This article was originally published in the April 2026 print edition of The Bark, distributed at the University of Minnesota Duluth campus.

The New Main Club grand opening. Photo courtesy of Bob Jansen

If you were lucky enough to walk into The Main Club in Superior, Wisconsin in 2025, you’d hear great hits like Feminiominon by Chappel Roan mixed with classic country and a dash of Whitney Huston. Pool tables and dart boards clacking, laughter and a sense of hometown community. You might think the bar has always been a safe haven for LGBTQIA+ people. However, the bar that stands open and proud today has a history that goes deeper than most gay bars we see today.

Robert “Bob” Jansen is currently 75 years old, an LGBTQIA+ activist, and opened the first openly gay bar in the Twin Ports area In 1983. This was a major opportunity for gay men specifically, along with other LGBT people, to have a space that celebrated and embraced them when many places weren’t so welcoming.

Walking through the door of the Main Club back then, you would have been met with “an old, grungy kind of bar and one of the popular songs of the time was Jump … you would feel the floor shaking because people would jump. It was a comfortable space for people … multicolor, multi-generational, everything,” Jansen said.

“I went to UWS (University of Wisconsin, Superior) for my bachelors and masters. I did other work at the University of Connecticut and then I taught in California for three years — then Scholastica offered me a job. So, I taught there for seven years and then they fired me for being gay,” Jansen said. “I got a year's salary and what could I do? So I decided: I’ll open a bar. That was it.”

Jansen described finding a staff that was not only diverse but fixed problems in the community. “There wasn’t the structure at that time for the men and women to talk. The women had their bar at the time it was called The Trio, it later became Bev’s Jook Joint, but there wasn’t a working relationship for the men and the women, and so I always tried to have women bartenders as well as men bartenders,” Jansen said. “Finding a staff that was comfortable with themselves was always a challenge too. I think it still is today.”

Just because spaces like The Main Club were in the Twin Ports doesn’t mean being openly LGBTQIA+ was easy. “The same time the bar opened, the human rights ordinance came up in Duluth,” Jansen recalled. “It passed the city council and then it was vetoed by the mayor, then the city council overrode his veto, and then it came up for public referendum and died like three to one.”

Why did Bob choose Superior, Wisconsin over Duluth, Minnesota? The surprising answer is it all came down to the cost of liquor license. “It cost around that time $1000 for liquor license in Wisconsin and in Minnesota it was like $30,000.” Jansen goes on to add the lack of LGBT spaces in Minnesota compared to other locations in Wisconsin.

“In Wisconsin, every town has a gay bar. Eau Claire, Madison, Milwaukee, Wausau … and you think of Minnesota and outside the seven County Metro area, they’re none — there is The Flame now,” Jansen said. Wisconsin also had differing laws than Minnesota which made the town a superior location for the bar over Duluth. “The liquor laws were cheaper and easier. At the time, you could be open seven days a week and in Minnesota you had to close on Sundays.”

There was LGBTQIA+ representation in the Twin Ports community but not for all members. “The lesbians had a strong hold in the community. They had a women’s coffee house, they had a bookstore, they had “wilderness way,” which is a camping area and all that kind of stuff, where the gay men really didn’t have anything.”

Keith Haugen and Micheal “Mike” Goerdt. Photo courtesy of Keith Haugen

Jansen goes on to talk about how other bars in Superior were selective towards treatment of Gay men, who still faced issues. “There was Molly’s, which people went to, but they had a sign on the wall that said no body contact, which meant men could dance with women, women could dance with women but men couldn’t dance with men,” Jansen said. “There was kind of a need for a community that was a little more accepting.”

This bar was a safe space for regular customers like Keith Haugen, now 64 years old, and 72-year-old Micheal “Mike” Goerdt. The two have been together for 30 years and were the first two gay men to be married in Duluth, on the stroke of midnight on Aug. 1, 2013 by John Goldfine.

