Why Gay Bars are Val for LGBT Communi | KCRW

Contents:

• THE HISTORY OF HOW GAY BARS BEME THE BATTLEGROUND FOR LGBTQ+ RIGHTS
• A MEMOIR ABOUT QUEER INTY, TOLD ONE GAY BAR AT A TIME
• IS MY HBAND GAY? SIGNS OF A GAY HBAND
• THE PLEASURE AND PA OF GAY BARS
• HOW 'THE EAGLE' BEME ONE OF THE MOST REGNIZED GAY BAR NAM
• WHY GAY BARS ARE VAL FOR LGBT COMMUNI
• WHAT EXACTLY IS THE POT OF A “STRAIGHT-FRIENDLY” GAY BAR?
• I WANNA TAKE CRAIG TO A GAY BAR - HERE’S WHY
• BEER IS SO GAY
• 'GAY BAR' TRACKS THE WAVE OF A WHOLE CULTURE — AND ONE LIFE

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

Although is nice to thk of gay bars as unanimoly safe plac, where the LGBTQ+ muny uld exist whout threat, that clearly wasn’t always the se.

Stati, gay bars seem to have gotten their ‘start’ the later part of the 1800s, wh a New York Cy hotspot lled “The Sli.

” 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.

A MEMOIR ABOUT QUEER INTY, TOLD ONE GAY BAR AT A TIME

Over the next several s, gay and lbian bars began to pop up all over the untry, each one perhaps takg a cue om those before .

Dpe their often short-lived nature, the early gay bars often served as hugely important battlegrounds the fight for LGBTQ+ rights. “ 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.

The sign the wdow reads: "We homosexuals plead wh our people to please help mata peaceful and quiet nduct on the streets of the Village. Jt two years after the Stonewall Rts, gay rights groups existed every major Amerin cy, as well as Canada, Atralia and Europe. “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.

IS MY HBAND GAY? SIGNS OF A GAY HBAND

In recent years, the role of gay bar has taken a more sual, fun place our non of nightlife, but that wasn’t always the se.

THE PLEASURE AND PA OF GAY BARS

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.

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.

AdvertisementSKIP Jeremy Atherton LWhen you purchase an penntly reviewed book through our se, we earn an affiliate 9, 2021GAY BARWhy We Went OutBy Jeremy Atherton LHistory, as is tght, is a straight le of domo fallg — the relentls clack of fact htg fact, an orrly que of aly stretchg on forever. History, as is lived, is a reelg spiral of flight and return; the erative reawakeng of new selv faiar plac; a never-endg terrogatn of our own nfed and nfg motiv; a msy slather of dots on a graph where the center n be plotted only Atherton L’s betiful, lyril memoir, “Gay Bar: Why We Went Out, ” cloaks this lived history that learned history, examg an objective subject — gay bars — to create a highly subjective object: a book about his life, flensed down to jt the bs that ma past the chapter foc on one particular gay bar (jumpg om London to Los Angel to San Francis and back), s history and s place the trajectory of Atherton L’s life.

HOW 'THE EAGLE' BEME ONE OF THE MOST REGNIZED GAY BAR NAM

Atherton L himself is renred only relatn to the bars he walks through; you’ll fd yourself hard-prsed at the end to say where he was born or how many siblgs he has (and you won’t re) Atherton L has a five-octave, Mariah Carey-que range for discsg gay sex. Like any good gay bar, this book has a bouncer, and his name is is Atherton L’s first book, but benefs om his extensive experience as an sayist and an edor of Failed Stat, a journal about plac.

WHY GAY BARS ARE VAL FOR LGBT COMMUNI

“Gay Bar” is well crafted (which is pecially pleasg nsirg this is a memoir about stctur), wh a strong thorial hand that mak the rear feel refully shepherd through the text, even as Atherton L jumps s and ntents.

