GAY CLUB! | Kirk Reviews

Contents:

• IN ‘GAY BAR,’ TIME-HOPPG SNAPSHOTS OF QUEER NIGHTLIFE
• A MEMOIR ABOUT QUEER INTY, TOLD ONE GAY BAR AT A TIME
• GAY CLUB!
• 'GAY BAR' TRACKS THE WAVE OF A WHOLE CULTURE — AND ONE LIFE
•  GAY CLUB!
• IN 1973, AN ARSONIST KILLED 32 PEOPLE AT A GAY CLUB. WHY HAS HISTORY SHGGED?
• BOOK CLUB MA ME GAY

IN ‘GAY BAR,’ TIME-HOPPG SNAPSHOTS OF QUEER NIGHTLIFE

If you felt a twge of boredom (bon if you thrill to disheveled, elive, gamy), then I have a book for Atherton L’s “Gay Bar” is a rtls and telligent cultural history of queer nightlife.

Atherton L began wrg 2017; more than half of London’s gay bars had shuttered the prev 10 years.

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

” There was an “upsurge stay-at-home gays” and rovg is beg lost? If you’re expectg an elegy, thk aga; “Gay Bar” has somethg knottier, more troubled, to offer. “The gay bars of my life have nsistently disappoted.

GAY CLUB!

In the openg scene, Atherton L and his partner (rather regrettably referred to as the Famo Blue Raat, after the Leonard Cohen song) go out to a London gay bar, lookg for a ltle adventure, and enter a crowd: “Wh a kd of btal elegance, the group spread apart like the blas of a pocketknife. Atherton L is a skilled rear of the signifiers of cloth and archecture, the fetishizatn of workg-class fashn, for example, and how the rise of AIDS fluenced sign cisns: “A new type of gay bar began to appear London’s Soho the ’90s — airy, glossy, ntental.

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

Sometim that history is his Atherton“Gay Bar” offers a twist on the nventnal memoir; ’s a life seen snapshots, the bars as the backdrop.

Amaretto sours Wt Hollywood, Atherton L llege, still strenuoly datg women and meetg his first groups of gay men. “Everythg about beg gay was so crowd: the ads for bars and rts and waxg servic rammed together, shallow and histrnic and imper, ” he wr.

 GAY CLUB!

”“Gay Bar” has s share of first-book blu. ) Most jarrg, perhaps, are Atherton L’s efforts at mimickg the theorists he clearly admir, those sectns that e across as parodi of amic wrg: “If the word muny is ed a failure of vobulary — too broad, too utopian — perhaps the metaphor to bt replace is metaphor self”; “gay bars are about potentialy, not rolutn. Gay bars are not about arrivg.

He’s already told what he most miss about gay bars; how movgly he replit here, wh his wi, strobg tellect, enliveng skepticism, raslly allure: “Perhaps you uld ll a gay bar a galaxy: We are held together but kept om llidg by a fe balance of momentum and gravy.

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.

IN 1973, AN ARSONIST KILLED 32 PEOPLE AT A GAY CLUB. WHY HAS HISTORY SHGGED?

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. As Atherton L remds , “disassociatn is a gay rual as much as any other. “Gay Bar” danc on the edge of that third space between fictn and nonfictn, a space often rerved for poetry.

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. “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.

BOOK CLUB MA ME GAY

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. Gay Bar: Why We Went Out, Jeremy Atherton L.

"We go out to get some, " wr Jeremy Atherton L his new book, Gay Bar. Gay Bar b memoir, history and cricism; 's a difficult book to p down, but that's what mak so readable and so endlsly fascatg. Atherton L's book starts off a crowd room a gay bar where he's gone cisg wh his partner, whom he refers to throughout the book wh the Leonard Cohen-spired nickname Famo Blue Raat.

That kd of gay bar — all kds of gay bars, really — are danger of closg, Atherton L wr, due to the populary of datg apps and risg property sts.