Who Needs Gay Bars? Audbook by Greggor Mattson — Love Guarantee

Contents:

• GAY BARS AREN’T DISAPPEARG; THEY’RE CHANGG
• WHO NEEDS GAY BARS?
• WHO NEEDS GAY BARS? NYC BOOK LNCH AND PARTY
• CHAPTER 12 GAY BARS WERE NEVER SAFE SPAC
• WHO NEEDS GAY BARS?: BAR-HOPPG THROUGH AMERI'S ENDANGERED LGBTQ+ PLAC AUDBOOK
• WHO NEEDS GAY BARS?: BAR-HOPPG THROUGH AMERI'S ENDANGERED LGBTQ+ PLAC
• BOOK TALK: GREGGOR MATTSON - WHO NEEDS GAY BARS?
• GAY PHOENIX
• GAY OH

GAY BARS AREN’T DISAPPEARG; THEY’RE CHANGG

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.

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?

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.

WHO NEEDS GAY BARS? NYC BOOK LNCH AND PARTY

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.

Eater: A big pot you keep g back to is the nebulo ncept of a gay bar. After all the terviews, are you any closer to beg able to fe what a “gay bar” is? So n a fe be a gay bar?

CHAPTER 12 GAY BARS WERE NEVER SAFE SPAC

Or if a nightclub has a gay night at least once a week, then I’m willg to say that’s a place where queer culture flourish. My favore gay bar Cleveland closed, and I was really stunned at the reactn. Bee some of the lol LGBTQ+ folks were like, “Yeah, we don’t need gay bars anymore.

” I regnized that the were maly cis whe gay men who are middle class or above.

When I went lookg, I wanted to know, is [the closg of gay bars] part of a trend? So then I set out to make a database g the Damron guis and to fd out, were gay bars gog away?

WHO NEEDS GAY BARS?: BAR-HOPPG THROUGH AMERI'S ENDANGERED LGBTQ+ PLAC AUDBOOK

And then I wanted to know om people who’ve been volved wh gay bars over the last 20 or so years, what have they seen? Nobody had talked to gay bar owners. In the book you wre that certa kds of gay bars, like lbian bars or more “cisy” gay bars, are closg at a faster clip than other typ.

WHO NEEDS GAY BARS?: BAR-HOPPG THROUGH AMERI'S ENDANGERED LGBTQ+ PLAC

What sort of gay bars do you see thrivg right now? You mentned that a lot of people have been sayg that they personally don’t need gay bars anymore bee they feel wele anywhere. What do you make of that tensn and the issu that arise wh what we expect out of gay bars vers what they n reasonably offer?

Ltle ci will end up wh a gay film ftival anized out of the bar. When someone says they don’t need gay bars, jt puts me a thoughtful mood. Is , “I don’t need gay bars my middle age, but I might as a retiree, ” or is , “I don’t need gay bars now that I’m a mted partnership, but I might if I were sgle”?

BOOK TALK: GREGGOR MATTSON - WHO NEEDS GAY BARS?

I don’t know that needg gay bars is an on-off swch for the rt of your life, and so ’s important to me that the bars that n serve all of be open for when we need them. In my own life, I start feelg guilty for not equentg the gay bars my neighborhood and my cy. ” A lot of amics bate or wonr whether we’re a post-gay phase, where we — and ’s never que clear who the “we” is — don’t need our gay inti or LGBTQ+ inti anymore.

GAY PHOENIX

But one of the thgs I realized talkg to owners of bars that don’t intify as gay bars but are certaly full of gay people is that maybe other bars need to prove to that they’re post-straight. Somethg that sort of surprised me when I was terviewg was the number of straight people who are pillars of the gay muny.

The number of ci where the gay muny jt do not functn whout the labor and re of some straight person. But I’m cur what you thk queer and gay bars might look like whout the threat of opprsn. What would mean to have a gay bar a world where we weren’t opprsed?

Here I rely on David Halper, who wrote a book, How to Be Gay, and he nclus that even if was a world whout opprsn, we still are raised a heteronormative world. I’m not married to the ia of a gay bar always beg everythg — if ’s a queer fe, if ’s a nonprof LGBTQ+ center — but I thk the panmic tght all how important is to have physil plac to ngregate, and those will rema important even a hypothetil, non-opprsive future.

GAY OH

Was there anythg else your rearch you were surprised by, posively or negatively, or maybe a prenceived notn that you had about gay bars that was challenged? I started llg outposts gay bars that are more than an hour’s drive om the neart other gay bar.

Most of those bar owners said “I always wanted a mixed gay-straight bar. I never wanted a gay only space. The fact that you have a bar that’s maly Latx folks or a bar that’s Ain-Amerin LGBTQ+ folks, that didn’t surprise me, although I was very terted to fd out what were the challeng of nng those kds of bs bee those are the bars that’ve been closg among the fastt — gay bars that serve people of lor.

One of my favore tim to vis gay bars is at three the afternoon when ’s full of retire.