I hope not, cause i LOVE drag queen bingo!
What’s this about?
I have heard a few words of complaint about this. A town might have 40 straight bars, and only one or two gay bars.
Then the few gay places are swarmed with straight women ‘who just want to dance without being groped’, then the straight guys who learn where those women are.
Quickly it’s not really much of a gay bar anymore. It is a bit disrespectful, IMO.
pdts
I kinda figured. That phrase struck me as pretty interesting as I had never heard that type of behavior expressed with that particular word before.
Please help a clueless, Paki, why do you need gay bars in the first place?
Paki?
Here’s one answer of about a hundred possible ones.
It’s an environment where one can hang out and meet other gay people, and can hit on another guy without worrying that you’re going to get beaten up by some easily-offended hetero.
pdts
As long as people are respectful and don’t come in packs, I don’t mind. I have known straight women to freak out when chatted up by a lesbian in a gay bar. Those are generally the faghags who think hanging out with their exotic male gay friends is sooo cool, but think lesbianism is icky. Those girls can get lost.
What pisses me off when Im in a gay bar is the hordes of Abe Lincoln lookalikes.
What gives?
You sure weren’t kidding about being clueless.
To teach the other bars how to dress.
Did you really just call yourself a Paki?
Because he’s a superstar. At the gay bar.
Straight dude here. I lived around the corner from a Hamburger Mary’s for like five years. It was the closest bar within reasonable stumbling distance, and they had an awesome brunch, so it became my watering hole. I made a handful of good friends there (of the “you can crash on my couch” variety) that I still keep in touch with. I never got the impression that I was unwelcome.
I only got hit on once - some younger dude asked me if he could suck me off in the bathroom. When I declined, he asked if he could at least watch me take a leak. Sure, whatever dude.
I think back in the day, the Coors family supported a lot of anti-gay causes and discriminated against gay employees (they also helped found the Heritage Foundation, an organization not exactly known for embracing gay rights). This was sort of touched on in the movie “Milk.”
Oh god is this going to sound bitchy? I hope this isn’t going to sound bitchy.
I understand why gay people would become annoyed with people in a bar but generally wouldn’t it be for the same reasons that anyone would become annoyed with people in a bar. Either they are being too loud or spilling drinks or taking forever in line or whatever. So other than the annoying people who would be annoying no matter where they went, why would gay people have a problem? If they don’t want to be told they can’t go somewhere or do something because they are gay then why would they use a double standard and say that I can’t go somewhere or do something because I’m straight? Seems a little odd to me.
I went to a Couchsurfer Happy Hour last night. The venue changes each month and this month we were at Nellie’s which is a gay sports bar. Awesome. We have used this venue before and it is one of my favorite bars so far in the area due the chill vibe, great drink prices, and quality of the drinks. I didn’t really feel any hostility from anyone. We weren’t the only group that was using the place for our event.
Also to comment on the beer topic. This bar had it’s own beer called Nellie’s. Tastes a lot like Miller with a hint of a hefeweizen. It’s good for a summer evening outside.
I believe that AK84 actually lives in Pakistan. I’ve never heard a Pakistani refer to him-or-herself as a “Paki”, but I’m sure that it’s like how black people are allowed to use “nigger”.
The stovepipe hat has obvious symbolism.
Let me take a stab at this. Because of the numbers, more or less everywhere else is a ‘straight bar’. You can walk into a bar, as a straight girl, and if it’s not a gay bar, you know there’s a very high likelihood that any random guy you talk to might theoretically be interested in you. He might be married, or find you ugly, or whatever… but he’s probably not gay. Straight people don’t need ‘straight bars’ for this, generally.
Gay bars allow gay people to recreate this. If a gay bar is not infested with straight people, then I can walk up to someone and hit on them, knowing there’s a pretty good chance they might be interested in me. But with lots of straight people there, that dynamic changes. I don’t want to spend half an hour chatting someone up just to find out that they’re straight, anymore than you want to spend half an hour chatting someone up just to find they’re married.
So yes, it is a bit of a double-standard. But because the outside world is so overwhelmingly straight, and because there’s still an awful lot of anti-gay prejudice and violence out there, I think it’s a justifiable one.
pdts
Straight folk grabbing a burger at Hamburger Mary’s was pretty typical - although if they knew what was good for them, they’d cross the street and eat the Thai food at Manora’s - still there and still the best!
To “throw shade” is to have an attitude/be bitchy, particularly directed at a specific person. It comes from drag. An alternative form is “to be shady,” as in “I ain’t tryin’ to be shady, but girl, your wig and makeup look a hot mess.”
See also the classic RuPaul line: “Don’t be throwin’ no shade / I just wanna get paid.”
There’s a big difference between large cities and small cities on this as well. Big cities tend to have a variety of gay bars: one caters to gay male sports fans, older gays, some cater to lesbians, some are like neighborhood pubs and some have huge dance floors, etc… Atlanta actually had a country bar for queer rednecks for a while (though I think it’s changed into something else now).
Smaller cities, college towns and I suppose larger cities without major openly gay population tend to have one or maybe two bars and they’re an “All Souls Church” or Gay Buffet: lesbian, gay, younger, older, and others. A couple of these I’ve been to probably couldn’t have stayed in business without the straight customers.
I rarely go to gay bars at all and never alone because I H8 HATE H-A-T-E loud music- I don’t like having to shout just to be heard ordering my drink- and because I live in a city that currently has one gay bar and never has two for more than a few weeks (there can be only one) it’s always loud. Plus, even though I’m a smoker the cigarette smoke drives me nuts; I don’t smoke in my house even and there’s usually a thick haze inside. I don’t know how non-smokers stand it. (Again, this is where I live: in larger cities I’m sure there are non-smoking gay bars.)
As others have mentioned, it depends on the bar and it depends on the straights. Back in the day, the bar I frequented was an exclusively male leather bar with a certain amount of action taking place. There was a bouncer at the door who sized up everyone who wanted in. No women and no straights, except for special events.