Pulse (nightclub)
gay bar, dance club, nightclub in Orlando, Florida

Pulse was a gay bar, dance club, and nightclub in Orlando, Florida, founded in 2004 by Barbara Poma and Ron Legler. On June 12, 2016, the club was the scene of the second-deadliest mass shooting by a single gunman in U.S. history, and the second-deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil since the September 11 attacks. 49 people were killed and 58 other people were injured.
Description
Pulse hosted themed performances each night and had a monthly program featuring educational events geared towards the LGBTQ community. According to Orlando Weekly, Pulse featured "three glitzy, throbbing rooms of club boys, twinks and twinks at heart. Every night has something different in store, but Pulse is known to have some pretty impressive drag shows, and the bar's dancers are usually gorgeous." Because of the three areas, Lonely Planet Discover Florida deemed it "three nightclubs," while their Florida volume focused on it being "ultramodern."
Top 10 Orlando called it a "firm favorite for the Orlando gay crowd," The Rough Guide to Florida deemed it "justifiably popular," citing its "great lighting and sound plus cabaret performers, drag acts, and erotic dancers." Pulse was the only gay club mentioned in The Rough Guide to the USA for Orlando. According to listings, the entire premises, including the washrooms, were accessible. Using "periodic consumer surveys," Zagat rated Pulse 25/30 for atmosphere, 25/30 decor, and 22/30 service.
History
In 1985—prior to Pulse's founding—the property located at 1912 South Orange Avenue was home to a pizza restaurant named Lorenzo's. By 1999, it was called Dante's, a bar with live music.
“Pulse (nightclub)” enters the record as gay bar, dance club, nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Pulse, nightclub and dance can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q24566959. Authority coordinates are 28.519, -81.377. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2004, 2016, 1985 and 1912.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pulse (nightclub)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.