Has the paradigm changed for gay bars?

[Virge]

Kenny I did a search for gay bars in Vancouver and found 8 listed. I'm not sure this is a thing that will effect canada as much as the US. BUT I did hear one of the old old gay bars in Montreal closed recently

[Bowyn Aerrow]

IDK... I tend to prefer to go to straight bars so I can do my serious business without dealing with guys trying to pick up on me... Really gay bars are not a place for serious drinking.

And the three 'gay' bars here are not good to judge any trends.

The original Gay bar (The Bull) is still here, been here for about 25 years.

The "Kids bar" which is aimed at the 20 something crowd and strives to be an exclusive big city club (good luck with that) is a couple three years old and has struggled to remain open since day one. Perhaps they should drop the cover charge and the velvet rope routine?

Then the Tiki-lounge, which is passed off as a 'gay bar' actually has many more straight people there than gay people.....

If I recall correctly my last two visits to the Bull I wasn't prevented from getting large amounts of alcohol into my body by guys stopping to ask me personal questions (like 'what's your name?') as often.... I can barely recall the dance floor and how crowded it was... Didn't stop on my way to the bar proper and my way to the door to look or count heads - I had business with Mr. Johnny Walker to attend too.


so there may be a trend going on......

[Buzzer]

As for social media as a means hooking up and dating... I had such bad experiences trying to fit in as "me" on them and not get constantly bombed by guys wanting to hook up or do cam sex that I QUIT it all and deleted my profiles. Contrast that with GS, I've been a member here for FOUR months and only ONE guy (a one-day only newbie) tried to hit on me about sex. That's why I'm here to stay.

If gay bars and social outlets are closing up on some kind of mass level across the country, and if the primary reason for it is the ease of things like apps, to me it would just be a sad commentary on how many American gay men conceive of being a gay man as just being about hooking up for sex. Because that's realistically all anyone is doing on the app circuit.

If it's happening in America and not so much in Australia or elsewhere, that would be the culprit, I think.

[Virge]

If gay bars and social outlets are closing up on some kind of mass level across the country, and if the primary reason for it is the ease of things like apps, to me it would just be a sad commentary on how many American gay men conceive of being a gay man as just being about hooking up for sex. Because that's realistically all anyone is doing on the app circuit.

If it's happening in America and not so much in Australia or elsewhere, that would be the culprit, I think.

Think about this buzzer >>> when was the last time you read a thread in GS like this....

[COLOR="Blue"]Title : I'm so confused. I need advice please.

Last night I walked to a quiet little gay bar near my house and this guy came in and sat almost beside me and started talking..... he bought me drink an laughed at everything I said. His eyes had twinkles in them like he was staring at christmas lights. It was raining when I was ready to leave so he gave me a ride. We sat in the driveway and talked an hour. We kissed. Wow! what a kiss. He didn't have a pen in the car for me to write down my number for him. He told me not to bother and laughed about it real weird. When I got up this morning there was a basket of fruit and a bottle of wine on my doorstep. There was a card but it wasn't signed. All that was in it was a phone number. Should I call? What is it's not from him? Who else could it be from? I'm so confused!!!!!![/COLOR]

Just think about the last time you heard or read something like that.

[Aike]

My wild guess is that bars are simply closing down because of the state of the economy, which hasn't been so great since 2007...

[Borg69]

