Is the Gay Bar So 20th Century?
Nearly forty years after Stonewall, gay bar patrons are no longer occupied with keeping the cops at bay - they’re too busy either welcoming or bemoaning an invasion of a different sort.
Does the increasingly common presence of straights at your local queer watering hole compromise the purity of the gay bar’s longtime mission statement? In a world in which homosexuals have lost some of their luster as an oppressed minority, do we really need a sequestered environment in which to find community and get laid?
These questions, and more, were explored in two weeks ago in Gay nightlife’s identity crisis). This week we talk to some straight and gay patrons, as well as some bar owners and managers - all of whom put their own spin on how the changing times are changing the face, function and future of gay bars.
Location, Location, Location!
Location, Location, Location!
The increased visibility of straight men and women in gay bars is a trend, an aberration or an abomination - depending largely upon what your age is and what bar you go to. Among bars that still cater to the increasingly graying gay vanguard (or identify strongly with the gay bar’s vitally important cruising element), mixed crowds are neither courted nor encouraged. But go to one of the bars in NYC’s Hell’s Kitchen (the neighborhood of choice among the next generation) and you’ll find gay bars with a very different vibe than their Chelsea or Greenwich Village counterparts.
That’s the assessment from Scott Ryan, manager of Therapy; 348 W. 52nd Street). Before becoming a manager, Ryan worked the from lines as a Therapy bartender. Before that, he did time as a barkeep at that legendary Greenwich Village piano bar, The Duplex. He says the trend towards mixed crowds is "not about sexuality; it’s about location." Ryan describes the six year-old Therapy as "primarily a gay bar. That’s how we stared and we that’s how we’re known." Even so, he notes Therapy has always welcomed straight patrons, has straight employees, and remains - despite its massive gayness - "a place I can bring my parents to; not that we encourage that."
As for the neighborhood, Ryan says Hell’s Kitchen is where you’ll find "the newer generation of gay bars." With many gays residents and bar patrons migrating from Chelsea (after having migrated from the Village), Hell’s Kitchen is where younger gays go when they want to socialize with their straight friends. Those stags and fag hags get a considerably less warm welcome in places like Splash - bars which Ryan says despite their Chelsea location, retain "an old school West Village mentality" of gay-only exclusivity that often greets women with reactions ranging from indifference to mild prejudice to outright hostility.
