How a Houston night club became a beacon for ’80s gay culture – Chron

Named for the iconic song by goth and new wave band The Cure, Pontello’s film debuted in July 2021, with a sold-out, two-night premiere inside the club. The current tour is the culmination of a journey nearly 10 years in the making, going back to Pontello’s own childhood in Houston’s suburbs.

The storied nightclub originally opened in 1976 as The Million Dollar City Dump, a supper club founded by Beverly Wren. The club had middling success until 1978, when another nightclub owner approached Wren with the idea of turning the venue into a gay disco. 

Throughout the ’80s, the club was an epicenter of Houston’s gay civil rights movement—taking up prime real estate on Westheimer Road during police brutality protests and the city’s early pride parades. It also became known as a hookup spot; the venue’s name allegedly comes from the fact that it was a good place to collect phone numbers. 

The original Numbers lasted for a few years, was briefly renamed Babylon, and then reemerged as Numbers 2 in 1987, when it was purchased by Bruce Godwin, a local record store owner, and Robert Burtenshaw, a.k.a. DJ Robot, a British video artist. Godwin used his music industry contacts to book shows at the club—primarily goth, punk, industrial, and new wave bands. Burtenshaw would create video installations for the shows. The duo also hired a disc jockey named Wes Wallace, who has spun at the club nearly every Friday night since 1991.

Meanwhile, Pontello was growing up as an weird, artsy, queer kid in Pearland. As a teenager, they attended the High School For Performing and Visual Arts, then located in Montrose; friends introduced them to Numbers, where they saw the Yeah Yeah Yeahs in 2003. Pontello quickly discovered Classic Numbers, a haven for Houston’s misfit kids thanks to its accepting attitude and 18-and-up age limit. 

“It just changed my life,” Pontello told Eater in a 2021 interview. “Kind of like HSPVA, I was in an accepting environment where I could dance all night and express myself and not be fucked with. And that’s how the love affair started.”

After high school, Pontello lived in Los Angeles and New Orleans, working in fashion and film. But they could never find a community like the one they had at Numbers. Then came the idea for the documentary—a way to tell the story of the club and what it’s meant to several generations of Houstonians. Pontello, who’d never made a film before, spent nearly a decade on the project, poring over documents at Houston’s Gulf Coast Archive and Museum of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender History, while conducting interviews with more than 200 people associated with the club.

The documentary’s consecutive debut screenings last summer drew audiences that included many people who’d essentially grown up with the club. There were some notable absences, though. Burtenshaw died in 2013 at the age of 58, Wren in 2014 at 89. Many Numbers regulars were lost to the AIDS epidemic. Others scattered to the winds, relocating from the city due to any number of life’s circumstances.

Some of those Houston expats are finding the movie. In Austin, Friday I’m in Love played as part of the traveling Sound Unseen Film Festival, dedicated to movies about music. (That same fest will bring the film to Minneapolis on Friday.) The crowd at the Austin Film Society Cinema was one of the largest they’d seen so far, Pontello said. Their former HSPVA theater teacher, who now lives in the state capitol, was a surprise guest. Meanwhile, the former coat check girl, who attended a screening in Nashville a few months ago, came to New Orleans this week to see the film a second time. And a mom in Kentucky drove a few hours to attend the Nashville screening, bringing along her gay teenage daughter.

“Here’s someone who’s never even been to Houston, never been to Numbers, and they’re obviously finding the film relevant and interesting,” said Pontello, who’s hoping that traveling with the movie—and also showing it locally at MFAH—will introduce the story of Numbers to new audiences. The filmmaker is also open to meeting with distribution companies to secure a wider release.

For Pontello, the most gratifying aspect of the project has been the conversations it’s sparked with audience members. “I am so proud,” they said. “Not just proud of the film, but proud of Houston too. It is such a special city, and I’m happy to be from there and spread this awesome story.”

During a recent screening, a young man asked Pontello a question that the director says gets to the heart of why they made the film: With all the uncertainty around human rights and equality for LGBTQ+ youth, how is the documentary relevant to today?

“The idea that Numbers and everything it represents, and their whole philosophy of tolerance and come as you are—it’s probably more important than it’s ever been,” Pontello said. “Hopefully, if anything, the film is a great example of how other places should operate. Whether people like the music of Numbers or not, it’s a great story of how humans should treat each other.”

Friday I’m in Love will screen at 6:30 p.m. at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston on Saturday, November 12. Tickets are available on the Houston Cinema Arts Society website.