Pebble Bar



Pebbles Bar (or Pebble Bar) was Singapore's iconic gay bar during the 1970s and first half of the 1980s.

Affectionately referred to simply as "Pebbles", it was located to the left of the ground floor forum of the now-demolished Hotel Singapura Inter-Continental, 585 Orchard Road, adjacent to the Hilton Hotel.

The construction of the hotel was completed around 1963 to 1965 as part of the Singapore government's plan to turn Orchard Road into a tourist belt.

Hotel Singapura Inter-Continental became the Hotel Forum before it was replaced by the present Forum Galleria building.



Customers walked into Pebbles Bar predominantly via the main entrance adjacent to the hotel coffee shop fringing the lobby but, very conveniently, there was also a more discreet entrance from the car park at the rear of the hotel.

In the early 1970s, it became patronised largely by the English-educated, upper-strata gay men of Singaporean society who formed a nexus which enticed other gays to congregate there. These included foreigners and socialising at the bar spawned many a local-Caucasian pairing.



Pebbles' main draw were the live performances of a local band Tania, whose lead singer, Alban de Souza, was decked out in glitz, painted his face a la David Bowie or KISS but with red makeup instead of black-and-white, and entertained with flamboyant, energetic camp.

Although it was the only one of Singapore's first 3 gay bars to have a dance floor, albeit a rather small one, same-sex dancing was strictly prohibited. The bouncers would stop any gay couple from doing so. Some gay bars of that era displayed white posters which read, "No man and man dancing" (sic).

Today, the gay community takes same sex dancing for granted but it is important to bear in mind that this was not allowed until the early 1980s. So gay people sat in one half of the bar drinking and listening to the music, while watching the straight couples dance in the other half. However, it was a common sight to behold men embracing and giving each other air kisses, a phenomenon rarely witnessed elsewhere in Singapore but which raised nary an eyebrow at Pebbles.

Pebbles Bar became less popular as a gay venue later in the early 1970s when Le Bistro starting to attract more of the gay clientele, although it never completely plunged into oblivion as a meeting place. It experienced a resurgence in popularity when Le Bistro closed down.

=See also=


 * Singapore gay venues: historical

=References=


 * Roy Tan, "Photo Essay: A Brief History of Early Gay Venues in Singapore" in the book "Queer Singapore - Illiberal Citizenship and Mediated Cultures" edited by Audrey Yue and Jun Zubillaga-Pow, Hong Kong University Press, 2012. ISBN 978-988-8139-34-7,,,,,,.


 * Russell Heng's article on Yawning Bread, "Where queens ruled! - a history of gay venues in Singapore", August 2005.


 * Russell Heng's article archived on Yawning Bread, "Tiptoe out of the closet: the before and after of the increasingly visible gay community in Singapore", June 2001.. This paper was originally published in the Journal of Homosexuality Vol 40 Numbers 3/4 2001 Special Issue - Gay and Lesbian Asia: Culture, Identity and Community, edited by Gerard Sullivan and Peter Jackson, pp 81 – 97.


 * Neal Prince, InterContinental Hotel Corporation Digital Archives, Singapura InterContinental Hotel, Singapore, Malaysia (1963-1986).

=Acknowlegdements=

This article was written by Roy Tan.