GRINDR KILLED THE GAY BAR

In the book Gay Bar: Why We Went Out (Back Bay Books, 2021), author Jeremy Atherton Lin says, “Perhaps the bars were only ever meant to be a transitional phase.”

 

Certainly, that seems to be how it has turned out. The same seems to be the case with gay neighborhoods. Vancouver’s Davie Street and the slightly broader West End aren’t nearly as obviously gay as they were when I moved to the area three decades ago. 

 

Part of the evolution has been on account of queer people feeling more accepted in greater society—although current anti-trans actions are huge setbacks. As the “community” has dispersed, gay bars have a significantly smaller walk-in clientele. Uber provides another responsible option for a night out but it comes at a cost as well. With gayborhoods less apparent, gay bars were bound to take a hit in terms of business. Grinder, however, has gay bars on life support. 

 

Yes, as Lin suggests, we’ve been transitioning away from the bars.

 

For me, I have not been a regular gay bar patron since about 1998. I got in a relationship and both of us considered it a relief to no longer have to go to the bars, getting looked at or, more commonly, being ignored. I saw no reason to be in a cruisy bar when I had a partner. We got dogs and a house (beyond the gayborhood). The focus changed. Domesticity felt so much better than that depressing walk home from a gay bar far too many nights.

 

When I was single again in 2004, I didn’t run back to the bars. Instead, I ran farther. I bought a home for myself and the dogs on B.C.’s Sunshine Coast, a ferry ride away from Vancouver. Any gay connections all but ended. Gaydar did not extend that far.

 

I first saw for myself the decline in gay bars during the summer of 2014 when I spent a month at an Airbnb in West Hollywood. I went out one night with my former Santa Monica roommate and his husband, first grabbing a drink at The Palm in Beverly Hills, then heading to a gay bar, The Abbey, in WeHo. 

 

As I sipped my Tom Collins—too much ice, as always—I looked around to see if anyone was looking my way. It was a clearer than ever no. Having been out of the scene for so long, the difference in gay bar culture in sixteen years was striking. The fact no one was checking me out was same old, same old. But no one was checking out anyone. The people who weren’t talking to friends had their heads down, all of them looking at the palm of their hand—or, more specifically, the phone in the palm of their hand. Even my monogamous(?) married couple friends would look down at their phones. 

 

“What is going on?” I asked as the naïve, out-of-touch person I was. 

 

But my friends were preoccupied. Someone was 250 feet away. Someone else, 300.

 

When they finally explained that they were identifying people as gay with the Grindr app, I thought I was stating the obvious: “But it’s a gay bar.” Why should anyone need a phone to do the communicating? We were all right there. (Some of us without the dang app.) 

 

In time, the reverse of what I thought would happen occurred. People didn’t quit Grindr when they were in gay bars; rather, they quit gay bars. Who needed them when you could Grind at home… or in a restaurant… or wherever the hell you were at any given moment. No more faulty gaydar. The gays in your area—the ones who had the sense to download Grindr—could be tracked based on distance and private photos. Hot… hotter… HOTTER! 

 

It all left me cold.

 

When Jeremy Atherton Lin wrote, “Perhaps the bars were only ever meant to be a transitional phase,” I’d hoped the next phase might be something else. We’d come out of dark spaces with booze spilled on the floors. We could socialize in the open. Queer Meetups, maybe. Connecting based on common (non-sexual) interests. Zoom chat rooms perhaps—a singles social. Better yet, speed dating at the library. Maybe with the decline of bars, alcohol would be less of a problem in the community and we’d meet like other people do at park potlucks, softball games, arts performances. We’d remember each other’s names. We’d have conversations. We’d connect… or realize we didn’t. Real experiences IRL.

 

Alas, no. Like the gay bar, I too have been phased out. Person-to-person meet-and-greets? WHAT?! Too old-fashioned. 

 

Everything now fits in the palm of one’s hand. Our phones own us. Is this progress?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FLAG FLAPS

It’s June again. Pride month. Thirty days to celebrate but also to irk certain people. I’m not talking about the obvious homophobes. I think they’re irked year-round. A decade after the right for queers to marry was affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court, there are plenty who grumble amongst their group while sampling cheddar at Cracker Barrel, eating sandwiches at Chick-fil-A or letting their eyes wander at Hooters. Instead, I’m thinking about people in our own ”community” who can’t process—or even actively reject—all the progress in terms of queer culture this century.

 

I’d like to think they’re not selectively homophobic; rather, they’re stuck. They like and accept what they were familiar with during their twenties and thirties. More recent changes in queer culture are too wonky for them. They don’t understand how evolution continues without them on board. This is old-person thinking. Sometimes it can feel challenging to keep up with the times. 

