There is a Brass Rail in Greenville, TX that is not a gay bar.
We DO have one of the ‘Mining Company’ variations in Dallas, The Throckmorton Mining Company.
There’s a bar around here called the Loading Zone.
(searches for a newish copy of HX, NYC’s premiere gay bar rag)
Okay, let’s play Linnaeus here and categorize our Bar Names for Boy Nellies:
The Butch Names: Rawhide, the Eagle (RIP), the Spike (RIP), the Manhole (RIP), Boots & Saddle, the Boiler Room, Montana Saloon, The Break (RIP), the Works, Hangar (although Flight 151 is straight), the Dugout, the Lure
The Pathetic Sex Pun Names: Dick’s Bar, the Cock (with neon light of rooster), the Fat Cock (same owners), Tool Box, Splash
The Gay Unicorns-and-Rainbows-and-Crystals-and-Pride Barfabilia Names: Stonewall (different location and owners from original), Oscar Wilde, Pegasus
The Come-On-Girls-We-All-Know-This-One! Names: Marie’s Crisis, Stella’s, Don’t Tell Mama, Brandy’s Piano Bar, Julie’s Piano Bar, Eighty-Eights (RIP)
The What-Us-Gay? Names: Townhouse, Regents, Ty’s, Julius’
Finally, we have the Modern, Post-Gay names: Two Potato, Chase, g (that’s right, just the single, lower-case letter), Liquids, B Bar/Beige, Hannah’s Lava Lounge, hell, Wonder Bar, Barracuda, Starlight 167, Crow Bar (RIP), Pyramid, Phoenix, Posh, Pieces, Blu, Bar d’O, Dusk, The Web, View, xl, Cake (RIP). Most of the newest places are single-syllable (Blu, Chase, g, View, Posh, Beige, hell, Dusk).
Don’t forget the Named-After-A-Character-In-Beaches category, as in Edinburgh’s very own CC Blooms. (Less of a club, more of a broom cupboard with music.)
I strongly suspect that Planet Out, right next door to CC’s, may also have been frequented by a high proportion of homosexuals.
>There’s a bar in SF called “The Glory Hole”? News to me, and I’ve been here since before VCR’s. Do you mean “The Hole In The Wall”, which bills itself as a nasty little biker bar? And “All American Boy” is an overpriced little clothing store on Castro street. Maybe they serve drinks now!
It was many years ago; perhaps I was misremembering.
I do remember hearing about a bar called Glory Hole that had to change its name to GH; might not have been in SF though.
{sigh} What a fun place that was.
Been to Hell, g, Splash - too crowded, too noisy. Is Mickey’s still around?
Mmmm… Asian boy bar…
Esprix
Gaudy said:
Just wanted to point out that while the sign and name do certainly sound campy enough to be a gay bar, or at least not your basic gaming parlor, this is not in the heart of Boystown. It is however right in the meaty part of the sex shop/piercing studio/tattoo parlor/campy clothes and decor stores region of the Northside. I won’t argue that gay neighborhoods don’t tend to have alot of these stores, and North Halsted as a matter of fact is loaded with them, but this particular area is about 4 blocks from the stereotypical boystown. But then of course, this whole “gay neighborhood” thing isn’t an exact science.
A couple of Chicago ones that Gaudy left off the list. Girlbar - Duh; Cocktail - Double Duh; The Ram - see the trend here?; As well as Spin and Berlin - these two aren’t real obvious, nor are they completely gay; Finally Roscoe’s - its the rolling stereotype of everything gay, campy, flamboyant and taking itself seriously all the while, not straight friendly, and while Roscoe seems to be a gay name (just ask Homer) its on Roscoe St. and presumably named as such.