'Gay Bar' Tracks The Wave Of A Whole Culture — And One Life : NPR

Contents:

• LA AT THE GAY BAR
• A MEMOIR ABOUT QUEER INTY, TOLD ONE GAY BAR AT A TIME
• GAY BAR BY JEREMY ATHERTON L – A GOG OUT MEMOIR
• GAY BARS NEAR ME
• THE 42 BT GAY BARS AMERI
• GAY BAR BY JEREMY ATHERTON L REVIEW – A LURID, LERARY NIGHT OUT
• IN ‘GAY BAR,’ TIME-HOPPG SNAPSHOTS OF QUEER NIGHTLIFE
• 'GAY BAR' TRACKS THE WAVE OF A WHOLE CULTURE — AND ONE LIFE
• HOW TO BEE POPULAR AT A GAY BAR
• RH, “AN ALL NEW GAY BAR” G TO SHAW, POSTS LIQUOR LICENSE PLARD
• A GAY UPLE RAN A RAL RTRANT PEACE. THEN NEW NEIGHBORS ARRIVED.

LA AT THE GAY BAR

AMV: Serial Experiments La, Electric Six “Gay Bar” Also featurg Excel Saga, Revolutnary Girl Utena, Strawberry Panic, Neon Genis Evangeln, Azumanga Dah, Black all Gay Bar AMVs are yaoi, I thought I’d make a yuri one. 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.

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.

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

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. On Irish televisn news, the headl rmed the natn that Panti Bliss, a brilliantly articulate mpaigner, had arrived at Dubl Castle, as ed she gay was all the rage jt then.

Leo Varadkar, mister for health, soon to be taoiseach, had announced that he was gay, as did a former mister om the other ma party, as did a well-known TV news journalist. That day would not have been surprisg had all the bishops of Ireland arrived their fery to let know that they, too, wanted to jo our Gay Bar, a brilliantly wrten and cisive acunt of gay life Los Angel, San Francis and London, Jeremy Atherton L quot the cric Ben Walters on gay history that is “agile om fear and fettg, too often wrten whispers and saved scraps”.

I imaged a walk that two men of my generatn – I me to Dubl 1972 – might do to revis the gay plac that have gone, such as The Gym, a sna jt a stone’s throw om Dubl Castle, or Ingno, another sna, much favoured by prits. He wr about a DJ his 40s lled B Statn John who “played ecstatic sets of arne dis … He was there to bear wns, to ttify, g rare tracks om what he lled ‘the goln age of gay’, the perd between Stonewall and Aids.

GAY BAR BY JEREMY ATHERTON L – A GOG OUT MEMOIR

Some thgs give him the creeps, like a gay thrift shop: “I crged when I passed , imagg the store to be filled wh stuff svenged om the hom of ad queens … I hadn’t found a way to nsir the multifar story of my people – and to read wh, but not through, the disease. When they stop shavg, their beards “were perverted, their bristl perfumed wh the sudor of scrotum” gay group, observed San Francis, “uld be tected om a distance by the stk … Each of them seemed to have a magnificent ass and be wrg a book. There were three bars that he and his partner lled the Triangle: “jolly Gee and Dragon, sordid Joers Arms and laid-back Nelson’s Head – a rpective five-, ten- and fifteen-mute walk om our buildg” wr well about another hntg the London years, the spectre of gay-bashg, quotg Neil Bartlett: “Those nights out were spirg – but the solary walks home were foolish.

London, 1986, was not a safe place for a visibly gay man like my twenty-eight-year-old self to be out alone after dark – or even by daylight for that matter. Micky’s WeHo has long been a staple on Wt Hollywood’s strip of gay nightclubs and bars on Santa Moni Boulevard, known for s open-walled two-story buildg where passersby n see the party ragg om the street. Though Sweetwater isn’t officially known as a lbian bar, the humble tablishment has long been the go-to spot for queer women the lol gayborhood, which featur nearly half a dozen gay bars that le Broadway Long Beach.

The bars are safe spac where members of the lbian, gay, bisexual, transgenr and tersex (LGBTI) muny n e together and celebrate their inti whout fear of discrimatn or judgement. 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.

GAY BARS NEAR ME

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? 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 42 BT GAY BARS AMERI

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. 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.

Luckily, his worst misadventure happened when a vulpe lad he brought home om a bar “proceed to rip apart my Amerin Apparel T-shirt om the V-neck” this brand-nsc anecdote reveals, gay inty is a sartorial and existential mefield: before you go out, you have to ci what to wear, which will terme who you tend to be that eveng. He valu the bars as arenas of egalarianism, even if the would-be skheads he enunters East End hangouts are often guilty of “homosexual chinery”, passg for hooligans bee they like the wardrobe; a crique of the post-dtrial enomy, he blam nsumer culture for refg inty as a mody and -optg gay men as “experts leisure and athetics”, prized bee they have sh to spend on ippery.

GAY BAR BY JEREMY ATHERTON L REVIEW – A LURID, LERARY NIGHT OUT

Dpe his mercurial temperament, L’s aim is nobly humane: he urg habués of the bars to look beyond the stereotyp that dify gay sire and “to see one another as multidimensnal begs”. Through the gay bar as portal, we might enter plac where we n be the majory not the mory, plac where fantasy and bchery are ma possible, where inty and sire are heightened.

It is, as far as I n tell, one of the only attempts at a cultural history of the gay bar, be a cultural history that is sexier and msier, bee L do not shy away om the visceral quali of gay bars.

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

In one memorable sectn, L scrib an unrground fistg club 1970s San Francis lled the Catabs, quotg the theorist Gayle Rub’s memory of : ‘Jt walkg to that room uld put a person a leathery mood’. And San Francis, g them as anchors through which to explore the history of queer life the area, as well as vanished gay spac that once existed the neighbourhoods. While GAY BAR is brilliantly lurid, readg the book still feels like a fuzzy night out: you blk and you’re somewhere new, wh no ncern for how you got there.

