The History of How Gay Bars Beme the Battleground for LGBTQ+ Rights

Contents:

• 'GAY BAR' TRACKS THE WAVE OF A WHOLE CULTURE — AND ONE LIFE
• THE HISTORY OF HOW GAY BARS BEME THE BATTLEGROUND FOR LGBTQ+ RIGHTS
• RAISG THE BAR: A BRIEF HISTORY OF GAY BARS
• HOW THE MOB HELPED ESTABLISH NYC’S GAY BAR SCENE
• HOW GAY CULTURE BLOSSOMED DURG THE ROARG TWENTI
• THE PANSY CRAZE: WHEN GAY NIGHTLIFE LOS ANGEL REALLY KICKED OFF

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

Gay Bar b memoir, history and cricism; 's a difficult book to p down, but that's what mak so readable and so endlsly fascatg. 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.

That kd of gay bar — all kds of gay bars, really — are danger of closg, Atherton L wr, due to the populary of datg apps and risg property sts. He's ambivalent about the velopment, wrg, "I had to nsir whether gay bars promised a sense of belongg then lured to a trap.

THE HISTORY OF HOW GAY BARS BEME THE BATTLEGROUND FOR LGBTQ+ RIGHTS

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. " He's also spired to dig to the past: "Enough time has passed that gay bars, once a surge, have bee monumental their own way. " 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.

RAISG THE BAR: A BRIEF HISTORY OF GAY BARS

Throughout the book, Atherton L scrib the gay bars that he equented, and his scriptns of the tablishments are endlsly evotive. " 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.

HOW THE MOB HELPED ESTABLISH NYC’S GAY BAR SCENE

" 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.

HOW GAY CULTURE BLOSSOMED DURG THE ROARG TWENTI

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.

Although is nice to thk of gay bars as unanimoly safe plac, where the LGBTQ+ muny uld exist whout threat, that clearly wasn’t always the se. ” Unfortunately, police reports and mastream media verage of a gay bar 1880 proved to be extremely unreliable and hyperbolic, fueled mostly by pearl-clutchg and fear-mongerg rather than actual rmatn. Over the next several s, gay and lbian bars began to pop up all over the untry, each one perhaps takg a cue om those before .

Dpe their often short-lived nature, the early gay bars often served as hugely important battlegrounds the fight for LGBTQ+ rights. “ orr to tablish 'good e' for spensn of platiff's license, somethg more mt be shown than that many of his patrons were homosexuals and that they ed his rtrant and bar as a meetg place.

THE PANSY CRAZE: WHEN GAY NIGHTLIFE LOS ANGEL REALLY KICKED OFF

Jt as did California, this state law was short lived, wh urts eventually led that gays uld ‘peacefully’ assemble at bars, which paved the way for the inic Stonewall Inn to open 1967. The sign the wdow reads: "We homosexuals plead wh our people to please help mata peaceful and quiet nduct on the streets of the Village.