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?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ROOM AT THE INN

I’ve been going to New York City for a decade now and finally crossed Item #1 off my gay travel itinerary. Evan and I, along with his New Yorker friend, Saul, had a drink at the Stonewall Inn. 

 

Over the years, I’d walked by it several times, strolled through the teensy Christopher Park that is a national monument across the street, even peeked in once or twice, but I’d never lingered. I have a complicated relationship with gay bars and, generally, the thought of parking it on a stool or leaning against a wall by a pool table has zero appeal. 

 

But this was the site of the Stonewall Riots beginning June 28, 1969, the symbolic, if not true, beginning to the gay rights movement and LGBTQ people standing up for themselves. A drink, we agreed. To commemorate history. 

 

As we walked in, a drag queen was beginning the first round of Bingo Night. I ordered a cider, grabbed a stool and didn’t bemoan this low level form of entertainment. We’d make an hour of it, twice as long as I’d anticipated.  

 

In addition to Bingo, the event included free popcorn—topped with M&Ms—and no cover charge. The drag queen called out and often sang Bingo numbers (e.g., “B-10…No, B safe.”). Lady Gaga’s “Abracadabra” and Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather” played at a respectful volume rather than with a pulsing beat. This was Monday, after all.

 

In terms of game, the highlight, for me at least, was seeing Evan’s excitement as he won a round of four-corner Bingo. For this feat, he picked a rubber duckie shower speaker from the prize collection. That’s something, right?  One of those things a person doesn’t know they needed until there it is in a flashy box just begging to be picked before the Pokémon stuffie and the Mr. Potato Head set. Let his grin be enough of a prize for me (although Mr. Potato Head would have been my clear choice if B-11 had been called before the game-ending B-5.

 

Did I feel greater empowerment as a queer person from Bingo at the Stonewall? No. Not at all. Did I regret going? Of course not. It turned out to be an innocuous evening but, because it was at Stonewall, I shall always remember it. 

 

Christopher Park, now part of
a National Monument

Drag Bingo Night at The Stonewall will never be as epic as an uprising against the NYPD. It was a perfectly tame Monday night at a rather ordinary bar which happens to be gay. I’m grateful for the ordinariness. More than that, grateful for Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera and others who’d shown up at the bar in late June 1969 just looking for a safe space to hang out for what should have been its own normal, uneventful night.

"YOU BE YOU"...I MEAN IT.

I have rocks in my head today. It’s a good thing.

 

These rocks are the colorful creations of children’s book writer and illustrator Linda Kranz. She takes flat rocks and paints them so they transform to vibrant fish which remind me of Mexican folk art. The fish illustrate some of her picture books. 

 

As a school principal, I got in the tradition of kicking off each school year by reading a picture book during the first day assembly and then working with staff to create a week’s worth of activities linked to that book. One of those books was Only One You by Kranz. It’s all about celebrating individuality, the lifelong learning journey and make the world a better place. (It makes a great graduation present, a nice complement to the multiple copies the cap and gown wearer receives of Dr. Seuss’s Oh, the Places You’ll Go!)

 

Kranz followed Only One You with a companion picture book, You Be You. It’s sparser in terms of words and more cliché in terms of text. (“Some fish swim up. Some fish swim down. Some fish swim quiet. Some fish swim loud.”) I prefer the former book, but I credit You Be You with helping the title’s familiar message stick. We’re all different and that’s okay. For the past decade, I’ve often heard people spout the sentiment and I’m so glad it’s out there in a world where social media holds up influencers and selfies seem to have morphed from self-expression to a de facto ranking of people’s appearance. Shirtless buff guy gets thousands of likes while “Average” Joe gets seven with shirt on, three without.

