How Gay Bars Influenced This Wrer’s Life

Contents:

• THE 42 BT GAY BARS AMERI
• GAY BAR IN LOS ANGEL
• A GAY BAR FALLY RETURNS TO THE GOLD COAST WH HOP TO UNE 'DISNNECTED' MUNY
• THE PLEASURE AND PA OF GAY BARS
• THE DEATH OF THE GAY BAR
• AS SEATTLE’S GAYBORHOOD MIGRAT, CAPOL HILL QUEER BARS FIGHT TO REMA A REFUGE
• STILL HERE AND STILL QUEER: THE GAY RTRANT ENDUR
• THE NUMBER OF GAY BARS HAS DWDLED. A NEW GENERATN PLANS TO BRG THEM BACK.

THE 42 BT GAY BARS AMERI

When the bar fally reopened Sprg 2022, an entire borough’s worth of gays celebrated by floodg the new back pat all summer and Gger’s has been crowd wh queers ever sce. It began s life as a beer-and-we offshoot of the Metropolan Health Club, a gym that opened 1983 to serve the gay ctomers who’d been bullied out of other lol clubs at the height of AIDS hysteria. While you won’t fd any Pri flags at Farraguts, you will undoubtedly hear Cele Dn and Melissa Etheri blarg om the bar’s dty, old jebox and, hontly, isn’t that jt as gay?

CourtyDallas: Round-Up SaloonEqual parts wboy boots and dis ball, Round Up Saloon opened 42 years ago Dallas as a gay untry wtern dance hall. Live out your Brokeback Mounta fantasi at this verno club, where wboy stum are not nsired drag, and le dancg is not an explic exprsn of homophobia. A gay gatherg spot sce 1939, and gay bar sce 1963, and the Bar Complex sce the 80s, s unassumg exterr beli a triple-threat treat of lounge, performance space, and a mirrored dance club reportedly moled after Stud 54.

) The glorly lively bar and rtrant scene is enhanced by a black box theater downstairs, where farcil plays, lbian standup, and gay dance troup reign. If you want to get away om the typil scene at fellow gay bars Olly’s and Gregs Our Place, English Ivy is an ial place to meet iends: mature enough for a proper Ladi Lunch (or bnch or dner. They are stars the makg and their rendn of Cele Dn’s “It’s All Comg Back to Me Now” will shatter your pt glass and break your ltle, gay heart.

GAY BAR IN LOS ANGEL

It’s not a gay bar the tradnal sense, but a place where traed pianists play selectns om Broadway shows and all of the drama teachers and mil theater majors of the tri-state area nverge to sg along. It was the se of an early gay-liberatn “sip ” 1966, years before Stonewall, and has been a low-key haven ever sce, wh a diverse clientele, a small menu, classic cktails, and an extensive (and packed) 4:00-7:00 happy hour. The origal was burned down an anti-gay hate-crime a few years back, but the revival has jt opened across the street and is bigger and better, wh a new performance space.

CourtyWashgton DC: TraIn a town where n feel like every other bar is crawlg wh Capol Hill staffers lookg to talk shop, Tra is the rare, glorly gay dive where absolutely everyone is wele to jt kick back.

Its owners have claimed ’s the cy’s olst gay bar, havg opened the 1950s and gone openly gay the 1970s, acrdg to Wtword, wh s stantly regnizable, rabow-pated door. Although ’s not an overtly bear bar — owners scribe as Denver’s queer, unrground fetish bar — ’s a favore of the beard, equently mcle-bound class of gay men who scrib themselv as such (particularly the absence of the late Denver Wrangler).

