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

Contents:

• THE 42 BT GAY BARS AMERI
• THE BT GAY CLUBS AMERI
• A YEAR GAY BARS
• IN ‘GAY BAR,’ TIME-HOPPG SNAPSHOTS OF QUEER NIGHTLIFE
• A MEMOIR ABOUT QUEER INTY, TOLD ONE GAY BAR AT A TIME
• 'GAY BAR' TRACKS THE WAVE OF A WHOLE CULTURE — AND ONE LIFE
• COME JO THE PARTY! LSONS OM VISG EVERY GAY AND LBIAN BAR THE COUNTRY
• GAY BARS AREN’T DISAPPEARG; THEY’RE CHANGG
• GAY BARS THE FRENCH QUARTER
• CHASG ‘PHANTOMS OF THE PAST’: 8 GAY AND LBIAN BAR ARCHIVISTS ON PRERVG LGBTQ+ NIGHTLIFE HISTORY
• 5 HISTORIC SAN FRANCIS GAY BARS WE WISH STILL EXISTED

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?

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.

THE BT GAY CLUBS AMERI

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.

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.

A YEAR GAY BARS

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. 41) Bar Gaytherg (Miami Beach, FL)42) Cafe Lafte In Exile (New Orleans, LA)43) Cubbyhole (New York, NY)44) Srlet Honolulu (Honolulu, HI)45) The Goln Lantern (New Orleans, LA)46) Freddie’s Beach Bar & Rtrant (Arlgton, VA)47) Replay Beer and Bourbon (Chigo, IL)48) Berl (Chigo, IL)49) Marty’s Marti Bar (Chigo, IL)50) The North End (Chigo, IL).

We intified bs the gay bars tegory, then ranked those spots g a number of factors cludg the total volume and ratgs of reviews between January 1, 2016 and April 28, 2021.

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

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.

One of Long Beach’s few, if not only, three-level gay bars, Executive Sue boasts a karaoke bar, vio gam, pool tabl for rent, and regular drag shows. Dubbed by KCET as Montebello’s bt Lato gay bar, Chi is the sister to Club Cobra, servg as a groundg se for the queer Latx muny the suburbs of East LA. The siwalks were dimly l, and I glid om light to light through the eply balmy eveng, and beyond the pat I found a panmic-era simulacm of a Texas gay bar’s ual weekday crowd: a few (whe) guys watchg sports on their phon, a (whe) man talkg to the bartenr, alongsi a handful of skny (whe) dus lookg to get laid.

In Hoton, while ambulance sirens blared at all hours, I ocsnally spent my afternoons walkg up and down the roads of our own lol gayborhood, Montrose.

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

I wished him luck, but I uldn’t hear his rponse over an unmasked group of whe gays, yellg about poppers and spillg their beer all over the June, my boyiend, L, and I flew to Los Angel for work.

Portland has historilly been home to the untry’s send-largt populatn of queer people, behd only San Francis, but, pendg on who you ask, the cy lacks a dified gayborhood. In the rtrant, I sat at the bar unr a televisn blastg Conan O’Brien rens, and a gay Asian du dnkenly munchg on i bi me plaed that he’d been abandoned by his iends.

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

Jeremy Atherton L, the thor of the book “Gay Bar, ” may have scribed the allure of the spac bt: “It’s not about holdg out for a good night, but rather a lettg go, ” givg to the “unnvcg promise of pe. 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. 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. ) 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.

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.

COME JO THE PARTY! LSONS OM VISG EVERY GAY AND LBIAN BAR THE COUNTRY

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 BARS AREN’T DISAPPEARG; THEY’RE CHANGG

“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.

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. 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.

He wr betifully about his llege days Los Angel, where he went to his first one, though he n't rell the name, wryly notg, "Of urse I n't remember my first gay bar — I was dnk.

GAY BARS THE FRENCH QUARTER

" That history clus the famo 1969 uprisg at the Stonewall Inn New York, but Atherton L also div to other, lser-known bars, cludg on that endured police raids meant to put gay people their place. " Atherton L explor topics like archecture and urban geography, as they relate to gay bars, betifully; he wr wh a real knowledge that's more than jt tellectual dilettantism.

About the changg looks of bars before the turn of the century, he observ, "A new type of gay bar began to appear London's Soho the neti — airy, glossy, ntental. " Along the way, Atherton L dips to other topics related to the gay muny: the appropriatn of gay culture by straight people, mic, drkg, and the valu of the younger generatn of LGBTQ people.

And while succeeds on many levels, perhaps the most remarkable one is Atherton L's nstant qutng of himself, and the realizatns of how he's changed sce he walked to his first gay bar years ago: "Maybe, I thought, I'm a dis ball. For me, my obssn was fueled by how velopers danced on the grave of my favore gay bar here Cleveland and the utter lack of rmatn about whether, or where, or why gay bars were closg. GM: One of the thgs I was terted was showg that many gay bars aren’t as clive to the breadth and pth of the LGBTQ+ muny as they should be, but I also wanted to protect dividual bars om onle vigilante mobs trashg their Yelp ratgs over my exposés of their racism, misogyny, and transphobia.

CHASG ‘PHANTOMS OF THE PAST’: 8 GAY AND LBIAN BAR ARCHIVISTS ON PRERVG LGBTQ+ NIGHTLIFE HISTORY

I thk bee lbian bars have been forced to bee more emphatilly clive to stay open a way that gay bars haven’t, people them have learned they have to accept everyone their space or get out. The fastt clg kd of gay bars over the last two years has been bars that only serve cisgenr men, and the fastt growg are bars that serve men and women—the jury is still out on whether they wele all genrs.

5 HISTORIC SAN FRANCIS GAY BARS WE WISH STILL EXISTED

But even after I was fished wrg thgs up, I would still squeeze more terviews, most recently wh one of the -owners of the Fox Bar and Market East Montpelier Vermont, perhaps the world’s only gay bar where you n also buy chee and h vegetabl. Later, I liked that I uld precisely ntrol the amount of alhol I was gtg: gay bars have heavy pours of liquor and you never know how you’re gog to feel after a simple g and tonic! 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. 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”?