 

The book gives me a visual image to go with the expression. Somehow painted fish make it real. I can say that “you be you” has done wonders for my outlook. Partly on account of my personality and partly due to the time when I came out as gay, I grew up extraordinarily critical of not just myself but others as well. I beat myself up over every one of my perceived flaws…and I perceived so many! It may have been a dysfunctional self-defense mechanism. To quote Taylor Swift’s song “Mean:”

You have pointed out all my flaws again

As if I don’t already see them.

 

Stick and stones couldn’t hurt me if I hurt myself first. I think so many gay men of my age bracket grew up with loads of self-hate and crap absorbed from all the haters we encountered in school, on playgrounds and sometimes even in our own families. Ideally, we would have lifted ourselves up, individually and as a community. Isn’t that the basis of Pride? But what I observed in gay bars, which seemed to be ground zero for all-things gay, was gays putting down gays. Just like our high school nemeses, we lifted ourselves up by putting others down. It was survival of the cutest/hottest/buffest.

 

Putdowns were woven into our campy humor. Long before “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” we were reading each other in jokes told at some unsuspecting patron’s expense.

“Oh, check out that tired, old queen.”

“Eww. Look at the twink over there.”

“She’s just a big, ol’ bottom.”

“That one shouldn’t wear a tank top. Her best hope is covering up…everything.”

 

Yuk, yuk.

 

Yuck.

 

Don’t believe me? Watch any version of “The Boys in the Band.” The characters are insufferable. Even listen to the banter between Will and Jack on “Will & Grace.” I love the show, but there was a running joke over Will being overweight. I may have been overly sensitive as someone with anorexia but there was no basis in fact for the putdown. That was the point. It reflected how harsh gays were in assessing their bodies and, yes, the bodies of their peers. 

 

I mastered this kind of “humor.” Sometimes I relied on it. If I could dismiss a handful of gay men in the bar, I might feel I belonged. I might have felt worthy (or worthier than them at least), despite the fact the models/actors/caterers of West Hollywood looked right through me. 

 

Critiquing others carried over to other places in my life. While my car idled at a stoplight, I might glance at someone in the crosswalk or popping out of Starbucks and I’d think something harsh about a mistaken mascara application, a misstep in choice of footwear or a hairstyle from the “wrong” decade. The assessments came easily. Joan Rivers, the “fashion police” and “Ab Fab” were also part of my pre- and prime gay years. 

 

It was a psychiatrist who made note—repeatedly—of how harsh I was about myself. My self-hate was deep, intense, unwavering. I couldn’t shift my frame of mind. What I felt was real and indisputable. 

 

A medical diagnosis paved the way for a shift from pervasive negativity. After a decades-long battle with what I thought was an eating disorder, I was finally diagnosed in late 2017. It came as a relief. The assessment meant access to supports and I spent all of 2018 and 2019 pursuing and receiving treatment. The interventions came too late. My behaviors are entrenched. As of 2023, things are status quo. I’m a functioning anorexic. 

 

The one silver lining from all the time I spent in programs was that one course I took was called “Self-Compassion.” On the first day, I was not impressed. My critical brain dismissed and tore up everything the facilitators said, every activity we did and every response from others in the program. It felt too woo-woo, too Oprah. And yet, I found myself relenting each passing week. I went from going through the motions as I’d done with every other group and individual intervention to relenting and coming to find purpose in imagery that calmed my brain and rooted me to positive places and people from my past. I caught some of my negative self-talk and shut it down instead of letting it snowball.

 

A law school classmate once said to me during a mixer our first year, “You have a lot of quirks.” He didn’t mean it as a compliment. I got the impression our ten-minute conversation exhausted him. He excused himself—more alcohol, a much-needed escape—and we never had another conversation during our three years of study. All the ways I’m different used to be handicaps, things that gave me a permanent home on the Island of the Misfit Toys. Now I think of them and roll my eyes, sometimes even smile. “You be you.” Sometimes that “pride” concept feels real. 

