When I was young, gay bars were definitely the centers of queer communities everywhere I lived, from Des Moines, to West Berlin, to Manhattan. I wrote a series of stories a few years ago remembering the Question Mark Bar & Grill in Des Moines, a space I loved so much back as a newly minted adult, when 18 year olds could still go to bars. The place was cramped and utilitarian, with only an enigmatic sign over a door whose glass was blacked out for privacy, just like the windows. But the community inside felt so warm and inviting!
A few years later, in Berlin, I discovered queer bars that loudly proclaimed their existence. No blacked out windows for them! But the people felt much the same. Proud, loving, welcoming. And grateful to be safe inside where they could drop whatever pretenses they kept up in public to stay safe.
I could say the same for Manhattan, where I landed after Berlin. Safe spaces were less necessary than in Des Moines, but far from unnecessary – even as the bars were mostly open about what they were.
And you know, I'm not talking about dance clubs, even though I spent a few years of my youth enjoying those, and loved them for what they were.
I'm talking about ordinary bars, like Uncle Charlie's in New York, or One Potato, or The Monster piano bar across the street from the Stonewall Inn, which wasn't a working bar most of the time I lived in NYC but is again today.
I think that of all the queer spaces that are disappearing, the ordinary sorts of bars, those simple hangouts, are disappearing fastest.
In some ways, we're doing it to ourselves. For all the important community functions ordinary queer bars served back in the day, they also served as focal points for meeting new people, potentially sexual/romantic partners. If you were lonely and wanted a date and didn't have any idea how to meet a fellow queer person, your best and perhaps only option was to go to a gay bar.
People generally don't do that today. We turn to apps instead. They're more reliable, they put us in touch with a broader variety of people, and (this is important to many) they don't involve walking into an environment where alcohol is popular.
With the rise of dating/hookup apps, people felt less need to frequent queer bars, even though our need for community safe spaces had not diminished.
I watched bars struggle to stay open as their custom declined and kept declining – even as they heroically strived to offer community and stay relevant.
What to do about the problem? I don't know. As long as we use apps to meet each other — and I see no indication that we're going to stop— running a queer bar is going to be a lot more challenging than it used to be. Dance clubs will have it easier, because apps can't offer what they offer.
But simple community safe spaces and hangouts? If we want those (and I think we should want them for all the reasons you cite) we're going to have to work to make them happen. And maybe bars aren't necessarily what they'll look like if we do?
Maybe we'll continue building networks of community centers that offer safe space hangouts? Or maybe we'll do a more focused job of making our queer community centers available as hangouts? LGBTQ community centers today often limit non-specific use of their spaces. You can find all sorts of meetings, from AA, to arts and crafts clubs, to peer support groups on specific days, etc. But what you often can't do is just walk in and hang out in a general space where people come to chill, talk to their friends, or make new friends. (Sometimes you can, for an hour or two a couple days a week, but that's hardly ideal or conducive to real community.)
In the meantime, we queer folks have far fewer safe community spaces to gather in than when I was young. We need to change that, and I hope we do.
