'Gay Bar' Tracks The Wave Of A Whole Culture — And One Life : NPR

Contents:

• A MEMOIR ABOUT QUEER INTY, TOLD ONE GAY BAR AT A TIME
• COLORADO GAY BAR SHOOTG: HERO VETERAN SAYS HIS ARY STCTS KICKED TO SAVE LOVED ON
• TIM MILLER: ‘YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE TO BE A HERO AT A GAY BAR’
• HERO BAR, GAY BAR TAIPEI
• IN ‘GAY BAR,’ TIME-HOPPG SNAPSHOTS OF QUEER NIGHTLIFE
• THE BT GAY BARS BOSTON
• 'GAY BAR' TRACKS THE WAVE OF A WHOLE CULTURE — AND ONE LIFE
• THE 42 BT GAY BARS AMERI
• “WE HAVE A GAY BAR HERE.” YOU DON’T NEED A COAST TO BE COSMOPOLAN

A MEMOIR ABOUT QUEER INTY, TOLD ONE GAY BAR AT A TIME

A man who has been lled a hero for helpg subdue the spect the adly Colorado Sprgs gay nightclub mass shootg has spoken out about what he experienced si the venue. AdvertisementSKIP Jeremy Atherton LWhen you purchase an penntly reviewed book through our se, we earn an affiliate 9, 2021GAY BARWhy We Went OutBy Jeremy Atherton LHistory, as is tght, is a straight le of domo fallg — the relentls clack of fact htg fact, an orrly que of aly stretchg on forever. History, as is lived, is a reelg spiral of flight and return; the erative reawakeng of new selv faiar plac; a never-endg terrogatn of our own nfed and nfg motiv; a msy slather of dots on a graph where the center n be plotted only Atherton L’s betiful, lyril memoir, “Gay Bar: Why We Went Out, ” cloaks this lived history that learned history, examg an objective subject — gay bars — to create a highly subjective object: a book about his life, flensed down to jt the bs that ma past the chapter foc on one particular gay bar (jumpg om London to Los Angel to San Francis and back), s history and s place the trajectory of Atherton L’s life.

Atherton L himself is renred only relatn to the bars he walks through; you’ll fd yourself hard-prsed at the end to say where he was born or how many siblgs he has (and you won’t re) Atherton L has a five-octave, Mariah Carey-que range for discsg gay sex. Like any good gay bar, this book has a bouncer, and his name is is Atherton L’s first book, but benefs om his extensive experience as an sayist and an edor of Failed Stat, a journal about plac.

COLORADO GAY BAR SHOOTG: HERO VETERAN SAYS HIS ARY STCTS KICKED TO SAVE LOVED ON

“Gay Bar” is well crafted (which is pecially pleasg nsirg this is a memoir about stctur), wh a strong thorial hand that mak the rear feel refully shepherd through the text, even as Atherton L jumps s and ntents. When he discs an important 1966 prott at the historic Greenwich Village gay bar Juli’, he c a New York Tim article to talk about the “tr of activists” volved — not realizg that the article left out a fourth man, Randy Wicker (the only one still alive, cintally enough) a half page later, though, Atherton L warns that spe the activist claim that gay bars “should be kept open to facilate knowledge passg between generatns, ” he himself had never really received gay wisdom “on a barstool. ” This book is not about history, the subject you study, but history, that thg you have wh that guy by the jebox whose name you n’t the fal chapter of “Gay Bar, ” Atherton L grappl wh gog to a new generatn of bars, created by very different forc, meetg very different needs.

TIM MILLER: ‘YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE TO BE A HERO AT A GAY BAR’

The heroic army veteran who bundled the Colorado gay bar shooter to the ground has tearfully scribed how his stcts om his ary trag immediately kicked , orr to protect his loved Rich Fierro first realized the gunman was sprayg bullets si the club, he ducked to avoid any potential g fire, then moved to try to disarm the shooter. Nam of the victims are shown on a rabow durg a ndlelight vigil on a rner near the se of a weekend mass shootg at a gay bar, late Monday, November 21, 2022 A pair of mourners were emotnal at a vigil held outsi Club Q Colorado Sprgs last night as they remembered the victims of the tragedyPeople embrace durg a ndlelight vigil on a rner near the se of a weekend mass shootg at a gay bar, late Monday, November 21, 2022, Colorado SprgsColorado Sprgs Mayor John Suthers, left, nfers wh Colorado 4th Judicial District Attorney Michael Allen durg a news nference about the weekend mass shootg at a gay bar, Monday, November 21, 2022Nic Grezcka, -owner of Club Q, listens durg a news nference about the weekend mass shootg at the gay bar, Monday, November 21, 2022, Colorado SprgsBut landlord Llie Bowman tells she was the one who alerted thori to her home, after Voepel - the spect's mother - phoned her to tell her 'people' were lookg for her son. Jeremiah Harris, who is 24 and gay, said he went to the club a uple tim a month and regnized one of the victims as the bartenr who always served him.

