In ‘Who Needs Gay Bars?,’ Greggor Mattson Explor the Past, Current, and Future of Ameri’s Queer Spac - Eater

Contents:

• GAY BARS AREN’T DISAPPEARG; THEY’RE CHANGG
• BEER IS SO GAY
• GAY BARS NEAR ME
• THE 5 BEST MOSW GAY CLUBS & BARSSEE ALL THGS TO DOGAY CLUBS & BARS MOSW
• THE 42 BT GAY BARS AMERI
• GAY MOSW MOSW CY GUI

GAY BARS AREN’T DISAPPEARG; THEY’RE CHANGG

There was a moment readg Greggor Mattson’s book, Who Needs Gay Bars?, where I found myself beg credibly fensive. One of the 130 gay bar owners he terviewed is bemoang how his ctomers are no longer ntent to hang wh iends and nverse over a few drks.

The differenc are sort of the pot of Mattson’s book, a chronicle of gay bars 39 stat across the untry and throughout Amerin history. ’ bee there is no one ‘who, ’ no one set of ‘needs, ’ and no one kd of ‘gay bar, ’” wr Mattson, a soclogy profsor at Oberl.

There are strip clubs and dive bars and f and cktail bars servg both gay and straight people. Mattson wr that 50 percent of the untry’s gay bars closed between 2012 and 2021, and that the difficulti have not been evenly felt.

BEER IS SO GAY

But even light of all the threats, gay bars are figurg out how to fill hol muny needs, how to pete wh apps and apathy, how to balance muny tradns wh more clive valu. And what’s more, the “gay bar” as exists popular imagatn — an exclive space by and for eher gay men or women — has never reprented what gay bars actually are. Or if a nightclub has a gay night at least once a week, then I’m willg to say that’s a place where queer culture flourish.

GAY BARS NEAR ME

So then I set out to make a database g the Damron guis and to fd out, were gay bars gog away?

And then I wanted to know om people who’ve been volved wh gay bars over the last 20 or so years, what have they seen?

In the book you wre that certa kds of gay bars, like lbian bars or more “cisy” gay bars, are closg at a faster clip than other typ. You mentned that a lot of people have been sayg that they personally don’t need gay bars anymore bee they feel wele anywhere.

THE 5 BEST MOSW GAY CLUBS & BARSSEE ALL THGS TO DOGAY CLUBS & BARS MOSW

What do you make of that tensn and the issu that arise wh what we expect out of gay bars vers what they n reasonably offer? Is , “I don’t need gay bars my middle age, but I might as a retiree, ” or is , “I don’t need gay bars now that I’m a mted partnership, but I might if I were sgle”? I don’t know that needg gay bars is an on-off swch for the rt of your life, and so ’s important to me that the bars that n serve all of be open for when we need them.

In my own life, I start feelg guilty for not equentg the gay bars my neighborhood and my cy. ” A lot of amics bate or wonr whether we’re a post-gay phase, where we — and ’s never que clear who the “we” is — don’t need our gay inti or LGBTQ+ inti anymore. But one of the thgs I realized talkg to owners of bars that don’t intify as gay bars but are certaly full of gay people is that maybe other bars need to prove to that they’re post-straight.

THE 42 BT GAY BARS AMERI

Somethg that sort of surprised me when I was terviewg was the number of straight people who are pillars of the gay muny. The number of ci where the gay muny jt do not functn whout the labor and re of some straight person. But I’m cur what you thk queer and gay bars might look like whout the threat of opprsn.

Here I rely on David Halper, who wrote a book, How to Be Gay, and he nclus that even if was a world whout opprsn, we still are raised a heteronormative world. I’m not married to the ia of a gay bar always beg everythg — if ’s a queer fe, if ’s a nonprof LGBTQ+ center — but I thk the panmic tght all how important is to have physil plac to ngregate, and those will rema important even a hypothetil, non-opprsive future.

GAY MOSW MOSW CY GUI

Was there anythg else your rearch you were surprised by, posively or negatively, or maybe a prenceived notn that you had about gay bars that was challenged? I started llg outposts gay bars that are more than an hour’s drive om the neart other gay bar.