We’ve all heard a million times how gay hook up apps are killing gay bars because guys no longer have to cruise cocktail lounges to get laid. But a recent in-depth article by Hornet suggests it’s not actually that simple.
According to one estimate the number of LGBTQ bars and clubs in the U.S. dropped 12% between 2005 to 2011. Considering that the Stonewall uprising, the figurative start of the modern-day LGBTQ rights movement, began in a bar, it makes sense why queer people would worry about these spaces closing down.
But the decline of gay bars is due to a bunch of different causes.
For one, greater mainstream acceptance of queer people and same-sex couples have compelled LGBTQ folks to move away from gayborhoods and gay bar districts out to the suburbs. There, queer people can hang out with their accepting families, straight friends and co-workers rather than always needing to go to a “safe” gay space.
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Same-sex couples have started having kids, compelling them to spend more time at home or involved in schools rather than at local drag or gogo spots.
Bars used to serve as rallying points for political organizing for same-sex marriage and against anti-gay police brutality. But the political challenges currently facing the LGBTQ community — like the trans military ban and the lack of nationwide discrimination protections — haven’t compelled the predominantly white gay male clientele to rally at their watering holes.
Also, few gay bars offer anything for queer people who are sober or who aren’t into “loud music, dancing, drag queens, karaoke… go-go boys or late nights.” RuPaul’s Drag Race and YouTube have made it so that you don’t even have to go to gay bars for your drag fix.
In fact, Drag Race tours will often stop at a town’s non-gay venues, and Drag Race fans have become less interested in local performers, thinking that the popular reality competition has already shown them the best drag performers out there (even though that’s obviously not true).
Even when young people do go to gay bars, they often “pre-load” getting drunk or doing recreational drugs before they walk in, thus reducing the money invested in gay spaces.
Gay bars can seem particularly inhospitable to lesbian, bisexual and trans people as well as women, undocumented people, the poor, the disabled and people of color. Others have reported sexual harassment in gay spaces, making them feel unsafe despite their cruisey atmosphere.
Lastly, gay bars are just expensive to run, especially with the costs of permits, taxes, entertainment and raising property rates.
In short, it’s not just apps that are killing gay bars. But unless gay bar owners and community members find new ways to make them feel truly vital and welcoming to everyone, their decline is likely to continue.
Chrisk
Yes the regentrification of the gay ghettos is playing a part. Besides few can afford to live in most of them anyways.
The hook up apps have definitely stolen people from the bars. Let’s face it. The reason most went out to the bars in times past was to get laid. Well now that’s been taken off the table and now bars are struggling to survive. Shocking.
Scout
Gays haven’t needed gay bars to hook up since the internet came into being back in the late 90’s. Manhunt, Gay.com, and the gay chat rooms on AOL all played a part. The phone apps came much later.
As the article mentions, gays don’t need gay bars anymore to feel accepted and safe, and unless these bars can offer a better enticement to patronize them besides simply catering to gay people, they will continue to close.
BlaqueCatt
I don’t think there even are any gay bars anymore. Straights feel so comfortable now the bars are usually half women and straight couples. Most of the formerly gay bars in my city you’d never know by the clientele.
Tombear
In many ways this ALL inclusive society has ruined many gay bars. Most of us like a totally masculine environment to drink and party. Quite frankly, I don’t want to drink with women and be conscious of them when I am having a man-to-man discussion.
Bob LaBlah
In NYC, L.A, San Francisco, Washington D.C. the cost of living (rent, mortgages..) have taken a DEEP bit into how much is left over for discretionary spending. At an average cost of $15 per drink and cover charge a lot of people now rethink spending $50 just to sit around a bar and still go home alone. Many have now figured out that $50 is more than a bottle of good booze they can have in their own home and it’ll go farther than two or three drinks. I feel for the bar owners but reality is reality. Many of us too are struggling to make ends meet.
Heywood Jablowme
Part of the problem is, drag just isn’t THAT entertaining and it’s certainly been done to death over the course of fifty years. It used to have a “transgressive,” “political” angle to it but that’s been lost. In fact, nowadays it seems the most avid drag fans are the right-wing types (see the nearby story about the Florida sec’y of state, and let’s be thankful that Rudy Giuliani is no longer doing drag, lol). I get the impression that young gay men now are mystified by drag, don’t get why anyone would want to do it, and have a vague concern that it’s offensive somehow.
