married back in the later half of 1989. (technically called civil partnership at the time, but required a civil marriage act in the town hall)    

So the new square in the very center of town - a literal skip, hop and limp wrist away from the town hall building - will be named after the pioneering men who dedicated their lives to equality, paving the way for Obama to include us in his inauguration speech and maybe one day soon the US will finally follow in the footsteps of Denmark, making it possible for ALL people to marry whom they love.