]Back in my younger days of bar and club life in the 80's and 90's, you could travel to any large city in this country on any day of the week and find a crowded bar and if it was the weekend, several that were packed and happening. During the week you can still do that in the very largest cities, but even there clubhopping from club to club is nothing like it was back in the day. Gay after hours, which was huge in the 90's, is difficult to find today. Times have changed. [/B]Of course the internet is part of it, but it is also a different world today. During the summer I live in suburban Detroit and within walking distance of my home is a lounge-type gay bar that consistently fills up with people more than any gay nightclub in the Detroit area. There is also a gay coffee shop in the area that transformed itself from being mostly just a gay bookstore, another kind of business suffering because of the internet. The coffee shop, that sells no alcohol, has drag queen shows on the weekend nights and is so busy you have to make reservations to get in. Although clubs can pack a lot of people in, lounges and coffee shops lend themselves to being more social. I'm glad there are more opportunities for gay people to meet others today, I just wish it wasn't the web replacing clubs because it is hard to believe that something came along that seems to have a poorer success rate in people going on a date and getting in a relationship than gay clubs had, but that is exactly what seems to be happening. I hear so many horror stories from single friends and online forums of being stood up and guys that just cut off communication with no explanation. I think the web is the means of communication that often makes it too easy to chicken out and not overcome the anxiety that comes with dating and meeting in real life.

This was pretty much my experience too... but I think also they've cracked down on drunk driving way more and stopped allowing smoking in bars, which IMO helped to contribute to bars being less desirable along with internet/apps.

I also think that back in the day less people were out of the closet and gay bars were private places where one could go in "public" yet still be hidden. Now days we don't have to hide in seedy, dark, back alley dives.

[50Plus]

Society has changed and we are all older.

The back in the day stories are just that - stories of our history.

[East]

The bar/nightclub I worked in for 20 years closed it's doors earlier this year. It was one of the oldest gay clubs in the San Francisco Bay Area having been gay since the 1960s.

I did not go to the closing party....

I started in 1978 and from 1978-1984 it was a line down the street to get it a lot of times..same with the big dance clubs I went to when I went out to dance (except I rarely had to wait in line..I got whisked in a lot by one of the bouncers )

Then there was AIDS..starting in 1981 and solid thru maybe 1996 it took away most of my generation and the one before and behind mine.......

I think the people changed a lot right before I left which was one of the reasons I left. They weren't nearly as friendly as the people before them and they would ask me questions like "How much money does that guy make?"...or "What kind of car does he drive?" ...or "Where does he work?"....those were all VERY NEW QUESTIONS and I hated them

Very materialistic...and I wasn't into it. They were also a lot more judgmental and snotty in general than the guys before them...not wanting to converse with anyone unless they met some silly standards they had set in their minds.....

Uh...OK...that was it for me. It was depressing. They were depressing. I was done....

I hear that the ones that closed limped their way to the finish line.....

Those guys in the late 90s began the descent. They brought alot of heteronormative standards with them and were quite the oppressive little fucks. I went to two others for a night with friends since the day I quit....it has been years now since I have been in one....not in this century at all. I will probably never go in another one.

[Steve]

I just want to be able to go to gay bars, dance, socialize, make friends and have fun. That's it. I'm like you about preferring meeting & socializing in peson instead of on the internet...

...All you guys in GS are more a part of my life than all the rest of the gays I know within 350 miles.

I hear you. As a young man dancing and socializing with people was my favorite thing in the world to do. You could dance to the latest songs, go wild on lighted dance floors with laser lights and fog machines to retro golden oldies from the past like Vickie Sue Robinson's Turn the Beat Around, or a Macho Man from the Village People. Hell, if it weren't for bars I never would have met Mark.

And yes, sad as it is, the effects social phobia have given me more friends at GS than I've had in a decade.

...During the summer I live in suburban Detroit and within walking distance of my home is a lounge-type gay bar that consistently fills up with people more than any gay nightclub in the Detroit area.

You snowbird (I envy the hell out of you)! Ditto your post IceBlink. So many bars are just gone from Michigan. Wasn't Gigi's a huge bar back then? What about the Tangerine Ballroom in Ann Arbor? Tramps is gone from Lansing. I'm not sure Paradise is still around either. My brother used to DJ at a bar in Saginaw called Tallulah's, but that is as dead as the dinosaurs too.

I think it happened sometime in the mid to late 80's with the advent of the gay plague. Bookstores and bath houses were targeted and closed. Gay people, especially the under 21 age set (before the drinking age went from 18 to 21 that is), began to complain that the only places we had to meet were Pride parades and bars. And even Iceblink will tell you, there were way too many regulars at bars, developing drinking addictions just to be among gay people. The clamor for alternate gay meeting places began.