Doug
Thank you, I feel exactly the same way. Drag is no longer about satirizing rigid, ridiculous gender roles, it’s now about literally trying to look like a woman (and celebrating the look that women have been fighting against for the last three decades).
MuslimSlutBox
I never had any idea what drag was about and could never understand what it had to do with being queer. Still don’t.
uwsapphire
Drag has been part of the gay bar scene for decades way before rupauls drag race so whats your point. But I will say one of the reasons I don’t go out to the bars as much is because its always a circuit party in my area, if you’re not white muscled and doing coke in the bathroom its as if you’re not welcome thats more of a vague concern to worry about than a man in a dress.
Wolfie
Actually it is not more complicated than that. Stop over analyzing.
thisismylife247
Rent has always been expensive, cost of living has always been expensive yet we still went out to the clubs in the 80’s and 90’s what’s changed? And as a student in the 90’s I was broke yet every Friday and Saturday night I was at the clubs – why? – to either get laid or to find someone to date. That’s how it was done in the day. Now we have apps to do that for us. It’s the same reason why cruising has died.
Yes we can go out with our “accepting families, straight friends and co-workers” but have you ever tried to pick up someone in a straight bar? Awkward!
Vince
Some of the most popular gay bars/clubs in Weho are ones that cater to straights. The abbey being the worst. The owners will hire mostly straight bartenders and go-go boys. They won’t even look at you and charge outrages prices for watered down drinks. Yet it’s still the place to be on any given wknd night.
Bob LaBlah
What’s changed? If you do not make at least $20 per hour in most major cities nowadays (or at least $37k per year) you do not qualify to rent a one bedroom apartment and in NYC and San Francisco you might not even qualify for a studio apt in the most run down neglected sections of the city if you make less than that. You would have to have a roommate and that will only increase the amount of rent you pay because another person would be on the lease. There are sections of East Los Angeles that only rent to latinos because the landlords are charging them by the person to live in those apartments and houses. Most of those landlords will not rent to blacks nor whites regardless of income for that very reason. The cost of living on the east and west coasts is just outright criminal when you factor in staples such as food, public transportation cost, utilities, cable tv and god for bid lets not go into health insurance if your job offers it. Yes, in the 1980’s I too was broke but enjoyed the weekends out because the cost of living was no where near what it was now.
laurent7465
Actually the statement: “… few gay bars offer anything for queer people who are sober or who aren’t into “loud music, dancing, drag queens, karaoke… go-go boys or late nights.” covers exactly why I have never been into the bars, even when I was in my 20’s-30’s and living in SF.
Vince
Ha. It’s funny that i must be a situational alcoholic. When I’m there i drink to dull my senses which would have me out of there. Being there just feels unnatural these days. When I was in my 20s-30s i loved it though.
redzebra1
In Melbourne, Australia, you HAVE to go. Otherwise 90% of the people you want to speak with/be friends with/see drag queens you like perform, etc, won’t see/meetup with you outside the venues. So you’ve got no choice. Unless you’re like really popular and they hang out with you outside the venues, but that’s only some of them. The rest of use have no choice but to.
honchojock
You guys have some awesome bars. You go to catch your mates and just hang out. So much less attitude I find when going out to bars down under.
QJ201
The app argument doesn’t hold up since as hooking up online has now been going on for a generation.
In NYC… bars don’t close for lack of business, they close because “THE RENT’S TOO DAMN HIGH”
Rent just don’t go up when the business lease ends… they go WAY up. 50% if not doubled.
One of the oldest bars in Chelsea is still going because they own the building.
Bars and clubs outside the urban areas… that’s a completely different set of challenges.
Bob LaBlah
Boots and Saddle down on Christopher Street closed four years ago and publicly said the landlord was asking the equivalent of extortion to remain there. Forty years in one spot was a long time (The Spotlight out in Hollywood was open even longer but it too could not afford a criminal sized rent increase). The club moved over to 7th ave and was seized by the marshal’s office. No explanation was given but a sticker from the marshal’s office indicated all property within was the property of the landlord. I here from friends that sometimes on the weekends it seems almost as though The Hanger, one of three bars left on all of Christopher Street, has closed because there is never a line to get in or is it packed to capacity like it used to be. I remember the days when there was barely elbow room to move around.
piriblue
The Village has changed so much. I remember when Christopher St used to be packed on Weekends.