His prose do the same, smoothly wdg s way om the eighteenth century to the morn day, transportg to a pocket of gay history for a few pag then – snap (gay snap, naturally) – back to the prent. ’ Here L seems to nod towards cultural theorist David Halper, who ntends that ‘gay’ is not jt an orientatn but a ‘cultural practice’ – performed or socially nstcted.

The book focs on mostly male spac, y – the thor is a gay man – but also asks bigger qutns, like what ‘gay’ means ntext, what mak a space ‘gay’ anyway, and how ‘gay spac’ shape our own ias about our sexuali.

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

Across the book, L search for his ‘tegory’ by tryg on different preformed gay male inti, om clone to Brpop twk to fashn gay, while remag aware this is prcriptive. A., for example, where L went to llege, he njur the profound alienatn of g of age as a skny mixed-race boy agast the backdrop of mcular whe Wt Hollywood gays. In fact, a good portn of L’s book is spent discsg how the gay bars of his life have ‘nsistently disappoted’, how the plac that are built for gay people have a way of makg feel like we’re not wele.

L not how a breed of toxic hypermasculy has been enforced male-centric gay culture, as a means to elimate behavurs that might draw negative attentn: ‘Mascule – normal – men wh stealthy predilectns uld be visible and therefore beyond the law’, he offers, suggtg that the legacy of crimalisatn is partly rponsible for a ridual expectatn to look and act ‘straight-passg’. Many of the gay bars he scrib are ‘not exactly what the term safe space brgs to md’, but beyond the femmephobia and racism, he wonrs aloud whether some of the dangers that n arise the spac might be worth holdg onto – and this is arguably the book’s strongt provotn. ‘People expect a book that’s affirmative, but ’s not, ’s problematic’, L recently said at GAY BAR’s onle lnch March 2021, acknowledgg that some queer rears might balk at the book’s primary foc on sleazy, male-only cisg bars.

HOW TO BEE POPULAR AT A GAY BAR

But GAY BAR is often nostalgic about precisely the kds of gay spac that seem to be disappearg: the snas, pubs wh glory hol the toilets, or kky, dark clubs wh a sense of risk.

Could we thk about the erasure of the spac as a mixture of all three of the above – part of the privatisatn or sanctifitn of gay culture that me as a rponse to the AIDS crisis, and that has been ongog ever sce – another act of assiatn, accelerated by the arrival of civil partnerships and same-sex marriage? Is the gay bar’s cle now bound up wh a new generatn’s mand for more clive, sober-iendly plac wh a foc on enthiastic nsent, which uld, turn, be perceived as another form of moral policg? He also laments the cle of the ‘retro’ or ‘basic’ gay bar – your G-A-Ys of the world, or their high street and small-town equivalents, although he acknowledg they have bee ‘blatant, an embarrassment, a blight’.

The type of bars wh cheap shots, rabow flags and ‘gay rimmed lightbulbs’, where, as L elucidat, ‘the homo- prefix meant not jt same sex but same genr, race, class’. In recent years, this particular type of gay bar has been closg across Bra, makg way for an era of more clive, rovg parti, which market themselv as queer rather than gay, attemptg to wele people om across the LGBTQ+ spectm. In the fal chapter of the book, L travels to Blackpool to vis a clter of gay bars on the suggtn of his neighbours, the artists Rosie Hastgs and Hannah Qulan, who filmed the same venu for their 2016 vio work, UK GAY BAR DIRECTORY.

RH, “AN ALL NEW GAY BAR” G TO SHAW, POSTS LIQUOR LICENSE PLARD

The film documents gay bars around Bra an exploratn of their gradual extctn and is several hours long, stchg together footage of bars that are almost always pletely empty, and shot after hours. This bar’s mp r njur a narrow stereotype of gay that verg on parodic – a feelg that is heightened when many of the other bars the film bear siar hallmarks.

When I watch the film, I thk about how many gay people I know who – displayg a kd of metropolan elism – would only vis the plac ironilly, or would dismiss the bars and the people them as too leral, too ‘basic’. Yet as L’s closg chapter on Blackpool explor, the good old fashned gay bar – specifilly those regnal areas or workg-class towns – is still a lifele to many: the (stunngly named) gay bar Peek-a-Booze Blackpool ‘seemed to perform multiple functns at once’, observ L, ‘village hall, workg men’s club, trans support group, senr cizens center’.

A GAY UPLE RAN A RAL RTRANT PEACE. THEN NEW NEIGHBORS ARRIVED.

In patg the more ‘mastream’ gay bar as a bastn or a relic, both UK GAY BAR DIRECTORY and GAY BAR: WHY WE WENT OUT seem to suggt that, jt as the word ‘gay’ might have fallen out of fashn, the gay bar might be gog wh . ’ While embracg the shift om ‘gay’ to ‘queer’ the language he and the bars he equents, L wonrs whether tryg to pe the sentialisatn of gayns that wh so much discrimatn, gay culture has lost somethg important: the sex (‘gay’, as he poted out at his book lnch, ‘is a sex-based inty, after all’).

He asks whether, tryg to pe the stereotyp, gay people may have fotten about the parts of the culture that mak them who they are and, attemptg to eva otherns, let too many people .

Queer rears who have never experienced some of the bars that L is talkg about might be the on to get the most out of GAY BAR, not bee we should necsarily keep the spac or the behavur that plays out wh them, but bee unrstandg the history of gay bars better helps to nsir their future, to ask ourselv: If gay bars are ed portals, where do we want them to take ? 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.