 

I’m prouder still that I’ve shaken off that tendency to critique passersby. Whatever the body, the clothing, the hairstyle, I let it be…as I should have done all along. If I catch myself leaning toward throwing shade (in my head), I cut myself off and mentally nod to the person in orange Crocs: “You be you.” 

 

To be sure, I have lapses. Facial tattoos and Botoxed lips are particularly challenging. (You be less you?) I continue to be a work in progress. I hope “reading” people fades from gay culture. It’s the opposite of flattering. Considering so many of us felt rejected and disconnected at times in our lives when we yearned to be accepted and loved for all that we are, “You Be You” should be embraced and practiced in our community as much or more than waving the rainbow flag and revering our divas du jour. I’m always going to be TeamOlivia but I have no problem with queers who are TeamMadonna, TeamGaga, TeamKylie or TeamSam. It’s all good. You be you.

A CALL TO ARMS

It’s come to this. I can’t wait to go back to sleep. Not because of fatigue. Not because I’m feeling ill. And, definitely not because this blog is suddenly sponsored by Sealy mattresses. I dreamed in snippets again last night—vivid, usually joyous moments.

This has been happening frequently in recent weeks. Yesterday morning, as my alarm sounded, my dearly departed dog was at my side, tail wagging, body contorting with excitement to embark on an anticipated first walk of the day. Real or not, it was a precious moment, a chance to see the little guy again.

Last night’s montage featured my remaining schnauzer running freely through busy streets where alert drivers cleared a path in traffic for him to roam. There was also a troubling scene with my ex trying to be romantic. In the dream, it sort of worked, but I didn’t have time to puzzle over this because I came to my senses and re-enacted that irksome endless running sequence from “Forrest Gump”. (All this running—my dog, then me; seems I am still trying to escape my rural environment.)

True to my inner shallowness, my mega-marathon did not lead me to a chance encounter with political leaders of the past nor did it inspire onlookers. (I’m just glad no one laughed; my gait has always been awkward). Instead, I wound up in a monstrous high fashion mall. Mysteriously, I did not browse or buy a thing. (Proof that dreams are often utterly implausible.) The running continued as I frantically tried to exit the shopping haven.

I wound up in a crowded gay jazz club. A soulful woman with a big voice belted out an up-tempo number and I stopped running. I was right where I needed to be. It perplexed me that the gay bar was an annex to a mall, particularly since I had the sense I had jogged into an urban center in Red State territory. (Perhaps I was back in Texas. It has been on my mind as another Thanksgiving approaches when my family will get together without me. It’s tradition. I cannot get the time off work.) The audience included a sizable smattering of heteros, all welcoming and taking in the musical genius of the singer’s vocal stylings, supported by a skilled band and a trio of sound masters flicking buttons and turning knobs to make every note pop.

With the mass of people jammed in the joint, I couldn’t make out the singer. I craned my head back and forth, expecting to see a gorgeous black woman in a body-hugging, amply sequined purple dress from The Supremes era. But then came the big reveal. While not as dramatic as something out of “The Crying Game”, the woman was indeed a plain man with a five-o’clock shadow, dressed in a sensible button-down shirt and a drab pleated denim skirt. The image disappointed in so many ways, but I went with the crowd, totally accepting him and cheering maniacally as the band segued into a sultry slow number.

And then my dream fast forwarded five or ten minutes. I was seated with the singer and the band and a few select gay fans at a long table at the back of the bar. One of the production engineers told me about their next gigs and their upcoming album. As music is so important in my life, I savored this up close and personal moment.

Even as a restrained groupie, I failed to fully understand something else developing by my side. A very cute gay man sat to my left. Naturally, I assumed he was taking in the conversation in a similar manner, feeling privileged to be invited to the inner circle of a group on the cusp of superstardom.

But then in the final moments it dawned on me that he was a friend of the band. He wasn’t hanging on every word they said. He was taking in my every move. Smitten. With me! How’s that for a twist?!

