The gay bar: Can you make money nng one?

" Today's bar owners n their bs at a time when gays feel more fortable spendg time all kds of plac, when the AIDS crisis has ma backroom hookups far ls mon, and when gays are as likely to meet on an iPhone app as at a bar. Many "gay bars, " pecially outsi the major urban centers, attract both male and female ctomers, but big ci, far more bars ter to gay male patrons than to lbians. Acrdg to the bar listgs the 2011-12 edn of the Gayellow Pag San Francis has one lbian bar, 24 ditg a mostly gay male clientele, and seven drawg both gay men and lbians; Atlanta has two lbian bars, 12 for gay men, and eight mixed; Manhattan has two lbian, 28 for men, and 13 mixed; and Seattle has one lbian, four for gay men, and six mixed.

" Today, women might take advantage of the cheap, strong drks available gay bars, but when 's time for dancg and romancg, they'll head off to the no-man's land of the girl bar. Tradnally, lbian and gay bars suated themselv remote lotns, even though that meant potential ctomers had to have the means and motivatn to get to them.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A ‘GAY BAR’ BE JT A BAR?

The last thg closeted gay men and lbians wanted was for -workers, fay members, or potential blackmailers to wanr to their sanctuary—nor did they want to be seen g and gog om such tablishments.

In Gay Bar, her memoir of nng such an tablishment the 1950s, Helen Branson wrote that "If an owner of a gay bar do not want the harassment and plats om the neighbors, he tri to choose a lotn that is not very ele.

THE HISTORY OF HOW GAY BARS BEME THE BATTLEGROUND FOR LGBTQ+ RIGHTS

The days, urban gay bars tend to clter together "gayborhoods"—New York's Greenwich Village and Chelsea, San Francis's Castro and SoMa, or Dupont Circle Washgton, D. In Seattle, Pony is jt steps away om another gay bar, the Madison Pub, though is a uple of blocks om Capol Hill's ma entertament strip, home to Seattle's livelit bars and clubs, both gay and straight.

Pony has tried to re-create that sual vibe—"a place where people n relax and naturally be themselv, " as Stoner scribed —and married wh a gay sensibily. " Brett Thomas, who owns three gay-iendly straight bars Eastern Iowa addn to Iowa Cy's only gay bar, says gays and straights drk differently: "A gay will e ; they'll try to figure out how they n get the most booze that glass for the lowt price.

TOLERANT TIM BRG CHANGE TO GAY BARS

Perhaps, then, 's the drkg habs of gay bar-goers, as much as growg tolerance among straight on, that explas the creasg tegratn of the gay and straight worlds today's bar scene. (The number of mixed straight-gay bars and clubs appearg gay-travel-gui publisher Damron's listgs creased by 42 percent, om 352 to 502, between 2005 and 2011. On the night I vised Tommy Gun, the seats were occupied by a crowd that looked as though had stepped out of a diversy trag vio: a table full of what appeared to be gay men, a lbian uple, two straight upl, and what seemed to be a group of straight women.

”“I remember seeg all the gay men walkg this directn, ” Lopez, now 28, says while hangg wh iends on the Nellie’s rooftop on a warm and btlg Saturday night. The bar beme his “gay trag wheels, ” he says, a place that was much easier to walk to than Cobalt and Town Danceboutique, which he says n feel “a ltle too gay.

“Now the joke is: You have more straight women here than gay men, ” Lopez if on cue, a bachelorette party ltle black drs stts onto the rooftop ck.

THE NUMBER OF GAY BARS HAS DWDLED. A NEW GENERATN PLANS TO BRG THEM BACK.

He ed to equent Nellie’s after his gay flag football team’s gam, but is lookg for a new waterg hole bee the drag-bnch crowd is still grdg away by the time their Sunday gam are over. On the wall hang dozens of awards om lol publitns: bt gay bar/club; bt sports bar; bt sgl bar; bt trivia bar; bt drag is the ambiguy that acpani the march toward equaly.

In the same way that, 2016, beg gay is viewed as part of a person’s inty but not the entirety of , the same way that there’s marriage equaly but not across-the-board LGBT equaly, the same way that gay bars are safe spac until they’re not, beg gay is part of this bar’s inty, but not the entirety of .

HOW ‘GAY’ SHOULD A GAY BAR BE?

” Unfortunately, police reports and mastream media verage of a gay bar 1880 proved to be extremely unreliable and hyperbolic, fueled mostly by pearl-clutchg and fear-mongerg rather than actual rmatn. “ orr to tablish 'good e' for spensn of platiff's license, somethg more mt be shown than that many of his patrons were homosexuals and that they ed his rtrant and bar as a meetg place. Jt as did California, this state law was short lived, wh urts eventually led that gays uld ‘peacefully’ assemble at bars, which paved the way for the inic Stonewall Inn to open 1967.