Rollerina rolling up and won the street. I am afraid that I don’t drink anymore and I don’t need to hook up just really need to meet new people. I’m living in a straight world and no Gay friends. The 70s were so good.
CityguyUSA
The Hanger was one of the first gay bars I went to in NYC while I was traveling back and forth for work. The very first gay bar if my life was La Cage, a strip joint a few blocks away from the US Capital where the took it all off but their socks. That was my first real gay bar my BF took me for my birthday, long since bullldozed.
For me gay bars were a way of life trying to find the elusive souls that wanted more than to feel me up in the bathroom or play a little short term tonsil hockey.
Here in south central PA we had easy acces to NYC, DC, Philly, Baltimore, Harrisburg ,Lancaster, Wilmington or York. Here in York we had 3 bars at any give time but I recall the changes coming in the 80’s. Seemed like bars were becoming more elusive there weren’t enough people to populate them all so a new bar came and an old one closed except for a few that were able to survive long term. Now there are no clubs or bars left here in York and the clubs we went to Like Kurts, Back Tracks, Lost and Found, Splash, Woody’s, the Hippo, the Allegro, the Ranch, the Mill, Orpheus, Stallions, La Cage, all gone but 2 Stallions and Woody’s (Philly and Harrisburg). Even the occassional trip to Pittsburgh but there’s where I saw the trouble coming. Clubs just didn’t last much more than a year or so regardless of Bryan Kinney’s version of Pittsburgh which was a life affirming show of just how the clubs were always were you went even if you started out at a house party you ended up in the clubs. Then along comes Will & Grace which kinda put a different spin on gay life as being more occassuional.
The partially changing demograohics of a dying industrial city weren’t helping as jobs were going overseas leaving Pittsburgh to reinvent itself as the college graduates were moving to other states. Let’s also not forget that health clubs opened and ripped boys didn’t drink liquor creating a break in the clientele that once was a community. The old desirables were being replaced with these processed twinks and gym bunnies that were more interested in steroid stacks and hair coloring than drinking. The inflow of drugs was crazy and the clubs couldn’t get in on the profit of illicit drugs.
Anyone remember New Hope? Kinda of an upscale resort area had one bear bar where the older guys left their doors hanging open and the Cartwheel where I became a weekend alcoholic from too little attention even though I had manged to update my 40 something body to be bold enough to take off my shirt. It eventually burnt down after I had a few short connections but it was never rebuilt. I always kinda figured it for arson.
Then I started hanging out at Shampoo in Philly which was only gay Fridays, well that right there was telling a story. Rarely did I see people connecting after a night of clubbing in fact I did better working the regional rail to and from work although straight friends made it kinda awkward at times.
No one I knew was hooking up on the internet it was more like having sex on the internet were you often didn’t get or want to see their faces but it was better than fantasizing alone although for me it was more of an early evening thing.
Then back to living in York where they gad just opened a new club that changed hands a few times. Started as the Velvet Rope, then something else and finally XS which was constantly harrassed by the police first for fighting after hours in the parking lot and then the guns started and that was the beginning of the end. The police shut them down and they never reopened. The only people I ever recall fighting in bars were the women although I usually didn’t hang out in the parking lot. There was a rash of places that got shut down as a result of gun violence and most weren’t bars or clubs although I think the alcohol was definately involved. Why had society become so hateful that we were now shooting each other?
Then the other local dive bar shut down I think due to an illness but none the less but it wasn’t just gaybars it was staight neighborhood bars that were noe coming up againsta government that was releasing it’s control on alcohol and filling thr grocery stores and convenience stores. That was a tough blow for local bars that once were able to charge $10 for a 6 pack nowgoing up agaibst orice discounters. Finally the stalwart of gay clubs, The Ranch had already seen the death of one owner and the other was just getting too old and wanted out. There were no buyers post 2008 so that was the end they didn’t even have a farewell just a sign on the door that said closed.
