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

gay bar why we went out

In his new memoir, “Gay Bar,” Jeremy Atherton L documents his personal history and the history of queer inty by explorg gay bars around the world.

Contents:

GAY BAR: WHY WE WENT OUT

After readg Jeremy Atherton L's "Gay Bar: Why We Went Out," the "dirty versn" of queer bar history, I revised the refuge of gay bars then and now. * gay bar why we went out *

Gay Bar: Why We Went Out - Harvard Review.

FOR THE LOVE OF GAY BARS

* gay bar why we went out *

Gay Bar: Why We Went Out. Jeremy Atherton L’s Gay Bar: Why We Went Out is a seamls batn of memoir and cultural history, orbg the yteryear of queer nightlife—a ptivatg exercise that hg on the limatns of one genre provg the necsy of the other.

WHY GAY BARS ARE DISAPPEARG ACROSS AMERI

L, Jeremy Atherton. Gay Bar: Why We Went Out. New York: Ltle, Brown and Company, 2021. * gay bar why we went out *

The ocsn for Atherton L’s shamelsly hybrid text is the realizatn that, jt as queerns has graduated to the mastream, and cisg now primarily exists the digal sphere, so too has our qutsential gatherg space—the gay bar—lost somethg of s urgency. “Gay is an inty of longg, ” Atherton L wr, as he looks back on years spent those dark, crowd plac, “and there is a wistfulns to beholdg the form of a buildg, like how the sight of a theater stirs the imagatn. An epigraph om filmmaker and wrer Derek Jarman, a major figure gay rights activism at the height of the AIDS crisis, opens one chapter: “When I was young the absence of the past was a terror.

Siarly, the act of rememberg the way thgs once were be Gay Bar a radil necsy—and a remr that history, after all, is a privilege.

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

Author Jeremy Atherton L wr of the history of gay bars, as their existence is threatened by the populary of datg apps and risg property sts, and reflects on their prence his life. * gay bar why we went out *

Havg e out after the emergence of AZT, Atherton L acknowledg that he was once repelled by what the gay past reprented.

GAY BAR: WHY WE WENT OUT

An cisive history of London, LA and San Francis rells the sights, sounds and distctive smells of gay life om the 1990s to today * gay bar why we went out *

AIDS, police btaly, a history of racism and vlence—the gay bar don’t get off easy jt for beg a sometim lifavg haven for a privileged few. He scrib his early experienc as a gay man gay plac wh a tenrns for his younger self that never que veers to sentimentaly, prentg stead a hyper-ntextualized nostalgia wh well-curated dips to the historil rerd.

The gay bar I’d once ped to as a teenager, armed wh a fake ID and the need to outn the stranglehold of the closet, is now a . Atherton L wr about gay culture as havg been built on the ia of imatn, “the longg embedd feelg real—on embracg that feelg, and refg to accept realns as ’s been nstcted for .

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

” And if the gay bar was once a place where we hoped we uld fd ourselv—to be someone different om who we’d been before—we did so wh tentn, buildg an inty om the ground up, playg the part until we’d memorized every le. Now the empty gay bars are “st-off exoskeletons, ” reprentative not of the promise of our future selv but of a time that has e and gone.

And the gay bars the larger cy where I live now are often overn by straight tourists and dnken bachelorette parti, appropriatn beg a natural nsequence of beg seen. As the remag partiers n attt, gay bars obvly still exist—“this is what we fought for, apparently”—but Atherton L mak the se for why they’ll never be the same. ” But upon reachg the wistfully movg ncln of Gay Bar, s narrator—a historian-as-participant—heads out of the bars and to the streets.

Even before I ever went si a gay bar, I was aware of the smell.

GAY BAR BY JEREMY ATHERTON L – A GOG OUT MEMOIR

Surely if some passerby saw me even sually glance , they’d figure out I was gay.

The nroticism of beg closeted is like that strs of seeg a p while you’re stoned, but 24/7, and also, you like gay turns out that Gay Bar Smell (a ee logne ia one of the Queer Eye guys should sh on) was an spic troductn for me, and an inic one at that. It’s even referred to the very first le of Gay Bar: Why We Went Out, the recently released book wrten by Jeremy Atherton L that aims to pture the trici, plitns, and fabulons of this culture.

*BEAR-MAGAZINE.COM* GAY BAR WHY WE WENT OUT

Gay Bar: Why We Went Out - Harvard Review .

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