The Open Café will close its doors for good after a big farewell party on Sunday June 26, the day after Gay Pride.
So decided Bernard Bousset, owner of the most famous gay bar in the Marais, which he opened in the spring of 1995 at the corner of rue des Archives and rue Sainte-Croix de la Bretonnerie (IVe).
After four years of procedures and negotiations, this warm man, determined at the age of 80 to bow out, announces it to us exclusively: "I signed on February 23, 2022 the sale of the business and the walls to the fund French investment company Black Swan, for an amount that I will not disclose".
Knowing that the rating of commercial real estate in the sector is in a range that goes from 11,000 to 16,000 euros per square meter, you do not need to be a great cleric to understand that the 205 square meters (basement included) of the Open change hands for a sum that is written in seven figures... The only certainty: there will be no more café at 17, rue des Archives, the seller having retained ownership of the name of the establishment and the license IV.
A new gay business disappears
After Amnesia and Central, two bars on rue Vieille du Temple replaced about ten years ago, the first by a clothing store, the other by a jewelry store, the bookstore Les Mots à la bouche, which has left rue Sainte-Croix de la Bretonnerie to settle in the 11th in the spring of 2020, it is a new gay business that is disappearing in the heart of the Parisian LGBT district.
Bernard Bousset who in 2006 sold the Raidd bar, rue du Temple - "for a handful of cherries", he remembers to one of his directors, Jean-Claude Houssoy - could he not have played the same scenario for the Open café to survive it?
“I have not found the profile that corresponds in the community.
Knowing that running this establishment of 20 employees requires a 100% investment seven days a week and that it is also necessary to have the means to buy back a business which had 1.7 million euros in annual turnover before the Covid " , replies the interested party.
A man with an incredible career path
Insoluble equation of a man so gifted for business that he contributed to making the Marais the trendy district of today.
“When I created the Open in 1995, the first gay café with a terrace opening onto the street, this place was worthless.
The shop opposite (Editor's note: now occupied by The Kooples brand) was a cardboard depot.
Not to mention the bankrupt PMU bar next door, which has become Les Marronniers brasserie.
In 1998, when I bought the walls of the Open for 500,000 francs, nobody wanted it because everyone thought it was too expensive!
says Bernard Bousset.
In turn at the helm of the Quetzal rue de Moussy, the Raidd bar rue du Temple where he imported from New York the show of the gogo dancer in the shower and of course the Open café, Bernard Bousset, also founder of the National Union of gay companies (SNEG) in 1985, has brought rain and shine to the gay Marais for the past thirty years!
With a smirk, he talks about the gold bridges that the big brands gave him to get their hands on his shop.
“Nespresso, John Galliano, Big Mamma… I have always said no”, laughs the one who was also from 1983 to 1985, the manager of the Deligny swimming pool (VIIe) “where everyone found themselves naked in front of the National Assembly, it's crazy!
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Determined to "take advantage of the few years I have left to meditate, listen to music, watch nature in my house in Normandy" while keeping his apartment in the Marais, Bernard Bousset says he is leaving "without remorse or regrets".
In the evening of a busy life, he confides: “I suffered terribly from my homosexuality.
When I was young, you had to live in hiding.
My existence has been nothing but a fight to have it recognized that homosexuality is neither a crime, nor a defect, nor a disease, it is a fact”.