And just as in every romantic comedy I’ve overdosed on, I turned to him and caught a quick glimpse before life got in the way. A sighting, a chance encounter, a stronger connection unrealized...or, as in the movies, frustratingly delayed. The moment was not halted by a closing elevator door, a swarming crowd, or the end of a train ride in France.

My dearly remaining dog had tap danced across the wood floor of the bedroom, anxious to get me up for his own morning walk. The real thing, an off-leash amble with no traffic to navigate. It is always a magical moment as I laugh at his gleeful goose honks and he bounces from bush to bush, christening everything anew. But I trudged along and eyed the colorful sunrise over the snow-sprinkled mountains, feeling stunned. Today’s greeting yanked me away from my dream guy.

As I reflect, I’ve changed my mind. Forget sleep. The reality is I can never return to good dreams. (Why do nightmares recur while the glorious moments are so fleeting?) I have a vague recollection that the man of my dream was shorter than average with dark hair and dark eyes, but a single image remains clear from the moment just before my dog brought me back to reality. I can see the sleeve of a red plaid shirt rolled up, exposing a pale forearm, dotted with a few freckles and a sparse matting of dark hair. (Red plaid? Really? Must go with it.) The arm is an effortless reach away. The image brings me hope. Maybe there is a real man out there and our fateful encounter is near. It doesn’t hurt to believe. At the very least, it’s a call to go shopping. Something good is bound to come from that.

I have (part of) a man in mind and I am left with a clue to his identity—my very own fairy tale. For the prince, it was Cinderella’s glass slipper. For me, it’s a guy’s right forearm.

Some guys are all about the pecs. Others go for biceps, butts or the front packaging. I always thought I was a face and hair guy but apparently that’s all wrong. No wonder I’m still single. All this time, I should have been casting my gaze on the underappreciated forearm.

Surely this changes everything.

TOO MUCH GINGER?

There was a time when I was a gay bar regular. Not knowing any other place where gays met, my first steps in coming out involved walking in on my own, ordering a drink and nervously studying the ice cubes in my glass. As you might surmise, it wasn’t a very effective tactic.

Somehow a few people did approach and struck up a conversation. Hell, in your twenties, you could be digging deep for a massive booger and still drum up a little interest! Over time, my gay bar trips would include friends. I always had my sights on a pretty hunk who’d finally make eye contact and dismiss me in a split second, turning to renew his gaze on a go-go boy or the bartender with biceps bigger than my waist. In that moment, I could always seek consolation in my friends and belatedly dismiss the guy who dismissed me, pointing out his uneven ear lobes or a freaky fingernail.

The online scene has replaced the bar scene. It’s back to going through the process alone. And the dismissals are just as quick., typically without explanation. I’ve had many messages initiated by gay guys in the Ottawa area, but they typically end abruptly. Things start with a short note with a vague reference to my “nice profile” and my photos. After one or two emails, the exchange dies. What happened? Did a virtual go-go boy make contact in the interim? Or is the initial message dating Spam sent indiscriminately to a herd of gays? Moo!

This week I had four guys sending me messages. I politely replied to each, but all conversations dead ended. The guy I was most interested in had a master’s degree and interests in hockey, cottaging, running and tennis—all things in common. His profile also mentioned barbecuing so I noted with honesty in my first reply that, as a vegetarian, tofu on the grill did nothing for me. Undeterred, he continued the conversation. My next message was the end of the line. Somewhere in four innocuous sentences I revealed the equivalent to asymmetrical ear lobes. I’m guessing it was my comment about enjoying a ginger cookie at a quaint bakery. Should have known. Ginger was the death of the Spice Girls after all. I’m figuring I should have stuck more to the Sporty Spice path. What’s with the Canucks’ bad start? How ’bout dem Sens?!

Ah, the things I can learn online! The bar scene may be far in my past, but that doesn’t mean I can’t find new ways to be summarily dismissed and for my self-esteem to get messed up.