GAYS FEAR TEXAS SLAYING REFLECTS TREND - The Washgton Post

Contents:

• THE 10 BEST TEXAS GAY CLUBS & BARSGAY CLUBS & BARS TEXAS
• VOTED BEST HOUSTON GAY BAR
• GAYS FEAR TEXAS SLAYING REFLECTS TREND
• GAY TEXAS

THE 10 BEST TEXAS GAY CLUBS & BARSGAY CLUBS & BARS TEXAS

For more than a century, even before Pri Month’s orig 1969, gay bars have persevered around the world as a way for the LGBTQ muny to nnect and celebrate. Hoton’s gay bars, particular, have been a place where people n nvene regardls of their inty and have played a key role Montrose velopg s reputatn as the cy’s “gayborhood. ” While more safe spac exist, gay bars are still a rnerstone the muny, while also beg a prime place to enjoy a happy hour cktail, a drag show, or a night of dancg.

Grab a beer and relax wh iends at Robert’s Lafte Galvton, the olst gay bar Texas, or h up the newly reopened South Beach Montrose for a long night of drks and dancg. Whether you intify as LGBTQ or if you’re jt an ally for a good time, the 18 sential Hoton gay bars are sure to be your new favore neighborhood bar year-round. 12 plac sorted by traveler favorGay Bars • Dance Clubs & DissGay Bars • Dance Clubs & DissWhat travelers are saygShawn HWashgton DC, DC367 ntributnsWe went to Bonham Exchange on a Friday night and s a huge space wh multiple dance floors and bars and a number of levels.

VOTED BEST HOUSTON GAY BAR

Rich's is known for their hottt DJs and large turn-outs on Thursday nights and sce is no longer a gay club, many teens and olr people e out for a fun time.

Other central Hoton neighborhoods, cludg gay-popular Montrose and up-and-g Midtown, have also seen big chang for the better, helpg turn the natn's fourth-largt cy to a lively and downright stylish getaway. And the cy's Holot Mm has changg exhibs (which sometim touch on the persecutn of gays and lbians) as well as a permanent display that clus personal effects revered om a Polish ncentratn mp.

Hoton's gay scene is centered  Montrose, an attractive neighborhood a uple of southwt of downtown, wh a mix of early 20th-century hom and ttag and several newer pockets of ndos and apartments. Although not pecially gay, the rtrant's uber-ol Whiskey Bar is a favore downtown spot for cktails—even if you're not stayg at the hotel, nsir havg martis here, as you observe the dramatic renaissance that is downtown Hoton.

GAYS FEAR TEXAS SLAYING REFLECTS TREND

" Although the spects lived Montana and were only visg their mother this Hoton suburb over the holidays, the crime has bee another blemish on the reputatn of a state already nmned for a recent spate of attacks on gay men and women.

"If you're preachg om a pulp or a polil fom, if you're sayg that gays and lbians are immoral, evil perasts recg children, and then don't anticipate and expect vlence, then that is absurd. Acrdg to the Natnal Gay and Lbian Task Force, based Washgton, there has been nearly a 100 percent crease natnally anti-gay homicis between 1992, when 30 were nfirmed, and 1994, when the number reached 59. Foreman attributed the high number of aths the Washgton area to the sprawlg geographil regn that is volved, spanng om Anne Anl County, Md., to Fairfax County, Va., and the fact that the pal area is home to the send-largt populatn of gay men on the East Coast.

At Communy Bank, at the panke hoe, at Dolly's, where they were the signated gay uple among a largely heterosexual clientele, their appearance ually was greeted wh cri of, "Here e Kenny and Fred! After all, recent years, a harsh spotlight had been aimed at hate crim agast gays Texas, attentn that Foreman, of the Anti-Vlence Project, said was somewhat unfairly foced. They clud Mike Burzski, 29, who was abducted outsi a gay bar Montrose by four teenage boys, then beaten and shot to ath; Leopoldo Qutanilla, 29, whose body was found a field near Irvg wh his throat and genals cut; and Randall Tubb, his forti, who was shot to ath Whe Oak by four teenage boys who said they were "queer huntg.

GAY TEXAS

Mart Leve ed spot maps of bars and cisg grounds to substantiate a "gay ghetto"; Jen Jack Giekg analyzed dividuals' "mental maps" of queer space; Am Ghaziani criqued the enclave theory of "gayborhoods" favor of what he terms "cultural archipelagos. As Hoton's Montrose neighborhood me to be intified as a "gayborhood" between 1960 and 1980, archival evince shows that cisg narrativ played a powerful role that intifitn.

Rather, ntemporary popular culture, high art, lerature, pornography, and vernacular speech ntue to reproduce face-to-face cisg public as part of a globally available gay sexual vobulary and social practice. Through documentg the disparate works of people who me to meet on Hoton's cisg grounds—tentnal sex-seekers, crimals explog stigmas attached to gay sex, ambivalent law enforcement officials, area nizens, and perhaps ially naïve passersby—I argue that the social distributn of knowledge about cisg illtrat that queer terrori functned part bee some who do not intify as "queer" also imaged those terrori as nnected to queer liv. Leve borrows four creria om the soclogists Robert Park and Louis Wirth to asss the stat of a "gay ghetto": stutnal ncentratn, culture area, social isolatn, and rintial ncentratn.

" That multiplicy of spac grounds his proposal "that we redirect the study of sexualy and space away om our preexistg assumptns of spatial sgulary—evced by a steady stream of publitns about dividual gay districts—toward a cultural archipelagos mol of spatial pluraly. Durg the twenty-year span centered on the 1969 Stonewall rts New York, cisg narrativ Hoton exhib a multiplicy of opns about a multiplicy of spac, even as public awarens of the Montrose neighborhood as "gay" solidified both lolly and natnally. Here, "tertg" served as for "gay"; the words "gay" and "homosexual" never appear the League's program, even though the drag event raised money to help those arrted raids on gay bars.