 

I recently finished reading Jeremy Atherton Lin’s GAY BAR: WHY WE WENT OUT (Back Bay Books, 2021). It was a slow read. There were several thought-provoking comments which I flagged with Post-its near the beginning and the end, but it would have read better and had greater potency as an essay instead of a book. Still, I plan to write about a few of the Post-it posits in a few blog posts over the summer. The comment I thought about as Pride month begins is as follows:

The closing gay bars had me thinking about the finitude of gay… By 2018, an opinion piece in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz declared, “Being Gay Is Passé.” A few years prior, one poll showed half of young people in Britain were identifying as not completely hetero, with most of those placing themselves in a nonbinary area on a scale of sexuality. So, not completely gay. I came across a statement online by a woke young person expressing his consternation that cis gay males remained the most culturally validated type of queer. 

 

This, to me, feels like the latest incarnation of a tale as old as time. There will always be a generational divide—a gap, if you prefer—where younger people bemoan dominate culture, i.e., that established and/or embraced by an older generation. Why should it be any different among queers, especially when identity is what defines the group in the first place? Younger people are fighting for their place, trying to dissociate with older folks, agitating for changes to ways of being they perceive as stuffy, stifling and just outdated. There will always be a push and, in turn, the older set will often push back, sometimes mocking or dismissing change initiatives as pious, naïve or, to use an aging term, tomfoolery. 

 

I can readily embrace the term nonbinary in terms of my own gender identity. Still, I rarely use it and I won’t wave a nonbinary flag at any Pride events this year or, likely, any year. (The flag, FYI, is comprised of four coloured stripes: yellow, white, purple and black. Yes, I had to Google.) I’m good with the flag. Let whoever wishes wave it, fly it from a pole, tack it to a wall so as to conveniently cover a persistent, undefined smudge. Let it be present in Pride parades along with a range of other flags associated with specific queer identities—aromantic, pansexual, transgender and many others. 

 

All these flags get a lot of my queer contemporaries in a tizzy. I’ve sat through many a brunch listening to them grouse about the proliferation of flags, most consisting of different stripes for different types. The argument I hear the most is, “Why do we need more on the flag? Why do we need new flags? The rainbow includes EVERYTHING.” For these gay men, it’s a one-flag-fits-all stance. They truly believe it to be the case.

 

However, I think it’s important to consider when the flag came about and what identities were commonly recognized at the time.

 

My own perception of the dominant queer community when I was coming out in the mid to late ’80s was that the two main categories of queer were gay and lesbian, defined by one’s birth gender. Bisexuals were doubted with derisive comments about “wanting it both ways” and having “one foot in the closet.” Transgender existed but the numbers seemed too small to have much of a voice at the table. Then, as now, some gay men saw trans issues as a distraction or even a liability to making inroads regarding gay and lesbian acceptance. To deny this would be to whitewash queer history, painting a false image of a community united—happy happy, forever and always. 

 

The rainbow flag came into popularity in the late ’70s. The familiar flag, created in 1979 with six coloured stripes—red, orange, yellow, green, indigo and violet—is not, however, the original incarnation.  In 1977, activist Gilbert Baker had created a flag with eight coloured stripes, hot pink on top and turquoise wedged between green and indigo. I point this out to emphasize that the six-striped flag so many traditional queer people accept was itself a modification. Yes, folks, that flag is not the original just as the Starbucks people line up at across from Pike Place Market in Seattle is not the original café. (It was in a building that was demolished. As well, a few other locations opened and closed before the 1976 location was established.) The rainbow flag was subject to change from the outset. Love the flag. See yourself in it if you will but recognize its an adaptation from the original.

 

At the time both these rainbow flags were created, they represented identities encompassed, at best, by the LGBT acronym. No extra letters or numbers. 

 

Since then, queer identity has not been static. Neither has broader society. At some point a flag may become universally accepted, but there has been rapid change in defining queer identity in the decades since. Flags change over time. The American flag is not what it was in 1776. The current Canadian flag only dates back to 1965. Moreover, more than one flag may connect with a person. (In terms of where I live, I recognize both the Canadian flag and British Columbia’s provincial flag.) 

 

A rainbow flag may be perfectly fine for gays and lesbians but it is entirely possible—probable, even—that some queer people only see the L and G in it. The don’t want to be included as part of “et cetera.”

 

If the six-coloured rainbow flag doesn’t connect with you, embrace another… if flags have any importance to you at all. 

 

Fly your own flag, I say. Fly it with your own sense of pride. And, when my contemporaries insist on one flag and only one, keep calm. Some fuddy-duddies just like things simple…the way they were in one particularly heyday.