Turn back to 2015, and you may recall a busy year. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of nationwide marriage equality. Barack Obama’s second term was coming to a close. Caitlyn Jenner came out as transgender. Star Wars offered up the seventh installment of its ongoing space opera. And, in December, Trade opened on 14th Street.
Ed Bailey, sort of the public-facing proprietor of a decades-running D.C. gay nightlife empire — along with John Guggenmos and Jim “Chachi” Boyle — knew the space well. He’s long lived just around the corner. Since World Pride, back in June, the original Trade space has more than doubled. Bailey was particularly familiar with the next-door addition the bar grew into.
“Because I’ve lived in this neighborhood forever, this was my dry cleaner,” Bailey says of the new space.
And he’s happy to talk about the new space, as well as the original. First, however, he wants to be absolutely certain that he gives credit where due. It’s apparent that Bailey, perhaps best known as a DJ, is more comfortable operating a spotlight than being under one.
“All of this was conceptualized by very, very smart, incredibly hardworking people who have worked for me for decades,” Bailey says of Trade, from its dawn to decennial. “They are incredibly important people in the history of this bar.
“Aaron Riggins, who is, to this day, a bartender here, who has worked with us for years, created parties at Town,” says Bailey, referring to the successful nightclub that closed in 2018. “He worked at Number 9. When we opened this bar, he was instrumental in creating the tone and vibe and the direction of Trade.
“The first general manager was Kris Sutton,” Bailey continues. “We moved from Kris to Dusty Martinez as the general manager, who then kind of added a whole new level of personality to the bar. He’s taken that to open Little Gay Pub. We could not be more proud of having helped to set him on his path to his current success, which is phenomenal.
“But the day we started hiring for this bar, we hired a young kid named Lucien Tessier. Today, Lucien is the general manager of Trade. He’s been here since day one, and has undertaken the incredible job of helping Trade become three times the size of what it once was. It’s been a daunting task. It is crazy to run this bar seven days a week.”
As proud as he may be of those who have worked hard to secure Trade’s success, Bailey seems equally proud of the venue itself. Touring the space, it’s as though every corner, every accoutrement, every fixture, has a story to share. At times, Bailey beams when he tells those stories. Or, you can hear the exhaustion in his voice when he recalls how patrons nearly pull sliding bathroom doors off their tracks.
Somewhere in between pride and peril is the mirrored shark spinning above the new dance floor, the Shark Tank. It’s the evolution of an inflatable, mechanical shark that oscillated over the bar as the star of the Halloween decor.
“It became kind of a mascot for the bar,” Bailey shares. “We named her Sharka. Sharka Khan. It went away for a while, and then we actually brought her back as a big party. Everybody came and it was kind of weird. Sharka was the inspiration for the mirrored shark. I bought this shark from a company that makes animal replicas for museums. Then I bought 250,000 mirror tiles from Amazon. My boyfriend, Connor Voss, put this together in our living room. As construction was delayed months after months after months, we lived with this thing in our living room. She’s a hit.”
While the Sharka Khan homage may be the most obvious conversation piece, there is so much more. The expansive new patio area, for example, features a grand artificial tree. Bailey explains that he was hoping to recreate a bit of magic he spotted elsewhere, but sensibly succumbed to the restrictions of this particular plot of real estate.
“When we were building this thing, there were lots of ideas, lots of visions about what it could be,” he begins his tree tale. “We consulted a lot of really smart people, because I wanted to put a real tree there. A real tree twice the size of what is there. Because one of the most interesting bars that I ever went to is in Miami, this kind of rinky-dink building you walked through.
“But you walked through the back door to this patio that was just amazing, with this gigantic real tree, around which there was a bar. This tree was humongous. All the branches had lights, and they hung candles and it was just this amazing thing. It’s always stuck with me, and I always thought, ‘Is there a way to do that here?’ We tried to do it at the Town patio. It’s too big an expense to do a real tree. It gets you into the six-figure realm. All the people we talked to said, ‘You don’t know what the soil situation is in the middle of a downtown block.’ If you did a real tree, you’re probably headed toward a situation where that tree might not make it. And then what do you do? So we started thinking about fake trees, and this was one of the best products. It’s had some technical issues, but it’s one of my favorite parts.”
