(updated Feb 17, 2018) Here’s what we think we know: Gay bars are disappearing and everybody already knows why. Gentrification is pushing them out of the neighborhoods they made hip, LGBT social acceptance has liberated their patrons to visit any venue they choose, and social media dating has eliminated their social function. Gay bars thus … More Gay bar book project update
Home for the holidays, time for a few more interviews. Some summary stats calculated from the Damron Guides (regular caveats apply): The Portland area has the same number bar in 2017 than it did in 1997, meaning the city has bucked the national trend of losing 24% of its gay bars (there was one more … More Gay bars in the Pacific Northwest
I’m giving this presentation at the Royal Geographical Society Annual Conference. It’s below. By the way, I don’t mean anything bad by the word provincial. I grew up provincial and I again live in the provinces, and I like it that way! The abstract is as follows: Our understandings of changes in gay bars are … More Centering Provincial Gay Bars
Guest post by Tory Sparks Stop Blaming Millennials for Killing Gay Bars: Generational Absolutism in the Gay Community I was born in 1994. If you’d like to stop reading now because of that, there’s nothing I can do about that except to ask you to consider: why do you want to stop reading? If you’re … More Guest post: Stop Blaming Millennials For Killing gay Bars
“Man, have you been in there yet?,” asked the clean-shaven bro in polo shirt and Oakley sunglasses. “Not yet,” I replied from my perch outside Splash Bar Florida, where I’d been interviewing Tony Boswell, the owner, for the past hour as part of the Who Needs Gay Bar Tour? “Man, you gotta go in there, … More Straight men in gay bars approach me
Northwest Arkansas contains all the contrasts and contradictions of other small city gay bars, isolated from gay neighborhoods but close to American landmarks. Fort Smith and Fayetteville are one hour apart, but their two gay clubs are entwined by more than their relative proximity in northwest Arkansas, home of Walmart’s international headquarters and the tiny, … More Road Notes 6: Our Arkansas in Three Gay Bars, by Tory and Greggor
A short tally of what we accomplished so far this summer on the Who Needs Gay Bars Summer Tour: 5500 miles driven 53 gay bars visited, including: 31 formal interviews with bar owners or managers, 21 of whom ran outpost bars more than an hour from the next gay bar 17 ethnographic visits without … More Back home, for now
“This is the least-gay gay bar,” claimed Matthew Heath-Fitzgerald, the owner of Fat Mary’s in McAlester, Oklahoma. The bar is in a former goat barn on a country road, next to the cemetery for the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, whose lights gleam across the fields. The other major employer is the Army ammunition plant at the … More Road Notes 5: The Least-Gay Gay Bar?
In my imagination, Texas has always been 100% Republican, 100% Christian, 100% cowboy. When I decided to come to Texas on this trip, I told myself: I can handle anything, as long as it’s for research. When I’m a researcher, I am detached—I’m not really there, I am an observer, and everything is interesting because … More Guest Post: Surpassing Tex-pectations by Tory Sparks
I knew it was a long shot that the Under-the-Hill Saloon in Natchez, Mississippi would be a gay bar. It’s been listed in Damron’s since at least 2007, but there’s nothing on the internet to corroborate: none of its effusive Yelp reviews mention anything remotely queer. The town is a regional tourist destination chock-full of … More Road Notes 4: Natchez on the Mississippi
