Gay Bar

Does gay still have a place? Strobing lights and dark rooms, drag queens on counters, first kisses, last call; the gay bar has long been a place of solidarity and sexual expression. Now they are closing, a cultural demolition that has Jeremy Atherton Lin wondering: Could this spell the end of gay identity as we know it? In prose as exuberant as a hit of poppers and dazzling as a disco ball, the author embarks on a transatlantic tour of the hangouts that marked his life, with each club, pub and dive revealing itself to be a palimpsest of queer history. Gay Bar time travels from Hollywood nights in the 1970s, to chichi bars in the wake of AIDS, to today’s fluid queer spaces. Atherton Lin charts police raids and riots, posing and passing out – and a chance encounter one restless night that would change his life forever. The journey that emerges is a stylish and nuanced inquiry into the link between place and identity, inviting us to go beyond Stonewall and enter the underground. Sparkling with wry wit, Gay Bar is at once a serious critical inquiry, a love story and an epic night out to remember.