Seriously, favorite parts abound. There are the custom-crafted, red booths in the lower level — the obviously named Red Room. “I’m a big believer in calling things what people are going to call it anyway,” he says, continuing to point to reclaimed wood here, the tiny disco ball spinning by the downstairs urinals, the layers of gold paint on the Shark Tank’s support columns, particular patterns of wallpaper. On and on, with the same pride as a parent showing baby pictures or a farmer walking you through a patch of his prize-winning pumpkins. With so much going on, a layperson might reasonably guess some of this is haphazard. But don’t be fooled.
“The thought that it might be a bunch of people in flannel shirts and handlebar mustaches was certainly on our vision board,” Bailey says of Trade’s aesthetic origins. “And the circumstances of the community and the times we live in and the trends, the community, just shift. Then Town closes and the city needs a place to dance and for the younger set to come to. Trade’s direction shifted a little bit to adapt, focusing a little more on DJ late-night dancing stuff. It just evolved. We added different lights and we brought one of the Town mirror balls over. No matter what your intentions are, you kind of have to roll with the punches. This is all very intentional. Everything that’s here is very intentional — even though part of the intentionality is to make it appear as though there’s no intentionality whatsoever.”
Whatever the secret sauce, whomever among Bailey’s business partners and staff are making the magic happen, Trade has reached its 10-year entrepreneurial and entertainment imprimatur. What’s next remains to be seen. What’s certain is that the newly expanded Trade is brimming with personality. In his rather soft-spoken way, so is Bailey. Even if he’d rather talk about someone or something else. Again, not a spotlight kind of guy.
METRO WEEKLY: Mr. Bailey.
ED BAILEY: Hey there. How are you?
MW: I’m doing well except for getting over a cold. How are you?
BAILEY: I’m okay. I am getting over a more substantial health situation than a cold. I wish I’d had a cold, but I had a pulmonary embolism.
MW: Oh, my! That must’ve been frightening.
BAILEY: Yeah. I mean, I didn’t know what was going on, but it was significant enough for everybody I’ve talked to to tell me how lucky I was.
MW: So, everything’s good now?
BAILEY: It was two months ago. I haven’t really done much in two months. I’ve only been to my bar twice in two months, which is really, really weird for me, because I’ve spent 30 years plus doing this, and I’ve never not been at a bar [I own] two weeks in a row, let alone two months. So that’s just been weird.
MW: How old are you? 56? 57?
BAILEY: [Laughs.] I’ll take either of those. I’m 59.
MW: You don’t drink, you’re not overweight. You look like the picture of health.
BAILEY: It was completely out of the blue. They put me on blood thinners to try to keep it from happening again. No understanding exactly why it happened.
MW: Where are you right now? At home? I don’t know how I know this, but I think you live on P Street just off Logan Circle.
BAILEY: I do. I can see Trade when I look out the window. Which is a blessing and a curse all at the same time. I have lived here for 28 years. I lived right around the corner from here before that. So I’ve actually lived in this neighborhood since 1994, which is insane.
In 1997 I told my parents I’m buying a condo at 14th and P — because I’m born and raised in D.C. — and my mother said, “The fuck you are.”
MW: Speaking of family, what did you do for Thanksgiving? Did you visit family?
BAILEY: Normally, I do. I am not flying since the blood clot, or I would have gone to see my mother. My mother has Alzheimer’s. I try to talk to her every day. She doesn’t answer the phone some days. She’s in a memory-care unit near my sister.
MW: Where is that?
BAILEY: Just outside of Boston. For the first time, she did not know who I was when I FaceTimed her. So that was a moment. Then she said, “Who are you?” And I said, “I’m your favorite.” Then it all kind of snapped, and she realized who I was, so it was okay. But that was a moment.
MW: My husband’s mother had dementia. I understand. At home, do you have a spouse? Partner? What is home life like for you?
BAILEY: I have a partner of 15 years who is wonderful and supportive and helpful and tremendous. Even though D.C. is my home and has been my whole life, that’s my current iteration of my home life. It’s awesome.
I’ve had many relationships. I’ve always been in a relationship. I’ve never not been in a relationship, and they’ve all been very long. Ever since I was 17, I’ve been with somebody.
MW: I’m guessing your home is very tidy. Maybe you’ll surprise me?
BAILEY: It’s quite tidy, yes. Despite my partner, it’s quite tidy. [Laughs.]
MW: Going back to 17, to Tracks, sort of the beginning of your career trajectory, is it fair to say you had, like, an unofficial Tracks internship in high school?
