Category: Who Needs Gay Bars?
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Club Q
From a piece I wrote for Contexts in the wake of the mass shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs: The public only takes note of gay bars when something bad happens. It makes being a gay bar expert utterly depressing. I feel an obligation to share my knowledge, but I also feel like a […]
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Interview: Chicago LGBTQ+ and gay bars declining in number, study shows
CHICAGO (WLS) — The number of LBGTQ+ and gay bars in Chicago and nationwide is declining, data shows. Experts say that could mean fewer spaces for some of the community, especially those with diverse backgrounds. “We have had the experience of going into bars in you know, in our community, and not necessarily feeling welcome,” said […]
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The impact of lesbian bar ownership on USA lesbian bar geographies: all-gender/straight-integrated LGBTQ places by design
One longstanding explanation for the scarcity of lesbian bars in the United States is the lack of women’s ownership of durable spaces. This study interviewed 15 women owners of lesbian and LGBTQ bars to understand how they conceptualize the queer social spaces they control. Whether they owned a lesbian bar in a big city with […]
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New data: gay bars and the impact of the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S.
This report is currently undergoing peer review but the preprint with data table is freely available at SocArxiv. Abstract: “What was the impact on gay bars of COVID-19 public closure orders? Gay bars were already quite vulnerable, retaining only 63.4% of their business listings from 2007 to 2019. Historic data from printed business guides were […]
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Chapter: The changing role of gay bars in American LGBTQ+ life
In Introducing the New Sexuality Studies 4th Edition, released June 2022. “Gay bars are iconic in part because they are the most common and accessible LGBTQ+ places, but they are in decline. About one third of gay bars closed in the 2010s, but new ones continued to open to serve their communities as one of […]
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Interview: Fox Market is Vermont’s 1st LGBTQ+ bar in 15 years. What took so long?
Erin Petenko interviewed me for a piece about Vermont’s newest LGBTQ+ bar-cum-grocery store, the first of that kind I’ve ever heard of, and for which I apparently said something about “skipping through the maple trees.”
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Interview: Cleveland’s gay bars fought to survive the pandemic. Will patrons return?
Peter Kusnic interviewed me for a very comprehensive look at the challenges facing Cleveland’s gay bars as the COVID-19 pandemic drags on.
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NPR conversation: Why Gay Bars Matter
On August 16th I was a guest on KERA’s program Think with Krys Boyd to discuss “Why Gay Bars Matter,” along with reporter Miguel Perez.
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Chapter: Update to “Style and the Value of Gay Nightlife: Homonormative Placemaking in San Francisco”
I updated my 2015 piece in Urban Studies for Christopher T. Connor and Daniel Okamura’s edited volume, The Gayborhood: From Sexual Liberation to Cosmopolitan Spectacle. “Reductionist conceptions of gay nightlife and the neighbourhoods they anchor have obscured their diversity amid claims of gentrification or displacement. The divergent trajectories of San Francisco’s three gay bar districts […]
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Article: Are gay bars closing? Some data.
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 […]
Greggor Mattson 