Gay Bar: Why We Went Out

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Sometimes the novels chosen are new, often they are from the backlist and occasionally re-issued from way back. Jeremy Atherton Lin finds himself at home in gay bars be they in London, Los Angeles, or San Francisco. Another important argument is that to him, gay bars were not safe spaces, and he did not want them to be - the conversation around this seems to have changed considerably.

Absurd as Lin finds the tribal concern with costume and kinky accessories, this self-mythologising, self-mocking manner is the theme of his book and his reason for writing it. Obviously, such topics are more appropriate for an NYT article and might not be able to frame a whole book, but I still felt like I got more out of this one article than Lin's whole book. And some close or morph beyond recognition when the community shifts- either growing younger, older or less inclined towards a certain demographic. With rare exceptions such as bank holidays, the book group meets on the first Wednesday of every month at 7.There are decent points, valid arguments, and interesting insights, but sometimes it just didn’t work for me personally. I nevertheless enjoyed running around the world from gay bar to gay bar with the narrator and his boyfriend “Famous”, and by the end landed on finding the overall uneventful and anecdotal nature of this story to be part of its charm. One need only look at the online discourse of “Gays Over Covid” or “Gays for Trump” to recognize that something is afoot. An expansive and vivacious celebration of an institution, Gay Bar is also a stylish, intimate exploration of what these spaces mean, how they are changing and what we stand to lose when they close their doors. We want to be in a room full of penises wherein each contains the strong possibility that it is, to use the old-fashioned queer initialism, tbh – to be had.

Of course, any reader in enforced pandemic lockdown is likely to be both highly envious, not to mention rather appalled, at the goings-on here. All of this is captured wonderfully in a quote from Jeremy Atherton Lin’s Gay Bar: Why We Went Out: “I was under the impression I was always late to the party, but in fact, I may not have been invited. This guy has vocabulary for days, and carries you with him across the bars of San Fransisco, London, and LA.Yet Atherton Lin is always on the outskirts of those communities, taking shots at their centers even as he acknowledges their orbits, always standing in and athwart his subject. The Gay Bar as a location for people to gather and express themselves, as as the location of queer history-both where it occurs and where it is passed on. But in urban centers around the world, they are closing, a cultural demolition that has Jeremy Atherton Lin What was the gay bar?

Or the documentary We came to Sweat about the oldest and longest running LGBT bar in Brooklyn also black owned. I went out to bars,” declares Jeremy Atherton Lin late in this florid, lurid, powerfully brainy memoir of gay gallivanting, “to be literary.

So it feels especially poignant to read Jeremy Atherton Lin's nonfiction/memoir “Gay Bar” now as he catalogues his personal experience going to gay bars and other historic examples of notable establishments where gay people congregated. It is a privileged, intellectual account of urban gay culture, and I feel it may have been improved if some of its characters had a little more depth or warmth. the United States of America by Eric Cervini and others that manage to convey important and underattended histories in engaging ways. This is an even more timely rumination in the time of pandemic when formerly rough and tumble gay bars have taken to pitching tables outside, under afternoon umbrellas for day drinking visible from the street. I also agree with some other reviewers who were disappointed that there wasn't more of a social historical overview of the development of gay bars and their wane in the wake of apps and online dating and hook-up sites.