When he discs an important 1966 prott at the historic Greenwich Village gay bar Juli’, he c a New York Tim article to talk about the “tr of activists” volved — not realizg that the article left out a fourth man, Randy Wicker (the only one still alive, cintally enough) a half page later, though, Atherton L warns that spe the activist claim that gay bars “should be kept open to facilate knowledge passg between generatns, ” he himself had never really received gay wisdom “on a barstool. ” This book is not about history, the subject you study, but history, that thg you have wh that guy by the jebox whose name you n’t the fal chapter of “Gay Bar, ” Atherton L grappl wh gog to a new generatn of bars, created by very different forc, meetg very different needs. Sometim a woman may have been a heterosexual relatnship for years and yet feel somethg is somehow "off;" and she may fd herself askg, "Is my hband gay?

" Many women fd this qutn unthkable but acrdg to Bonnie Kaye,, an expert women married to gay men, is timated that 4 ln women have been, or are, married to gay men. Unfortunately, is timated that 50% of gay hbands hi their homosexualy om their wiv and don't reach this place of honty on their own. In many s, is the wife, who after spectg that somethg is wrong, mt nont the gay hband wh the evince, and only then n hontly be achieved.

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

If turns out that a hband is, fact, gay, the fallout n be difficult to al wh, particularly for the straight partner. What's important to remember is that the hband's homosexualy is entirely his rponsibily and has nothg to do wh the wife. In 2017, the wrer Jeremy Atherton L noticed a spate of media verage mourng gay bars London, more than half of which had closed wh the last .

I WANNA TAKE CRAIG TO A GAY BAR - HERE’S WHY

From NBC News to the Guardian, nearly all the verage ntaed a siar slant, which played to a popular narrative: gay bars as beans of liberatn, central to the formatn of queer inty and muny. “Gog to your first gay bar — I feel like 's told wh so much agency, ” Atherton L told me over the phone, om London recently. I walked around the rner bee I uldn't brg myself to go , but then the next night I did and everythg was illumated and the drag queen sed at me and I was gay.

Throughout his life, gay bars offered solace and excement, but they jt as often disappoted, exclud, and baffled, providg Atherton L wh more qutns about his inty than answers. Or as he wr Gay Bar: Why We Went Out: “It was beg apparent that beg homo did not amount to beg the same: I clearly was not like other gays. ” Atherton L’s but is a book-length say told through the lens of the gay bars, nightclubs, and sex parti he’s equented over the span of nearly three s.

In li of hn he achiev somethg richer, if not more knotty: the gay bar a state of irrolutn, providg a hall of mirrors onto which his inty ntracts, expands, and sometim actur. ”Dpe s tle, Gay Bar was not tend as a five cultural history, but rather, “the story of what the gay bar meant to me, ” Atherton L said.

BEER IS SO GAY

” The tle was meant to feel small, he said, like lyrics om the Frank Ocean song “Good Guy”: “Here’s to the gay bar you took me to. ” “Gay bar” more as footnote than book is heavily rearched, wh source material that clus everythg om Disintifitns, by José Esteban Muñoz, to back issu of the bar rag Attu, and even a review. The sourc accumulate whout hierarchy; when to gay history, and gay nightlife particular, Atherton L knows that what gets whispered across bar stools at 2 a.

Gay Bar is cultural history as gossip, funneled through Atherton L’s sharp, nimble, and often vastatg a historian, or even a nventnal memoirist, Atherton L is terted blurrg the distctns between nonfictn and fictn. As much as the gay bar has been amed as the birthplace and bedrock of LGBTQ rights, is also a se of dulgence, a place to be dnk and horny and feral.

'GAY BAR' TRACKS THE WAVE OF A WHOLE CULTURE — AND ONE LIFE

Though he’s cerebral throughout Gay Bar, makg sual reference to Barth and Butler, he’s also rooted firmly the appet of his body.

“There's kd of an impulse behd this book to prent a versn of ‘gay’ that's not jt anodyne and, you know, Queer Eye — posive and affirmative, ” he said. ”Gay Bar opens wh Atherton L on his kne, a posn of subordatn he strik throughout the book, if not sexually then socially.