Investors are required to open a bar in expensive, gentrified coastal cities. If these temporary closure orders become permanent business failures, bars are unlikely to reopen quickly. As one gay bar owner told The Daily Beast, “The vast majority of bars don’t operate with margins to be able to sustain themselves for two weeks, four weeks or eight weeks without cash flow.” Because these bars in smaller cities are often the only LGBTQ address for multi-county regions, their temporary closure leaves already-isolated LGBTQ people even more isolated than ever.
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Bars like Milwaukee’s This is It! have taken to GoFundMe to plead for donations.īut shuttered gay bars outside of big cities don’t have the resources - nor the national reach - to move content online or raise money. In bigger cities, supporters have established relief funds for the LGBT nightlife workers sidelined by COVID-19 closures. Some states, like New York and Ohio, have relaxed rules to allow carryout liquor sales, giving some bars a revenue stream. Partial relief comes in other forms, too. Still, it’s something, and for LGBT people with disabilities, these online offerings are often more accessible than the physical places. These shows, however, represent a mere fraction of the bars’ regular weekly schedules, and virtual tip jars don’t bring in the same cash as the regular live shows did. Gay bars like Stud have moved events online for their housebound patrons. In greater Los Angeles, Latino nightclubs Club Cobra and Club Chico began broadcasting go-go dancers and drag queens on OnlyFans. San Francisco’s Stud moved its weekly “Drag Alive!” to the live-streaming network Twitch. Chicago’s Sidetrack rushed to produce new episodes of its drag talk show, “ IMHO Show,” for YouTube. New York City’s Marie’s Crisis began broadcasting show tune sing-alongs on Facebook. Some well-known establishments from big cities have responded to the coronavirus closures by moving their programming online. When one of them closes, whether it’s due to the coronavirus or an owner’s retirement, entire regions are left without an LGBT community hub. In many smaller municipalities – from McAlester, Oklahoma, to Lima, Ohio, to Dothan, Alabama – the local gay bar is the only public place that caters to an LGBT crowd. They’re also fundraising powerhouses and regularly host events for queer cancer survivors, gender affirmation surgeries or burial fees.īig cities have many gay bars and LGBT organizations, but most places only have one or two gay bars. They’re the training ground of America’s Next Drag Superstars, and the place some parents call for advice about their child’s coming out. Going to a gay bar is still a rite of passage for every LGBT person’s coming out.Ī wellspring of modern LGBT politics and social life, they’re still hubs for political organizing. Today, they are often the only place where they regularly do. They were once the only places where LGBT people could gather in public. The mainstreaming of LGBT people is a positive sign of progress, but something is lost when gay bars close. And in the nation’s interior, economic and population declines have eroded patron bases. Similarly, bars serving working-class and poor LGBTQ people are more likely to be pushed out by gentrification than bars that serve middle-class and white gay men. Bars serving women and people of color, along with those that cater to men interested in fetishes, kink and BDSM, faced closure rates of over 50% between 20. Not all gay bars face equal risks of closure, however.
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And in coastal cities, gentrification is blamed for pushing gay bars out of the neighborhoods they helped make hip. The Great Recession also hammered bars and full-service restaurants, pushing some vulnerable establishments to the edge. “Every bar is a gay bar.” In addition, the debut of geolocating smartphone dating and hookup apps like Grindr also heralded an era where cruising for sex – one of bars’ primary offerings – could be conducted anywhere, anytime. “I go wherever I want with my friends,” one former employee of a gay bar told Talking Points Memo in 2015. In this era of increasing LGBT acceptance, there’s growing competition from straight establishments.