BAILEY: When I was 17, 18, I knew I was gay, but didn’t know anything about what being gay was all about. There was no Internet, no anything, no representation anywhere. You don’t know what the deal is. Are there other gay people in the world? I didn’t even know.
Then you get taken to this nightclub, in ’84, and you don’t know what to expect. You don’t know what it’s like. It’s not like a kid in recent years who may have seen a movie or a TV show to have some kind of expectation about what they’re walking into. I didn’t know where I was, what I was about to see. I didn’t have any idea. I go in, and I’m like, “What the hell is this?” There are thousands of people, every kind of person.
I went with straight friends, and they don’t know I’m gay. I barely know I’m gay. My friends tell me there are two sides to Tracks. They say, “You don’t want to go into that room.” I knew what that meant. So we went to the big main room on whatever night this was. It was a mixed crowd of some straight and some gay. But Tracks was almost always like that. All ages, all ethnicities, all sexual orientations. Just this big, huge mass of people.
We’re on the main floor, on the dance floor, and “Let the Music Play” by Shannon was playing. Then the power went out in the whole club. It’s scary and weird. Everybody in the club started banging on the railing or stomping their feet to make a beat so that everyone could keep dancing, chanting, “We don’t need no power!” I was like, “This is magical.” This communal feeling of all these people, together in this spot, having fun, enjoying themselves, being whoever they were, not even letting the power outage dampen their evening.
It was just amazing. I don’t want to seem dramatic, but it was spiritual. I’m like, “This is a thing?” People enjoy themselves, come together and the music, the dance floor, the lights…. It was incredible. I don’t really know how to describe it, but I knew I wanted to be a part of this thing. And that was my first time going to Tracks, or to a nightclub of any kind. I was like, “Okay, I want to do this.”
MW: Have you been able to recreate that feeling?
BAILEY: Oh, absolutely. That’s what I strive to do. I went back to Tracks the very next night without my friends, thinking, of course, that I was going to walk into the same thing. But this was a Sunday night, and at the time, Tracks was completely Black on Sundays. So I see this completely other thing. But the same kind of amazing people in this world of being able to do whatever they want around friends and supportive people in an atmosphere with the same kind of happy energy. Oh, my God, the world just opened up for me. As a kid, I was just wide-eyed and excited at what I was experiencing. That experience was right before I left for college.
MW: Where were you going to high school?
BAILEY: I went to Sidwell Friends. My mother and father were very Washington. My mother was a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission. My father ran multiple campaigns for all kinds of people. He did Gerald Ford’s presidential campaign. He did [Sen.] Lamar Alexander’s whole career. All these significant Republicans — back when there was a Republican Party. I had a tough act to follow across the board.
And I was the chief Senate floor page for two years. I was the page for Howard Baker when he was the majority leader of the Senate.
MW: How old were you?
BAILEY: About 13.
MW: Did you get any stories out of that?
BAILEY: Mm-hmm.
MW: Any you can share?
BAILEY: Some more people have to die before I can share those stories. [Laughs.]
MW: All right, we’ll keep an eye out. Did you enjoy it?
BAILEY: It seemed like a very big honor. It was a cool job. It was pre 9/11, so you could freely walk around the Capitol. Anybody could. It was an interesting job, running around the Capitol and the office buildings, learning all kinds of things. It was neat, frankly.
MW: You said your introduction to Tracks was right before college. Where did you go?
BAILEY: I went to Vanderbilt in Nashville. The second I had a break, I came back and went to Tracks. I did that for the next few years. Nashville had a much less vibrant nightlife for gay people. There were two places to go. One of them was a country-and-western bar, which was just not my thing but made sense in Nashville. The experience there was so different than being at Tracks. It was a downer. And I didn’t know anybody in Nashville, didn’t have any friends there.
Right when I was starting to feel like maybe I was going to have some gay friends [in D.C.], I went away to college. I was on a campus of 10,000 students, and there were no out students. There was one guy everybody knew was gay, a cheerleader. That was it.
I started looking for other things to do. My best friend at college, also from the D.C. area, lived across the hall from me. He got a job at the audio-visual office and would manage it at night. They had some very simple, very basic DJ equipment. I used to go there with him at night and learned how to DJ from playing with that equipment.
I started hanging out in DJ booths whenever I could. That required being in these nightlife venues enough to meet people, to make contacts, to get close and be able to move a little closer, a little closer, and then finally be in those DJ booths and befriend people. To watch, and observe, and figure it out.
