Gay nightlife’s identity crisis
It used to be that if you didn’t mind the taste of alcohol and didn’t at all mind having sex, the gay bar was your one-stop shopping destination. There, you found a sense of safety and community - and, without too terribly much effort - someone to take home.
Today, almost forty years after LGBTs rioted in the streets as the cops raided Stonewall, the gay bar is undergoing an identity crisis that may render its decades-long function as a protective enclave irrelevant; or, at the very least, see its role expand to survive the changing times and serve the next generation.
As older gays "age out" of the bar scene - and younger gays have access to a greater variety of welcoming places to go on a Saturday night - is the gays-only gay bar on the fast track to obsolescence?
If you go out to a gay bar these days, you might very well wonder where everyone under thirty has gone. But hit up a hip club, and you’re likely to find a mix of straights and gays - young pups who grew up in a world where gays were, if not greeted with open arms, at least not shamed back into their own secret world when they wanted to socialize.
It’s no wonder that out, proud, and open-minded Gen Yrs (1978-1995) and Millennials (1982-2001) are more likely to drink with their straight friends - and in doing so, seek out gay bars that are straight-friendly or straight bars that are gay-friendly.
Online, and out of the bars
Larry Rosen, a professor of psychology at California State University, Dominguez Hills and author of "Me, MySpace and I: Parenting the Net Generation," sees the mixing of gays and straights as the inevitable effect of greater gay identity acceptance that coincided nicely with the rise of social networking sites and a sea change in terms of how young gay people can reasonably expect to be treated. "These influences all happened at the same time. None of them are the cause of the other," says Rosen; "but they were all facilitating factors, which is why you’re seeing gay clubs and bars showing less attendance and popularity."
For Rosen, the Internet has already replaced the decades-long function of the gay bar as the singular, necessary physical space in which gays could find and form community. Going online instead of going out "has most certainly made it easy to find a community -- which always existed, but seemed to be a whole lot easier to find when social networks came into being."
What’s more, "Being behind the screen and feeling somewhat safe has fostered this generation’s ease in which to express their gender identity and sexual preference." So by the time somebody turns 21 and is able to drink, they don’t necessarily need to gravitate towards a gay-only watering hole in order to form, find or confirm their identity. Not so very long ago, however, Rosen recalls: "There was a reason for the gay bar. It was an enclave where you knew you had likeminded people." But then, along came the Internet; and, more recently, the rise of social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. Once they established a foothold in popular culture, "You no longer needed a private meeting place."
Those raised on "Will & Grace" as opposed to "The Boys in the Band" casually glance at someone’s sexual orientation on Facebook or MySpace and "just note it without major judgments anymore. That’s a product of people feeling comfortable with expressing their sexual orientation." Inevitably, such comfort leads to a certain expectation that when interacting with friends in the physical world, they’re seen as neither gay nor straight. So when gay and straight friends mix, "They recognize these are just people. They interact with them, they have less advance prejudice, and that naturally leads to hey, let’s go have a drink."
It’s often taken as a given, when young gays go out to have that drink (with their straight friends and allies), that the location will be one in which everyone will feel comfortable - or, at least, feel welcome.
Wes Combs, of Witeck-Combs Communication, knows a thing or two about spotting trends within the LGBT community. He attributes the downturn in attendance, and the closing of gay bars to the fact that "People in their twenties grew up in a much more integrated world. They had gay friends in high school and college and lived their lives more openly, not feeling the persecution and discrimination that people in their forties or over felt." Armed with the confidence of that mindset, "There’s not as much of a need for them to go to gay bars." When they do, "The gay bar is just another location where they socialize with their friends - as opposed to a primary location.