“But that night, for the first time, the ual acquicence turned to vlent that night the liv of lns of gay men and lbians, and the attu toward them of the larger culture which they lived, began to change rapidly. This month pecially, ’s important to remember the signifince of the gay bar as an Amerin in, as somethg fiant and revolutnary— the most grassroots sense of the word.

THE 5 BEST MOSW GAY CLUBS & BARSGAY CLUBS & BARS MOSW

Whether you are a member of the LGBTQ+ muny, work at a gay bar, are an ally the dtry, or if you plan on celebratg this June, jt remember the bars and people who helped make all possible. When Don Krse, who is gay, wanted to open a bar eight years ago, he said, "the plan om the begng was to pture the gay dience as well as the typil straight bar dience.

Gay bars once banked on the gay muny for bs, but their nstuenci have "reached an expiratn date, " said Michail Takach, public relatns director for PriFt. Many gay baby boomers are agg out of the late nights of drkg and dancg, and Generatn Y, Takach said, don't feel the need to protect or hi who they are a gay bar. There were signs of the evolutn then, said Brehm, who lls the '80s "an awakeng of the gay muny, " which was both bldsid and unified by the AIDS crisis.

GAY MOSW MOSW CY GUI

"If you want to be a gay bar, then you're really gog to have to duce people to e to your si of town, or change and move to a different neighborhood, " he said.

" After years of workg at the Triangle, the shuttered Swch and La Cage, Lison loted his gay bar across town om Walker's Pot on the east si at 707 E. A group is planng a lbian and queer “clubhoe” Los Angel, and an “old-school gay girl” Norfolk plans to reopen the lbian bar she found four s ago. Pike and McDaniel know openg a bar durg a panmic may be risky, but they say they’ve learned one thg om years of visg and workg other queer tablishments: If they want to survive, they first have to build a better and more clive than a barThe gay bar was long the ma, and sometim only, space where queer people uld gather.

About 200 of those tered to, like Hershee Bar Norfolk, opened when their stat had laws that prohibed bar owners om employg gay people or creatg gatherg spots for them.

MOSW GAY BARS

She mentored foster children whose parents had kicked them out, and every Thanksgivg, she threw a dner for people whose fai didn’t accept 1987, Norfolk had four or five gay bars, and the number natnwi peaked at more than 1, 700. Those servg lbians and people of lor were h all gay bar listgs cled by 37 percent between 2007 and 2019, the number of queer bars servg people of lor cled by 59 percent, and bars for lbians cled by 52 percent, Mattson Francis lost the Lexgton Club, and Rubyu Jungle shut s doors New Orleans. “Gay bars were never jt hookup plac, but they were plac to meet other LGBTQ+ people, and now that you n meet them om your bedroom or while you’re wag for the b, that has taken away some of gay bars’ monopoly on beg the place where you fd other LGBTQ+ folks, ” he bars are also no longer the only place some queer people, pecially Whe and cisgenr men, feel safe.

“I thk this is highly uneven, ” Mattson said, “but for gay, Whe, middle-class people like myself, any bar feels like a gay bar if you show up wh six iends.

A GAY UPLE RAN A RAL RTRANT PEACE. THEN NEW NEIGHBORS ARRIVED.

Pike did secury for Nellie’s Sports Bar, and McDaniel bartend at APEX, Cobalt and other gay bars before workg alongsi Pike at A League of Her Own (ALOHO) Adams was one of jt 21 lbian bars left the untry when Pike and McDaniel worked there, but durg the early days of the ronavis panmic, the uple cid they wanted to create a new spot, one they owned. As You Are won’t have secury guards; stead, Pike is trag a fleet of “safety managers” — a change Pike hop will attract applints who are ls ncerned wh actg tough and more terted creatg a safe atmosphere for and McDaniel know that some people thk the gay bar era is over, that spac like theirs are no longer need, but people who say that tend to have more privilege, McDaniel said.

“My experience of tryg to fd safe space here the Stat, and parg wh trips back to vis fay Mexi, has probably rmed my fervor for creatg a space where you are able to jt exist regardls of how or where you were born, who you want to love and how you intify, ” Castellanos, the owner of Hershee Bar Norfolk, nsirs herself an “old-school gay girl, ” but she’s rootg for the next generatn of queer bar owners. AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTSocial Berl for The New York TimJune 24, 2017The webse for the Abbey touts s role as a two-time wner of Logo’s “Bt Gay Bar the World” award.

In this time of creasg acceptance of lbian, gay, bisexual and transgenr people, gay tablishments across the untry are grapplg wh an flux of new newly diverse crowd at the formerly exclive environments has set off a bate wh the muny about the meang and purpose of such bars today.

What happens when a ‘gay bar’ be jt a bar? - The Washgton Post

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Contents:

RABOW RANT: SHOULD STRAIGHT PEOPLE GO TO GAY BARS?

WHAT EXACTLY IS THE POT OF A “STRAIGHT-FRIENDLY” GAY BAR?

MALE GAY BAR ETIQUETTE