I started doing that with some of the DJs at Tracks, on my breaks coming back to D.C., to the point they’re like, “I’m going to run to the bathroom. Here, play the song.” That turned into, “I’m going to go hang out with that guy I like. Why don’t you play for a little bit till I come back?” And then, “We’re going to take the night off. Why don’t you just do this tonight for us instead?”
Then I finished college and had no kind of understanding of what I was going to do.
MW: What did you major in?
BAILEY: Spanish.
MW: Why Spanish?
BAILEY: Because I was getting A’s in Spanish. I figured I might as well major in something I was doing well in. Since I was doing well in Spanish, I took Italian. And I took French. I took Portuguese. I left college speaking not fluently, but speaking all those languages. Which are basically one language.
MW: You’re like the king of Romance languages?
BAILEY: Yes, yes. [Laughs.] And I went to Georgetown to get a master’s in linguistics. While I was doing that is when I really started to fill in as a DJ at Tracks. Then the DJ who was playing the small side of Tracks on Friday and Saturday nights — Was it both nights? Gosh, I don’t remember — decided they were going to stop and suggested I take their spots. I got hired to start playing Friday nights in the small room. This was probably 1988. I’d play from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m.
MW: You could juggle that with earning your master’s?
BAILEY: This was all I cared about. With the master’s program, I went the full two years but did not get the master’s. During the time that I did my thesis, the theory that my thesis was based on was debunked by prominent linguists. So they didn’t accept my paper. I said, “That doesn’t seem appropriate to me. You agreed that this could be my thesis. You signed off on all of this.” We went back and forth and I kind of dug my heels in. Maybe I shouldn’t have.
MW: Doesn’t seem to have hurt your career at all.
BAILEY: No, because I really didn’t care. I really did not care. I had found this thing that I really loved. It wasn’t making me any money, but it was bringing me such joy. So I let the master’s go. I just let it go.
Then my time at Tracks was expanded. I was asked to do other things as a DJ there. And I was approached by Eric Hilton of the Hilton Brothers, who said, “Hey, we’re going to turn Perry’s restaurant into a nightclub. I think you should do a night there.” That was my first time promoting something, doing my own parties, Thursday nights at Perry’s. It was Kevin Aviance, Sister Face — the club kids of the day.
MW: This is the kind of attention I would think would sort of pull you toward New York nightlife.
BAILEY: There was a ton of pull. The “Why aren’t you in New York?” refrain was constant. And I had befriended all those people in New York. I was friends with all the New York club kids. Michael Alig and Larry Tee — all those people.
MW: All the experience, none of the acid. You were a front-row, sober witness.
BAILEY: I’ve seen people at their worst, for sure.
MW: I don’t know you, but you strike me as kind of an introvert. Not to the life of the party.
BAILEY: I’m not a wallflower, but I’m not the life of the party. I enjoy being at parties in a way that I’m a little bit removed from the party. I’m pulling the strings for the party, but I don’t have to be in the middle of the party.
MW: You’d probably make a really good spy.
BAILEY: [Laugh.] I have, for many years, and nobody’s figured it out till you.
MW: I hope you don’t have a dossier on me! Despite the New York pull, you stayed. Why?
BAILEY: New York is just really hard. It’s totally different. The kinds of people involved in nightlife there, the money…. You could never really build anything, because someone could come along and outspend you, do something better. That’s the real reason I never ended up going to New York. It’s just too complicated. D.C. was comfortable and I really understood the city. I really knew what was going to work and what wasn’t. It’s kind of just always felt more comfortable for me here.
I was also working at Tracks, which was the most significant nightclub — maybe on the East Coast — when it was open at that time. It was the first nightclub to have a computerized light show. Normally, there were straight nightclubs that would have a gay night. Tracks was a gay nightclub that would have a straight night. Nobody did that back then.
I was enjoying what I was doing. It was great. In the middle of that, kind of blossoming, a new ownership group came in to buy Tracks in 1990. That included John Guggenmos and some other prominent names. They decided to interview everybody who worked at Tracks, so I went to dinner with John Guggenmos. We were the same age. He had this vision for taking Tracks to the next level. Tracks was doing really well, but it could be more polished in a world that was evolving around what gay nightlife could look like. Gay nightlife had always been kind of secretive, under the radar. But in the ’90s the world evolved enough that there could be a more sophisticated marketing approach, elevating the entire concept of nightlife, as opposed to being this kind of dirty little secret.