Now with the advent of internet quick cruising, message boards with members spread hell, west, and crooked, and App's like Grindr, many of those bars didn't have the clientele to stay open. Selling alcohol and cigs were a main source of income. The drinks cost you an arm and a breast, and the well liquor was a watered down travesty, but at least you could get together with other gay people and joke, dance, drink, and have fun.

Increasingly accessible to people of many age groups, "gay friendly" cafe's started to make inroads. Cafe's that could sell food and now insanely popular exotic coffee. a more expensive source of income, could book bands, independent artists, sponsor drag shows, and hire gay comedians. They could draw a larger crowd, make more, money, and keep a captive audience with diverse entertainment. The longer the crowd stayed for every day of the week shows, the more money they made off sales.

The internet is a great and terrible thing. Same with smart phones. Designed to bring the world together, they have also pushed us all apart. How many times at Christmas and Thanksgiving have you looked at the room only to find most people buried in their phones or laptops? Frankly in this day and age I'd be a little frightened about arranging a hook up online. Jeffrey Dahmer types still exist.

Think about this buzzer >>> when was the last time you read a thread in GS like this....

[COLOR="Blue"]Title : I'm so confused. I need advice please.

Last night I walked to a quiet little gay bar near my house and this guy came in and sat almost beside me and started talking..... he bought me drink an laughed at everything I said. His eyes had twinkles in them like he was staring at christmas lights. It was raining when I was ready to leave so he gave me a ride. We sat in the driveway and talked an hour. We kissed. Wow! what a kiss. He didn't have a pen in the car for me to write down my number for him. He told me not to bother and laughed about it real weird. When I got up this morning there was a basket of fruit and a bottle of wine on my doorstep. There was a card but it wasn't signed. All that was in it was a phone number. Should I call? What is it's not from him? Who else could it be from? I'm so confused!!!!!![/COLOR]

Just think about the last time you heard or read something like that.

Haven't read anything like that in a very long time. Maybe our friends in the UK have read posts like that, but then pubs are sort of a way of life over there. I used to moderate at another site whose members were located predominately in the UK and it was common to hear about nights at a pub. Maybe that's changed there as well.

Society has changed and we are all older.

The back in the day stories are just that - stories of our history.

Bite your tongue. Off!


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I wish I had a list of bars for your travels Virge, but I'm out of the loop. My advice is to try and locate the bars you can find open. Chances are they aren't the "specialty" bars of the days of old. Most of the bars that are left are either dance clubs or cruising spots. If no bar is available, try to find a friend who will open his home to you. It's cheaper to buy a fifth of booze, drink at home, reminisce about the past, and listen to music you like rather than a DJ who plays track after track of Emo Ecstasy music anyway. Last, check out the cafe scene. It isn't the same vibe, but I guess we have to try to embrace our brave new world and smile for the past.

[Buzzer]

I think the people changed a lot right before I left which was one of the reasons I left. They weren't nearly as friendly as the people before them and they would ask me questions like "How much money does that guy make?"...or "What kind of car does he drive?" ...or "Where does he work?"....those were all VERY NEW QUESTIONS and I hated them

Very materialistic...and I wasn't into it. They were also a lot more judgmental and snotty in general

I believe you reached the same conclusion at the bottom of your post, but this sounds to me like all that happened was that gay dating began to more closely resemble straight dating.

I'd honestly have to put this one down as an "American thing" too... probably even going above what's a homo or hetero norm. Things like how, today, parents do not back up teachers at all and frequently wind up in open conflicts with them are just, imo, symptoms of a whole culture that embraces the idea that "your income = your value." I've literally heard parents of school-age children say things, including at my work, like "What do they know anyway, if they were so smart they'd be doing a job that makes real money and not teaching." "You know what they say about those who can't do, they teach."