Tag: nightlife

January 28, 2023

Gay bar writings

Since 2015 I have been researching and writing on the role of gay bars in urban processes including gentrification, LGBTQ+ community development, and social inequality. This forms the basis of my forthcoming book with Redwood Press, Who Needs Gay Bars? It is based on interviews with more than 120 gay bar owners and managers, site […]
November 27, 2022

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 […]
June 1, 2022

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 […]
April 29, 2022

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 […]
April 13, 2022

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 […]
July 13, 2021

Article: Anticipated Stigma and Self-Racialization: From Alcohol Flush Reaction to Panethnic Asian Glow.

Published with Alexandra Hamada OC ‘13, Karl Orozco OC ‘13, and Han Guel Jung OC ‘14 in Deviant Behavior. These former students formulated the research question and executed the research while taking my SOCI 428: Alcohol and Culture seminar; I gave an assist in the framing and writeup. Although the biomedical processes of the alcohol […]
April 29, 2021

Teaching with Disco Déjeuner

To support my nightlife class during the COVID-19 pandemic, Assistant Professor of Dance Al Evangelista and I hosted a midday speaker series Disco Déjeuner: Lunchtime Conversations on the Future of Nightlife. Speakers included multi-hyphenate artists, activists, academics, and entrepreneurs discussing the way forward. A list of the speakers and more information can be found here.
March 15, 2021

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 […]
December 25, 2016

A Christmas Wreath for the Phoenix Cabaret

Two sides of the Phoenix cabaret in 2012 via Google Streetview, wreath visible above main door, R. For 5 years after it closed in 2011, a wreath adorned what used to be The Phoenix Cabaret and Embers Disco in Birmingham, Alabama. Don’t ask why I was looking up closed gay bars in a […]
August 5, 2016

Lesbian bar closures, Lost Womyn’s Space

I’ve been reading the blog Lost Womyn’s Space for a while now, but it’s proving invaluable to track what the author ruefully calls “the Great Lesbian Bar Die Off.” You can read about my interest in lesbian bars here. It’s impossible to contact the author: the blog is anonymous, there’s no “About” section, and comments […]