Gay Bar: Why We Went Out

by Jeremy Atherton Lin Narrated by Jeremy Atherton Lin

Overview

As gay bars continue to close at an alarming rate, a writer looks back to find out what's being lost in this indispensable, intimate, and stylish celebration of history.

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In the era of Grindr and same-sex marriage, gay bars are closing down at an alarming rate. What, then, was the gay bar? Set between Los Angeles, San Francisco, and London, Gay Bar takes us on a time-traveling, transatlantic bar hop through pulsing nightclubs, after-work dives, hardcore leather bars, gay cafes, and saunas, asking what these places meant to their original clientele, what they meant to the author as a younger man, and what they mean now.

In prose as exuberant as a hit of poppers and as dazzling as a disco ball, Atherton Lin conjures the strobing lights and the throbbing music, the smell and taste of tangles of male bodies, the rough and tender anonymous encounters, the costumes and categories--twink, top, masc, queen, tweaker, tourist, voyeur, exhibitionist--all the while tracking the protean aesthetics of masculinity and gayness. Along the way, he invites us to go beyond the simplified gay bar liberation mythology of Stonewall and enter the many other battlefields in the war to carve out space in which to exist, express, and love as a gay man.

Elegiac, sexy, and sparkling with wry wit, Gay Bar is at once a serious critical inquiry into how we construct ourselves through the spaces we inhabit and an epic night out to remember.

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Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

A kinetic bar crawl through space and time and subculture. . . . Gay Bar  feels like a love letter, and of the realest sort — one that expresses devotion through piercing, sustained attention, that takes delight in negotiating.”
 —BUZZFEED

“[A] diamond of a book; its milky imperfections streak through the text like a hot load shot across a greedy, gorgeous face…Gay Bar elides categories, determined to queer gender and genre alike, smearing even this commonplace with a sweaty, gropey touch…Atherton Lin’s thick description of this mélange works the magic of a Proustian madeleine. This is, in part, because he writes the way gay culture looks and feels: he is both evasive and effervescent…But Atherton Lin is after something more: the glam camp of undiluted faggotry. This is writing as drag, and it aims at times to be just as tawdry and exhibitionist.”
 —THE BAFFLER

“With his incisive, kinetic prose, Atherton Lin fuses together memoir, travelogue and history lessons, turning a lifetime of bar hopping into a richly queer palimpsest… Right now, when most bars are closed, Atherton Lin is the friend you cannot wait to have sitting on the barstool next to you when they reopen. Brilliant, intelligent and witty, Gay Bar will intoxicate you until they do.”—WINNIPEG FREE PRESS

“A refreshing glimpse into the sweaty glory of the humble queer haven we’ve missed in the last year…If you’re looking for an honest and visceral reading experience, Gay Bar really is the book for you.” 
 —GAY TIMES

“Atherton Lin takes us on a journey threaded by his own heady experiences, reflecting with unbridled sexual honesty on the role various gay bars played. Always unvarnished – appropriately salacious – the gay ‘scenes’ of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and London come to life, rich with smell, taste, tribalism, and always a frisson of sexual tension…This is exceptional writing.”
 —FINANCIAL TIMES

“Filled with well-researched history, entertaining personal anecdotes, and a healthy dose of queer theory…a well-timed reminder of who we become when we’re surrounded by our own people.”
 —QUEERTY (Best Holiday Reads)

“I’m a year late, but Jeremy Atherton Lin’s GAY BAR was a knockout: a responsible history of places that at the time aspired to nothing more than a few hours of lurid fun and total oblivion. God knows how he remembered any of it.”—Philip Hensher, THE SPECTATOR

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2020-11-27
A writer’s intimate trans-Atlantic history of gay bars.

In his first book, Lin examines queer history through the lens of what he sees as a vanishing institution: the gay bar, which, in recent years, has been “under threat not so much by police, but a juncture of economic factors like unchecked prop­erty speculation and an upsurge in stay-at-home gays.” With raw, voyeuristically explicit detail, the author escorts readers through the crowded, smoky gay bars of London before turning to erotic adventures in California, where he came of age in the early 1990s. Lin chronicles his experiences with his husband, “Famous,” and their barhopping days cruising together for sex, but there’s a lot more here than just sex in dark corners. Lin vividly describes the evolution of gay hot spots in London, including details on a two-mile viaduct channeling through the city, which has housed “raunchy clubs” and even “a small theater [that put] on gay plays.” He also looks at the ever evolving nature of queer life in San Francisco and vividly recalls his memorable early experiences there. “The streets,” he writes, “were like advent calendars: I wanted to open each door and reveal a bisexual hippie, leather daddy, elegant transvestite, friendly bull dyke wielding tat­too gun, sleazy yogi, stoned poet, skateboarder too lazy to resist my advances. I wanted to eat it all up.” Lin grounds his randy travels with sobering ruminations on the deleterious effects of lingering prejudice, gentrification, cultural assimilation, and homonormativity. Though the narrative occasionally darts around too frenetically—it would have benefitted from a tighter organizational structure—the author remains locked in on his subject, creating a consistently engrossing story. As last call descends on many iconic gay bars, Lin’s unfettered reminiscence and sharp wit will resonate especially with older readers, who will enjoy the sweet nostalgia embedded in this entertaining history. “Gay bars are not about arriving,” he writes. “The best ones were always a departure.”

A vibrant and wistful report on a bygone era in gay culture.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940177324548
Publisher:	Hachette Audio
Publication date:	02/09/2021
Edition description:	Unabridged

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