A GAY BAR FALLY RETURNS TO THE GOLD COAST WH HOP TO UNE 'DISNNECTED' MUNY

Tra also helps fill a blank spot that particular area’s Denver’s gay scene, wh a perch along Santa Fe Drive and diverse programmg that rang om drag shows and DJ nights to leather nights and beer bts. The name stretch back to the 1970s when the slim brick buildg hosted a gay club lled Triangle, and was a tryout spot for var, unsuccsful bars and craft rtrants after the origal Triangle closed the early 2000s. Like Lucid, #Vybe featur a b more diversy than many gay bars, wh drag queens of lor and top tourg queens like Adore Delano swgg through regularly, addn to stand-up edy, game nights, Denver Brons parti (the cheerlears even stopped for a show recently) and lots more.

Montrose is the unofficial “gayborhood” of Hoton, and has been at the nex of queer culture Hoton, as well as the state at large, sce the ’60s. Tony's Corner PocketFourth WardTony’s Corner Pocket is the Hoton gay-bar equivalent of Lola’s Depot, an analogy that should make perfect sense to anyone who lik their bars on the dive-y si. Crocker Bar’s nvenient lotn the heart of the cy’s gayborhood also provis patrons wh easy accs to several of the area’s other great LGBTQ+ bars.

Gee’s rabow flag-adorned vered pat is also one of the bt plac the neighborhood to people-watch sce borrs Fairview, which serv as the ma pestrian thoroughfare for the gayborhood.

THE PLEASURE AND PA OF GAY BARS

“Scratch anyone who’s lived an Amerin gay mec long enough, and [the cle of queer spac] be almost a melancholy pot of pri, of the I’ve-seen--all-kid variety, ” wrote Peter Lawrence Kane 2015’s “The Case of Ameri’s Disappearg Gay Bars” for this magaze.

) The reasons are many: gentrifitn and risg rents; an assiatn of gay nightlife culture to the mastream; a rise spac, pecially the 2010s, that marketed themselv as “for everyone” rather than self-intifyg as queer. Our tent wh this llectn of stori is to provi a small snapshot of queer nightlife, both tablished and emergent, right now—om what the beachgoers at “The Gay Beach of New York” are stockg their olers this season, to the regulars that make a gun-shop-turned-queer-bar California’s Mojave Dert what is, to the breakneck proliferatn of queer craft cktail bars.

THE DEATH OF THE GAY BAR

There is new hope that the Gold Coast's "sttered" LGBTQI+ scene will fd a greater sense of muny after the cy's first gay bar more than two years pots:There hasn't been a dited LGBTQI+ safe venue on the Gold Coast for more than two yearsA new bar has opened Broadbeach aimed at the muny and s alliGold Coast Rabow Communi has weled the venue and says more are on the wayDan Dunn lnched Chameleon Lounge Bar last week to addrs what he scribed as a "disnnected" muny. 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 .

AS SEATTLE’S GAYBORHOOD MIGRAT, CAPOL HILL QUEER BARS FIGHT TO REMA A REFUGE

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. 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.

STILL HERE AND STILL QUEER: THE GAY RTRANT ENDUR

” 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. ” “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.

THE NUMBER OF GAY BARS HAS DWDLED. A NEW GENERATN PLANS TO BRG THEM BACK.

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. “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. ”Through his nasal passag, Atherton L replac the sanized gay body wh somethg more flhy and human, makg visceral a mon taboo popular culture: pictg gay sex, all s tactile glory.

By extensn, he’s hopg to challenge the media-iendly nceptn of gay men as perpetually groomed, perfumed, and disfected — a rponse to the AIDS epimic. After a year fed by social distancg, when stayg meant savg liv, I asked Atherton L if there was anythg particular that he missed about gog to gay bars. ”His rponse illumated the sence of what ma Gay Bar such a satisfygly thorny read: Atherton L’s abily to wrtle wh the tensn the room, and to regnize s tangle a form of tst, even assurance.

Far more tertg to Atherton L is how gay men nstct their differenc, mostly relatn to other gay men, the way gay bars ntuoly splter his sense of self, rather than g to ngeal. ”) Gay Bar still feels like a love letter, and of the realt sort — one that exprs votn through piercg, staed attentn, that tak light negotiatg.