Femmepremacy, another roving New York party, gathers together Black femmes and femmes of color both in-person and online. New Orleans-based Ascendance hosts pop-ups in a “strictly consent-only space” that’s “anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-queerphobic, anti-ableist, and anti-ageist.” Chicago’s Party Noire - created for queer, trans, genderqueer, and gender-nonconforming Black people–has successfully followed a similar pop-up framework since 2015. Papi Juice, a New York-based pop-up party that celebrates queer and trans people of color, has transformed spots like the Brooklyn Museum and Elsewhere (a nightlife venue) into safe spaces for select nights. Haddad, who has cerebral palsy and uses a walker, recounted his isolating inaugural experience at a gay bar: “…the first thing I encountered was a staircase.” In a recent production of Hi, Are You Single?, actor and writer Ryan J. The Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations released a 2016 report stating that “LGBTQ people of color, women and transgender people often feel unwelcome and unsafe in Gayborhood spaces.” In 2019, a gay Chicago establishment, ironically named Progress Bar, momentarily banned rap music - a policy quickly decried as anti-Black. Racism, misogyny, transphobia, ableism, and ageism are all unfortunate cornerstones of places that often favor young, muscular, masculine, non-disabled white men. In 2016, a mass shooting at Orlando’s Pulse Nightclub left 49 dead and dozens more wounded.Įven as a momentary refuge from the outside world, gay bars continuously fail queer people. In 1973, an anti-gay arsonist set fire to a New Orleans gay lounge and killed 32 people. When police raids ended, hate crimes did not. Through the late 1960s, routine police raids meant gay bar patrons could be threatened with fines, jail time, and possibly job loss or social annihilation if outed by authorities. Whether it’s Stonewall or the Stud, gay bars have been considered LGBTQ “safe spaces” - a term scholar and activist Moira Kenney attributes to the gay liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s.īut “safe” is a misnomer. Should we rebuild these once-sacred spaces or create something new? Now, as the world reopens and we clamor for community, queer people face a conundrum. Sometime between the birth of dating apps, marriage equality, and gayborhood gentrification, traditional gay bars became inessential. In the late 1980s, there were roughly 200 lesbian bars across the country. According to sociologist Greggor Mattson, 37 percent of US gay bars closed between 20. The immediate cause of these deaths might be COVID-19, but gay bars were on life support before the pandemic began. Little Jim’s, a Chicago mainstay known as the Cheers of Boystown, shuttered after forty-five years in business. Washington DC’s Eagle flew the coop last May Atlanta’s Eagle followed suit in November. Los Angeles bid farewell to Gym Bar, Flaming Saddles, Rage, Gold Coast, and the 52-year-old Oil Can Harry’s. NYC lost institutions like 9th Avenue Saloon and Therapy. It was one of the oldest LGBTQ establishments in the United States.Īmerica’s gay bar graveyard has amassed a sobering amount of headstones in the past year. Bartenders started slinging drinks from The Stud’s latest SOMA location in 1987.
The bar began operating in 1966, one year before the original Stonewall Inn opened its doors across the country. What followed was an hours-long funeral - not for a person, but for The Stud - a beloved San Francisco gay bar forced to close during the pandemic.