This article was originally published on Medium.com in Prism & Pen on May 19, 2023.
Photo: Rachel Robinson in The Stranger
There are several problems with gay bars: one, that you have to stay up too late, and, two, that they’re designed to be exhilarating. This typically means the music is loud and your attention is directed to the glitterati: “Who’s that hunk coming in the door now?” As a patron, your attention is always wandering. And then there’s the alcohol issue. For some, that’s a third problem.
It used to be, too, that gay bars were situated in more problematic neighborhoods in the city or out-of-the-way spots in the country. There was significant nimbyism from the straight world. As a neighborhood gentrified, the gay bars tended to move out to dingier or more remote locations. I suspect there still would be pushback if some enterprising individual wanted to open a gay space, particularly in some town or state where LGBTQ culture is being hammered currently.
Then, there’s the reason that straight women, who are just looking for a hassle free time, can find that easier in a gay bar than in a local biker bar, say. But then, they become pheromone magnets for straight men, who, last I looked, aren’t always hospitable to the possibility of getting hit on by gay men.
It’s probably a combination of all these reasons that explains the demise of gay bars and makes it iffy if we’ll see any resurgence of them.
But, I don’t think it’s ever been the case that queer people can’t find some place to be safely queer, even if not completely physically safe, at least affirmingly safe. It may be happening more online now, but we adapt with the times.
But it’s not just queer people who are looking for safe spaces. Safe is something that all people want, the more so that it’s becoming less assured all the time in the States. That’s because a safe space has to include safe people, meaning friends and acquaintances for the most part.
But safe isn’t enough of an attraction by itself. Everyone wants someplace that is both safe and welcoming. The welcoming part means the place is open to newcomers — with the proviso that those newcomers aren’t threats.
For entertainment over the long haul, we want spaces where we can encounter new people, with new faces and new perspectives, who bring in new energy. But a safe and welcoming space to be successful will adhere to the old saying that “there’s safety in numbers.” That is, it has to be able to accommodate a crowd, not necessarily a large one, but a diverse one. Bars, by definition, as well as for financial reasons, do this. The old crowd drinks more if there are newbies present. Sorry, if that sounds contrived and cynical, but bars are capitalistic ventures after all.
I remember in the old golden age of gay bars that they were often siloed. Here I’m speaking of bars predominantly for gay men. There were certainly siloed Lesbian bars too, but there were always many fewer of them. The gay men’s bars back in the day came in leather, chicken (twink), dance, piano, and stripper flavors. In the larger cities, there were often different dialects of each of these types, focusing often on different age ranges and sexual behaviors.
Today’s bars, as I understand them, and I’m no expert, tend to be queer bars, meaning that they are more diverse, not catering to any particular subculture, embracing all the letters in our acronym. I hear that they’re livelier and friendlier and more universally welcoming than the older generation of bars. Someone please tell me if this is wrong.
When my partner and I moved to the country, that is rural West Virginia, and left off big city life, it was necessary to give up the silos. We were lucky to have one or two bars, typically located out on the highway or in the decaying part of a neighboring state’s downtown. These bars typically didn’t last that long, but while they did, they attracted the full range of our spectrum. To be honest, though, the spectrum didn’t seem to be as wide as it is today. They still kept the same drawbacks as city bars — too loud, too smokey (back then), too distracting, too geared toward alcohol — but they were inclusive. You could see everyone on any particular night.
What was more important as the social glue for our gay community was in-home get-togethers. We organized a club, the Panhandlers, which became the de facto social venue. At any one of our regular meetings we’d have as many as 30 people attending, strung out over limited spaces on couches, at tables, on the floor, eating, drinking, and chatting. A few hours of this and we’d be off to the bar or to home.
A number of our hosts had properties with land enough and isolated enough that they could host outdoor activities and on one occasion that I remember we had a hired male stripper for entertainment. We could also include swimming at some locations.
It might all seem to be small change to the city crowd, but many of them would come up from time to time to visit and see how their country cousins did things. We were welcoming.
The forces at play that made my part of West Virginia a safe and welcoming location won’t necessarily exist in every rural setting. Our location, about 70 miles from Washington, DC gave us an advantage. It’s relatively easy to get to and from and even to commute to. And it’s beautiful.
We still have those advantages and over the years many of those occasional city cousins who came to visit set up vacation homes of their own here and ultimately transplanted completely. We’re now kind of recognized as a gay retirement area, in fact.
I would say, though, that we’re now more integrated with the wider community and it doesn’t seem as necessary to confine our entertainment and socializing to our own kind. There being more and more of us contributing in visible ways to our communities, it has become easier for us to forgo our own exclusive spaces.
So there are no gay bars here now. But that’s OK. We don’t seem to really need them. If we do get a yen, though, Washington is close by. It’s been a long time, though, since I personally have had that yen.