Contents:
- AN O TO THE QUEER BARS OF LONG BEACH’S GAYBORHOOD—AND EVERY QUEER BAR THE WORLD
- 10 GREAT GAY BARS ORANGE COUNTY (AND LONG BEACH)
- GAY L.A. – LONG BEACH’S CENTRAL PLACE QUEER L.A. HISTORY
AN O TO THE QUEER BARS OF LONG BEACH’S GAYBORHOOD—AND EVERY QUEER BAR THE WORLD
Fans wept when Roosterfish, the Wtsi’s olst gay bar, closed 2016. Micky’s WeHo has long been a staple on Wt Hollywood’s strip of gay nightclubs and bars on Santa Moni Boulevard, known for s open-walled two-story buildg where passersby n see the party ragg om the street. The venue is the only Latx gay bar LA that explicly ters to a gay and Mexin dience every night, not jt as a theme once a week.
But ’s the perfect space to grab a workday bnch wh a lleague or for -workg ssns -hosted on Tudays wh Gay Asstrology. The origal Downtown gay bar, Jalis is a dive bar that ters to the Latx and Mexin LGBTQ muny. Though Sweetwater isn’t officially known as a lbian bar, the humble tablishment has long been the go-to spot for queer women the lol gayborhood, which featur nearly half a dozen gay bars that le Broadway Long Beach.
10 GREAT GAY BARS ORANGE COUNTY (AND LONG BEACH)
One of Long Beach’s few, if not only, three-level gay bars, Executive Sue boasts a karaoke bar, vio gam, pool tabl for rent, and regular drag shows. Dubbed by KCET as Montebello’s bt Lato gay bar, Chi is the sister to Club Cobra, servg as a groundg se for the queer Latx muny the suburbs of East LA. It’s the perfect place for gay men to meet on the Eastsi.
Broadway Bar Long Beach—the most wterly bar on the strip of Broadway that signat the good ol’ Gayborhood—is, for lack of a much more eloquent term, that bch.
Dignifygly divey, unapologetilly un-morn, proudly pay-wh-sh-only, a stuc showse unlike any other, the Broadway Bar is the place L Gays take their straights to jt to lgh at them when they see the bartenr’s pour. It was and is a place of worship and protectn, pecially for an entire generatn of humans who saw more stggle, tratn, misunrstandg, stereotyp, and challeng than any gay whe du nowadays uld prehend. Even then, my hot-ms-ns that was my twenti, I was protective of the olr fags and dyk—and I was jt as protective of their spac, llg out younger, wannabe-classy gays for dismissg the Broadway as a dump and askg aloud why Long Beach jt uldn’t “add a ltle pat to the walls” and “stop the creepers om lurkg.
GAY L.A. – LONG BEACH’S CENTRAL PLACE QUEER L.A. HISTORY
The Faln, whose ty-but-mighty space felt like the dance floor heaven of my gayt dreams, gettg lost the vio mix of DJ Yellow and unabashedly tastg the whiskey-staed lips of too many boys (and a few girls) to unt. The now-gone Paradise, s brick terr the backdrop for piano-lovg, out-and-proud homos sgg Barbara and Liza, Elton and Cher, while hostg a soft ball team fundraiser and givg you a much-need be of food before traipsg down the rt of Broadway a queer-l, happy fuckg daze. Wh each of the spac—whether they are the actual space self or, more importantly, the humans who equent them—ss the fact that, before Stonewall, when the ia of a Gayborhood beme more acceptable to the extent that a largely don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy veloped, the queer muny was shunned om every aspect of livg: From the church they grew up to the medil muny dismissg them as a disease to policians erasg them om the protectns of the law.
The only place that you uld be a known queer—even though you uld get arrted there and was not safe—was a gay bar.