HERO BAR, GAY BAR TAIPEI

It also rekdled memori of the 2016 massacre at the Pulse gay nightclub Orlando, Florida, that killed 49 2006, there have been 523 mass killgs and 2, 727 aths as of Nov. This 3 bedroom apartment has a livg room wh flat screen TV and a fully equipped kchen wh a washer and dryer, a bathroom wh shower and ee WiFi, Close to all the gay bars and rtrants.

— A rated army veteran who tackled the shooter who killed five a Colorado Sprgs gay club said he wanted to protect the close kn muny si the room. If you felt a twge of boredom (bon if you thrill to disheveled, elive, gamy), then I have a book for Atherton L’s “Gay Bar” is a rtls and telligent cultural history of queer nightlife.

IN ‘GAY BAR,’ TIME-HOPPG SNAPSHOTS OF QUEER NIGHTLIFE

In the openg scene, Atherton L and his partner (rather regrettably referred to as the Famo Blue Raat, after the Leonard Cohen song) go out to a London gay bar, lookg for a ltle adventure, and enter a crowd: “Wh a kd of btal elegance, the group spread apart like the blas of a pocketknife.

Atherton L is a skilled rear of the signifiers of cloth and archecture, the fetishizatn of workg-class fashn, for example, and how the rise of AIDS fluenced sign cisns: “A new type of gay bar began to appear London’s Soho the ’90s — airy, glossy, ntental.

) Most jarrg, perhaps, are Atherton L’s efforts at mimickg the theorists he clearly admir, those sectns that e across as parodi of amic wrg: “If the word muny is ed a failure of vobulary — too broad, too utopian — perhaps the metaphor to bt replace is metaphor self”; “gay bars are about potentialy, not rolutn. He’s already told what he most miss about gay bars; how movgly he replit here, wh his wi, strobg tellect, enliveng skepticism, raslly allure: “Perhaps you uld ll a gay bar a galaxy: We are held together but kept om llidg by a fe balance of momentum and gravy. Atherton L's book starts off a crowd room a gay bar where he's gone cisg wh his partner, whom he refers to throughout the book wh the Leonard Cohen-spired nickname Famo Blue Raat.

THE BT GAY BARS BOSTON

That kd of gay bar — all kds of gay bars, really — are danger of closg, Atherton L wr, due to the populary of datg apps and risg property sts. He wr betifully about his llege days Los Angel, where he went to his first one, though he n't rell the name, wryly notg, "Of urse I n't remember my first gay bar — I was dnk. " That history clus the famo 1969 uprisg at the Stonewall Inn New York, but Atherton L also div to other, lser-known bars, cludg on that endured police raids meant to put gay people their place.

'GAY BAR' TRACKS THE WAVE OF A WHOLE CULTURE — AND ONE LIFE

" Atherton L explor topics like archecture and urban geography, as they relate to gay bars, betifully; he wr wh a real knowledge that's more than jt tellectual dilettantism. About the changg looks of bars before the turn of the century, he observ, "A new type of gay bar began to appear London's Soho the neti — airy, glossy, ntental.

" Along the way, Atherton L dips to other topics related to the gay muny: the appropriatn of gay culture by straight people, mic, drkg, and the valu of the younger generatn of LGBTQ people. And while succeeds on many levels, perhaps the most remarkable one is Atherton L's nstant qutng of himself, and the realizatns of how he's changed sce he walked to his first gay bar years ago: "Maybe, I thought, I'm a dis ball.

THE 42 BT GAY BARS AMERI

Leve is a big fan of the X-Men (who have a handful of gay characters) and the Transformers (all of whom seem straight) and has been readg ics sce he was 8. ’ ”The Sk Tight party — which the stum range om the faiar (like Spir-Man) to on that only a ics geek would regnize (like the 1993 versn of Superboy) — is one way that gay, lbian, bisexual and transgenr ic book fans are exprsg themselv today.

“WE HAVE A GAY BAR HERE.” YOU DON’T NEED A COAST TO BE COSMOPOLAN

But wasn’t that long ago that the environment was ls than welg for those who wanted to make the two seemgly disparate worlds Kelbgh for The New York Tim“Growg up the ’80s, I gus I didn’t even thk gay super-hero or supportg characters were a possibily, ” Dan Avery, 37, an edor of Next, a gui to gay night life New York Cy, wrote an e-mail msage.