After hours: pturg the journey home om New York Cy's gay nightclubs | Photography | The Guardian

Contents:

• THE BT GAY CLUBS AMERI
• WHEN DID BOSTON’S GAY SCENE GET SO STRAIGHT?
• BT GAY ANTHEMS OF 2017: CRIC’S PICKS
• BT GAY CLUBS SAN ANTON
• BT GAY CLUBS LAS VEGAS
• THE BT GAY AND LBIAN CLUBS AND PARTI IN SF
• AFTER HOURS: PTURG THE JOURNEY HOME OM NEW YORK CY'S GAY NIGHTCLUBS
• FLASH THE FLH: MANCHTER'S GAY CLUB HERO – PICTUR

THE BT GAY CLUBS AMERI

We didn’t know Buzz was a gay club, but the wrhg bare torsos, smell of sexed-up sweat, and anthemic mic quickly clued . Over the years, though, one club after another has shuttered—and lol gays gmble that the scene simply isn’t what ed to for good reason: There were at least 20 known gay bars Boston 1977, acrdg to Andrew Elr, chair of the History Project, a nonprof that archiv documents, photos, oral histori, and ephemera related to Boston’s LGBT history. Ours was the send state to add sexual orientatn to s anti-discrimatn statute ( 1989), and the first to legalize gay marriage ( 2004).

WHEN DID BOSTON’S GAY SCENE GET SO STRAIGHT?

Indtry vets I spoke wh chalk the loss of gay bars up to the price of progrs: As Massachetts helped normalize LGBT cln faster than jt about anywhere else the untry, bs that origated as safe spac suffered; the rise of onle hookup s and mobile apps livered the fatal blow.

BT GAY ANTHEMS OF 2017: CRIC’S PICKS

Meanwhile, gentrifitn changed the face of gay ghettos: Yuppi wheeled expensive baby strollers, helpg shoo away the lorful queer artists and others who gave neighborhoods such as the South End their appeal.

BT GAY CLUBS SAN ANTON

As a rult, the bars and venu that rema feel ls edgy, say some old-timers, and the spotty scene no longer cultivat a hive-feelg gay of this is part of a larger trend, affectg ci om San Francis to New York, and should set off alarm bells regardls of whether you’re gay. Gay bars have long been spac that prop up muni who play on the g, generators of subversive cultural movements that eventually go mastream, and bulwarks agast the sterilizatn and homogenizatn of cy life. He’d left his wife and started dippg his to to gay bars, followg exhilaratg but terrifyg cursi down alleyways and to dark, barely marked dive bars, where he found solace others wh siar stori.

Today, the clash is wily regnized as the first shots of the morn gay rights movement, and the Stonewall Inn is a natnal monument, the first signated specifilly for s role LGBT history. In 1983, the first meetg of the AIDS Actn Commtee (AAC)—a rponse to ernment actn as the epimic cimated gay men—took place at Buddi, a popular Back Bay bar. Likewise, Sporter’s, a Bean Hill bar, hosted fundraisers for Elae Noble, the first openly gay person elected to any state’s legislature.

BT GAY CLUBS LAS VEGAS

Boston’s gay bars served as facto muny centers throughout the early AIDS crisis, providg support and tn when the outsi world offered neher.

At first, the shift was imperceptible, but once the new lennium rolled around, felt apparent those shuttered spac weren’t g the early ghts, says Frank Ribdo, who found the popular South End gay bar Club Café 1983, Boston’s gay bars battled through a particularly rough patch as patrons took advantage of greater acceptance more-mastream spac. Headquartered East Cambridge’s tech and life scienc hub, Onle Buddi is the parent pany behd Manhunt, the proudly horny progenor of gay hookup webs, as well as Jack’d, a mobile app that is ls strintly sexualized and aimed at Generatn Z and the lennial market. Office visors expectg to fd go-go boys dancg the acuntg partment, however, would be sorely disappoted: Onle Buddi looks much like any other major web many say this is what’s replaced the gay bar.

THE BT GAY AND LBIAN CLUBS AND PARTI IN SF

In talkg to club owners, DJs, drag queens, and other fluencers Boston’s LGBT social scene, I’m told that, as much as anythg else, hookup webs and apps supplanted gay gatherg spac by renrg moot their utily as a place to meet for muny support, fun, and isks.

But he claims his crics miss a bigger pot: Datg apps are the new sgl bars for gay and straight folks alike, and pecially for the younger generatns. / Portra by Tony LuongEven whout the digal disptn, assiatn was already acceleratg the cle of the gay bar scene, pecially here Massachetts, which blazed ahead of the natn wh legal rights and protectns.

AFTER HOURS: PTURG THE JOURNEY HOME OM NEW YORK CY'S GAY NIGHTCLUBS

Wh much of gay culture built on the tensn between sexual self-exprsn and social reprsn, ’s no surprise that gay bars have shuttered as that tensn has eased.

FLASH THE FLH: MANCHTER'S GAY CLUB HERO – PICTUR

“A big part of the gay bar was, was a place you uld go if you had a secret, ” says Mark Krone, a History Project board member. Enter: Mastream Ameri, wrapped pk feather boas, and rryg plenty of door of tegratn swgs both ways, so as gay dollars left gay-specific spac for mixed on, straight dollars started rollg like never before. Club owners and performers say that straight folks creasgly began slippg to historilly gay spots to ham up for a night, and that many bars beme unexpected statns for (heterosexual) bachelorette parti—pecially the wake of the smash TV h RuPl’s Drag Race.

Jacqu, which is snug and charmgly ayed, still looks like an old-school gay bar wh gr—a far cry om the verno Lansdowne Street super-clubs such as Avalon and Axis, where Knievil and her cht-paddg posse cut their teeth the late ’90s, back before the Fenway’s nightlife bacchanalia got a slick and sterile makeover.

But they n also e across as vasive, and drive out the already dwdlg gay clientele a stctive (for the bars) feedback first, the terlopers treated queens “more like circ clowns than performers, ” Fijal says.