MW: Your trajectory is two-pronged. You’ve been running bars and clubs, but you’re also a DJ.
BAILEY: I have DJ-ed in many, many, many places. For many years I was playing consistently all over the country. I probably played every major gay nightclub there was in the late ’90s and 2000s.
COVID changed everything. A new crop of people came in after COVID. It’s changed my DJ-ing career significantly. But before that, I had played in South America and Europe. I played in Canada a lot. I played Sydney for Mardi Gras. I played at a big club in Zurich one night for the after-party of a Madonna concert. I’ve opened for Kylie [Minogue] in concert. I opened for the Pet Shop Boys one time.
I’ve done a lot of really cool DJ things. It’s the reason I do what I do. It’s the reason I’m in this business. Had I been able to make money being a DJ, that might have led me to not be involved with owning clubs. But when I was doing it, there was no real money in it.
MW: So, you’re a DJ first, business person second?
BAILEY: Absolutely. I don’t even know that I call myself a business person.
MW: Well, you are really successful….
BAILEY: Mm-hmm. Right. But I’m holding on to not being a business person in case something doesn’t go well. Then no one can blame me. [Laughs.]
John’s a business person. John has helped shape all of these things we have done, had the foresight to make them happen. John is the one who became aware that the space where Trade is, was available. At that time, ten years ago, having a liquor license on 14th Street was an incredibly smart, valuable commodity. Even if something doesn’t work, it was such a commodity that you were like, “We could sell this. Somebody’s going to want this because it’s a valuable location.”
I don’t really think of myself as a businessman. I mean, I understand that I am, but I don’t think of myself that way.
MW: From your Tracks roots, you’ve seen our nightlife evolve. Ozone, Nation, Town, Halo, Number 9, Trade. You’re a D.C. queer-nightlife linchpin. You’ve observed it, been steeped in it for decades. How has it evolved?
BAILEY: At its core, it’s the same thing. It’s people wanting to be around other people like them, to feel comfortable in spaces to enjoy themselves. At its core, that’s what nightlife is: people being able to have fun in a safe environment. People want to have the fun they want to have, and you can define “fun” in a lot of different ways. For some people, that’s dancing. Or flirting. For some people, it’s drinking and everything else. But that’s the core of what it’s always been and what it continues to be. As the culture shifts, the music ebbs and flows, technology changes, real estate changes, and nightlife changes to fit all those variables.
MW: What’s your opinion of the regulatory environment for D.C. nightlife proprietors?
BAILEY: I have a different take on that than most bar owners do. I live in a neighborhood where there are a lot of bars. In the spring and summer, my ability to go to sleep is severely impacted by the numbers of people. I understand why people want businesses to be responsible around noise and trash issues. I never want to be a business that makes somebody’s quality of life lesser than it could be. I don’t ever want that.
It’s necessary for there to be [advisory neighborhood commissions], for there to be regulatory controls. There have to be.
One of the kind of shitty things about being a bar owner — and there are many — but one of the shittiest things is that we are not a fraternity that is looked upon as having great integrity. For those of us who do have great integrity, we’ve always been overshadowed by the bad operators. And there are many. The bad operators have forced the reality that there needs to be a system to deal with noise and trash, stuff that impacts the neighbors.
My experience is that — and I have more years under my belt with this — is that there is a very levelheaded group of people who work in D.C. trying to figure out how to help businesses do better. The system itself is so complicated that sometimes that’s hard. It’s big and it’s clunky, so it’s just difficult. But the people in those positions are doing the best they can to help. It’s easier for us because we’ve been doing this for so long that we know the people involved, and they know us. There’s a respect that comes with that.
MW: Our city has a tradition of memorializing some of those who’ve contributed to its success. Frank Kameny Way. Ben Ali Way. Coudriet Way. If, sometime in the far-flung future, there’s an Ed Bailey Way on some block of D.C., would you be touched by that?
BAILEY: Of course I’d be touched by that. It’s not why I do things, but it’s certainly always nice to be recognized. But we shouldn’t make it all about me.
Trade is located at 1410 14th St. NW in Washington, D.C. Open Mondays-Fridays at 5 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m. Featuring an XL Happy Hour from opening to 8 p.m. daily. No cover. 21 and above. Follow Trade on Instagram at @tradebardc or visit tradebardc.com.
Source: Metro Weekly – www.metroweekly.com