Haugen and Goerdt met in 1986 at a straight bar named Norman’s in Virginia, Minnesota. “I was there with a friend from high school and Mike was there with his sister, but that was back then and we were making eyes and all that,” Haugen said. “I thought his sister was his wife.”

Goerdt adds how his sister pointed out Haugen by saying “there's one [a homesexual] right there!” as she noticed the two were watching each other. “At the end of the night, we never said a word, but he came up to me with the napkin with the [Mike’s] number on it,” Haugen said. “It was about two weeks later I called him.”

Later that year, the pair moved to Duluth and met Bob Jansen. Haugen described Jansen at the time as “the welcome wagon” to the Twin Ports. “When anyone new moved to town, Bob always had the scoop,” Haugen said.

Haugen recalled how the LGBTQIA+ community would keep up with new people moving to Duluth. Jansen had a solution called “The Homo Hotline” that allowed anyone with any news about anyone to call and share updates. “It was a whole different world then,” Haugen said.

“Whether you were in the Twin Ports and gay, whether lesbian and homosexual — you were at The Main.” Haugen explained, “It was always a race to get there because if the women got there first, they’d pump the jukebox full of Patsy Cline.” Haugen added, “[When] the men got their first, it’d be all dance music and disco.”

The Main would hold many events to get the community together. Haugen recalled, “Halloween parties, always had new year eve parties and the new years eve parties in Superior you could stay open all night.” “So we did,” Goerdt announced as Haugen chuckled. “You’d walk in and he would hand everyone a nut and everyone a bolt to get people to mingle and if you could find someone who’s nut lined up with your bolt you’d get a free drink. That was a way of getting the new people or all the people to talk.”

The biggest event The Main Club would host was called the Blue Moon Ball. The event got its name from a comment someone made to Jansen. “When he [Jansen] first opened up the bar, somebody told him, you know it’ll be a blue moon before you can make this, you know, continue or fly.” Haugen explained, “Once a year he would throw the Blue Moon Ball. The Ball always happened the same night as the Christmas City of the North parade. Every year it would be like the gay prom, everyone would dress up, we wore tuxes.”

The original Main Club burnt down. Photo provided by the University of Minnesota Duluth

Mike added, “The pool table was just loaded with food and all kinds of stuff.” The Blue Moon ball continued until Jansen sold the bar in 2017.

The Fire

On Dec. 27, 1996, a night just like any other, not too long after the annual Blue Moon Ball, Haugen had just fallen asleep before tragedy struck The Main Club.

“I remember I had been laying in our TV room and had fallen asleep and then that morning when the news came on, It was about the bar burning, and I remember seeing it and going ‘oh my god.’ At first you thought ‘oh, it was just a small fire, they'll get it out’ and then it ended and it was gone,” Haugen said. “We lost two community members.”

“After that you know, the entire community came together again,” Haugen explained that people worked to fundraise for Jansen, allowing him to buy another bar. “But that was sad to see, to lose that.”

New Beginnings

Jansen was able to open a new Main Club in downtown Superior. This didn’t come without controversy for some residents of Superior.

“This drove people nuts,” Jansen explained, “until they found out we were a good economic structure. Like the Andro next door would sell out when we had drag shows. They would go out to eat and they would find we tipped well.”

After selling the Main Club in 2017, Jansen is still finding ways to bring the community together. He threw his 75th birthday party at The Main Club this summer. Jansen posted an invite on facebook about it to let people know they were welcome.

“There wound up being about 150 people there, including the mayor of Superior, who proclaimed Bob Jansen Day. The former state representative from Duluth, and the former state representative from Superior were there too, I didn’t do any work to get them there. They came because they wanted to,” Jansen said.

Today, Jansen keeps a much lower profile but still frequently attends events in the community. He hopes that his legacy can help LGBTQIA+ individuals “feel like they were treated well and that they could go out into straight society and be proud of being gay.”