In this week’s stallment of ¡Hola Papi!, John Pl Brammer addrs that funny thg we ll “gay culture.”
Contents:
- GAY BARS AREN’T DISAPPEARG; THEY’RE CHANGG
- DO YOU WANNA FUNK WH ME?: A BEGNER’S GUI TO GAY NIGHTCLUBS
- THE DOS & DON'TS OF GAY CLUBBG
GAY BARS AREN’T DISAPPEARG; THEY’RE CHANGG
There are some plac -- like the backrooms of gay bars -- that should rema exclive, Alexanr Chev wr. * i don't like gay clubs *
heckhomo. To be sure, I love the LGBTQ+ muny and I have received much support wh , but I don’t go to gay bars, clubs, pri paras etc.
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. Gay bar patrons want entertament, he says — drag shows, TV watch parti, activi.
DO YOU WANNA FUNK WH ME?: A BEGNER’S GUI TO GAY NIGHTCLUBS
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. “There is no one answer to the qutn ‘Who needs gay bars? ’ 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. Gay bars are not a monolh.
THE DOS & DON'TS OF GAY CLUBBG
But the state of the gay bar has bee a prsg ncern. 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.
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. “Gay bars are not dyg, they’re evolvg.