I published a piece for The Conversation on gay bars and the COVID-19 pandemic. It was interesting to publish something for no pay, but under a Creative Commons license. I was surprised at how many places picked it up, from Slate, Yahoo News, Business Insider, Curve Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Seattle Post-Intelligencer… to … More Shuttered by the coronavirus, many gay bars – already struggling – are now on life support

My undergraduate research assistants and I built a dataset to try to figure out if, where, and why gay bars are closing. The first piece is short, snappy, and open access on Socius. It’s less easy to click to, but the piece has a lengthy methodological appendix that contains the data table and lots of … More Are gay bars closing? Some data.

To learn more about my research project Who Needs Gay Bars?, I’ve written the following pieces of public scholarship which are available at the links below: 2018. with Tory Sparks OC’17. “‘We Have a Gay Bar Here.’ You Don’t Need a Coast to be Cosmopolitan,” in Red State Blues: Stories from Midwestern Life on the … More Public essays on gay bars

The piece I wrote for Belt Magazine about the loss of my favorite gay bar has now been used by two artists to explore gentrification in Cleveland’s Hingetown neighborhood. Danny Volk interviewed me for his piece called Cruising, which used smartphones’ geolocating technology to sonically take listeners back to earlier versions of the neighborhood. It’s … More The poignant queer art of gentrification

(updated July 30th) This summer, my research assistant Jack Spector Bishop and I are completing the interviews for my book on gay bars. I just completed a road trip through New England, bringing my total to 106 interviewees in 33 states. If you or someone you love owns or manages a gay bar in WA, … More Gay bar book interviews 2018

I’m teaching my sociology of sexuality class this semester. I often leave a gap in the syllabus for students to pick a topic that hasn’t been addressed. It helps me learn new things from them, respond to current events, and fill in the topical gaps for a class that students’ in which students are often … More Teaching Weinstein, Spacey, Sexual Assault, and New Skirmishes in Old Sex Wars