I still don’t know anyone that’s had much success online seems like most of them are still in the closet only showing a chest but demanding your face, some sites are better than others but the biggest sites IMHO are the amateur sex sites where you can crank one off watching a show and call it a night or have your own show. I think it’s about as good as it gets anymore.
Ultimately, I think all of these things came together since we were starting to open
those closet doors into a changing world were LGBTQ’S in relationships were starting to live in a very different world. The only good thing Obama did. Society has changed just like we’re starting to have vegeterians impacting the eating of meat. It’s A Brave New World full of more violence than ever.
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
It’s actually a shame because I couldn’t wait to go to my first gay bar I was at a straight bar with some friends and one of the guys that we knew said let’s go “goof on the Gays “at a Gay bar I never knew existed was like 2 minutes from where I lived needless to say the next night I was there by myself and began my journey making lifelong friends. I got a job bartending in a Gay bar throughout college made a good coin
We would go to Gay events we had Gay bowling leagues we used to go on ski trips that Community just doesn’t exist anymore it’s a shame for young gays the only be able to download an app and be able to hook up with meaningless one night stands
it’s true the rent has a made a big impact on these bars but the whole sense of community is just lost….
MarathonBoy
All LGB people should cheer the decline of the gay bar and the toxic subculture created by urban gay men in the mid-20th century. It may have been a necessary evil but now it’s an unnecessary evil. LGB people can enjoy better venues and better lives than before.
As for this essay, it’s so laughably dumb I don’t even know where to start, whether it’s claiming that bars have declined because they aren’t welcoming to poor transgenders, whether it’s illogically using “queer” and “LGBTQ” interchangeably, or whether it is claiming that we should all be concerned about gay bars because Stonewall was a gay bar. (You know, Dan Villarreal, Lincoln was shot in a theater, so maybe we should want all the theaters to close down.)
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
We’re you even alive in the heydays of Gay bars? They were far from a “toxic environment” they offered a refuge for Gays when there were basically no other options. As above I had great times, made lifelong friends at those safe Havens…..
Vince
@PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS. Marathon boy say’s he’s a student in his twenties. Of coarse he’s been on Queerty for at least a decade. Used to go by Jacob23 many years ago. Queerty would keep deleting his accounts over the trolling.
I recognize the troll for its rabid hate of older gay men/society and trans people. So yeah. Speaking of evil and toxic..
MarathonBoy
@PlaysWellWithOthers – I wasn’t around during WWII, but that doesn’t mean I can’t understand it and draw lessons from it. I am glad that you made some friends, but you can also make friends in the midst of a disaster. That doesn’t make it any less of a disaster. I do agree with you that decades ago, it was necessary to have a gay subculture and that even a toxic one was better than none. But that time has passed.
@Vince – Sorry, but I never said I am in my 20s, I have only been on this site for about a year or less, I have never had any account deleted and I absolutely do not hate older gay men. In fact, I abhor ageism. One of the horrible aspects of the gay subculture created in the 70s is that, by focusing on hookups and physical beauty, it inevitably is steeped in ageism. Anyway, you should probably consider how sad it is that YOU have been on this site for over a decade and are so invested in your online hate that you remember old commenters from 10 years ago and think they are still conspiring against you. Grow up and get healthy.
Vince
@MarathonBoy. You said you were a student at one time so i just assumed. Then there’s your rabid hate for trans and then there’s your obnoxious “were gonna make a new gay society. Get out of the way older evil gays”. etc…BS.
Btw. Nothing sad about it. I love this site. Apparently you do too because something keeps drawing you back.
Vince
@MarathonBoy. I know all the trolls on this site no matter how many times they change their names. You have your own brand of shithouse crazy.
david_warner
Can you back up any of the claims in this article with actual sources? I doubt it.
Giuseppe
Gay bars have become a hellish nightmare. Half filled with women, WHY?? The music is generally awful and a shirtless bartender is no longer unusual or interesting. But honestly, I think allowing women in has changed the dynamic 100%, there’s nothing that makes a gay bar different from a “straight” bar, it’s difficult to tell if the shrieking is coming from a girl or one of “their gays”, and the conversations I’ve overheard mostly concern ‘Drag Race’ and “like literally, the Housewives are like literally giving me life”. Blech. HARD pass.
calpoidog
Is this an editorial or based on facts cause I’m not seeing any facts for these conclusions.