The first gay bars appeared in London in the 1720s and it's been a wild ride since then. We talk about the history of how these spaces came to be and the challenges they face in 2024.
The first gay bars appeared in London in the 1720s and it's been a wild ride since then. We talk about the history of how these spaces came to be and the challenges they face in 2024.
Hello
This is gay bro shit- a podcast where I summarize and collate Wikipedia articles into new narratives
Now that's kind of a joke, but I do generally use Wikipedia as a jumping-off point and while I don't think it should ever be considered an academic resource, what it is good at is collecting information and pointing you in the right direction for other sources of information.
And you can just call me Dan this week, because thats my name.
Today we're going to be covering a subject near and dear to my heart- and that is the Gay Bar.
I’m going to talk about the history of these spaces, how they came to be and how they grew- and more recently how they've come under threat, though you could say they've always been under threat.
I'm doing this topic because I needed a bit of a lighter subject after the heavier research episodes I’ve done recently, but also because I owned a gay bar- so this is something I have intimate knowledge of- and I’m going to talk about what that was like and also attempt to give a bit of an economics lesson about what it takes to open and keep one going.
Now, there are a lot of specific details of my experience I won't be going over because I’m still in a very protective mode when it comes to how that ended and I have a lot of emotions tied up in the experience and the aftermath of it.
But first an announcement. I’ve always said from the beginning that this podcast would have a lot of interviews, and in the next few weeks, you’ll hopefully start hearing the first of those. I'm looking for guests who want to come on and talk about fitness, body image, and queer culture-related topics, preferably people with a lot of lived experience or subject matter expertise, because you know I love to research.
And i just got an email address for this show. So feel free to shoot me an email at GAYBROSTUFF@gmail.com. That’s right gay bro stuff and not the actual name of this podcast because I don't think Alphabet inc would let me have that address.
So send me a message introducing yourself and giving me a pitch about what you want to talk about and I’ll hopefully get back to you.
next, let's do a fitness check-in: As mentioned previously I was in a bulk phase, and that was meant to last 12 weeks, basically up until the end of February. But I got sick at week 10, so I decided that was a sign to just take a break and try and live in maintenance mode for a few weeks. But in the 10 weeks, I went up about 15 pounds, so a pound and a half a week, and most of that was muscle because my waist measurements didn't really change much, maybe half an inch- so I would say that's successful. I think I wanted to add 20 pounds, but the reality is that I’m already fairly close to my ceiling for muscle mass- so when you get up at this end you just can't realistically expect to add that much new mass, even if you add testosterone into the mix. My FFMI now is about 27- so I'm definitely at the top end of the range. But of course, I’m not satisfied and still want to add another 20 pounds of muscle- but we’ll see if that is remotely possible.
So now I’m trying to cut- ideally, I went to get my body fat below 15% and I'm trying an experiment where I cut for two weeks and then eat at maintenance for a week, and repeat. With the thought that it's going to be easier to do a hard cut for two weeks if I know that in a few days, I can eat some of the high-calorie foods I’m craving. And the nice thing about doing this post-bulk phase is that my maintenance calories are now about 3600 or more, so I’m eating 2600 calories a day, which is still plenty of food so I don't feel deprived.
Alright, that was probably boring to most of you so enough of that-
so let's get back to Gay Bars
As far as we know the first gay bars, as we would now identify them started appearing in the 1700’s in a few big European cities.
But before that, bars in general, or Taverns first appeared in about the 5th century BC. With some of the first stories documenting them existing in Mesopotamia, but the first instances we know about were in ancient Greece.
Now these bars dont look like they do today obviously, they started out as a simple feature of urban Greek home design where there were usually two rooms at the front of the house facing the street that began to be used as a shop or food stall, and in some cases they sold wine.
Like many things Greek, the Romans adopted this design and expanded these spaces and Tabernas were a regular feature of most roman cities. Meanwhile in northern Europe, where grapes did not grow, They instead developed alehouses, that sold exclusively beer made from the grains that readily grew in the colder climates, most notably barley.
Up until the 12th century, most people did not travel much, so these were strictly local establishments. But in the late middle ages people began to be more mobile, specifically for the purposes of religious pilgrimages- and later for the purpose of trade mercantilism. So a number of inns sprung up that catered to these travelers,
In 1577 we get the earliest survey of drinking establishments in Britain, done for the purposes of taxation of course. And this survey recorded 14,202 alehouses, 1,631 inns, and 329 taverns, representing one pub for every 187 people.
That's actually a ton of locations, I looked up the current number of pubs per person in the UK, and it's closer to one pub for every 3300 people.
Meanwhile here in the US Wisconsin, the state with the most bars per capita has about one bar for every 2000 people, and New Hampshire is the state with the least bars, at one bar for every 65,000 people
So they had something like 10 to 30 times as many drinking establishments as a portion of the population than we do now in most of the US. Or 300 times in places like New Hampshire with few bars.
Incidentally, Ireland and Hungary have about the same rate of bars as Wisconsin, one for every 2000 people, so those are your drunk capitals, everyone.
But going back to the past, it seems like people were drinking a lot. Now one of the things we need to remember about pre-modern history is that people did not have access to clean drinking water. It really wasn't until the 1900s that most cities developed their drinking water systems and that we understood germ theory enough to be able to guarantee water was safe to drink.
But beer and wine and cider were safe because fermentation destroys bacteria, so instead of drinking water people drank alcohol. Even children would drink beer, and even today in Germany there is a tradition of brewing ‘Kinderbeer’ with a low alcohol percentage that is potentially servable to children. The average medieval peasant ate an entire loaf of bread every day and drank close to a gallon of beer. So if you’re a white European there's a reason you probably love carbs. To be fair this beer was generally lower alcohol than what we consume today, so people weren't exactly drunk, but life was hard then so who can blame them if they were?
Now spirits, such as vodka, whiskey, gin, brandy, and tequila, which are distilled, meaning they boil off a brewed beverage like a fermented mash, and collect the vapor to create much more concentrated beverages- these weren't really invented until later, and were mostly used for medicinal purposes. Then in 1688 William of Orange brought Gin to England and sparked what was called ‘the gin Craze’. During this period poor people were increasingly consuming large quantities of gin until it became a moral panic and parliament passed 5 different acts trying to tamp down on this problem.
So that brings us up to the first known drinking spaces specifically dedicated to gay men- the Molly Houses of 1700s London.
Reports of these spaces first began appearing in newspapers in the early 1720s, which means they were probably existent for at least a few years beforehand in secret. And they were called ‘Molly’ houses because Molly was slang for a homosexual at the time. So really it's just a more colorful way of saying ‘Gay Bar’. but Molly was also slang for prostitute, and indeed there was a lot of sex work occurring in these spaces, but with anything this old we can't say how extensively.
As far as the physical spaces, often these were back rooms at bars or taverns that catered to regular patrons in the front rooms- though sometimes they were private residences or even what we might recognize as a brothel today. So they could be as simple as a room with a keg in it, or as elaborate as a brothel or bar dedicated entirely to this clientele.
The Most infamous of these molly houses was Mother Claps in Holborn- which if you don't know London is sort of east central. Just to the east of the British Museum. But this bar allegedly even had security at the door where only people who could be vouched for as sodomites were allowed entry.
https://cabinetmagazine.org/issues/8/bailey_trumbach.php
But this place was only open for 2 or three years before it was raided by an organization called the Society for the Reformation of manners, which of course sounds puritanical, and it was. And the owner was put on trial along with three patrons who were seen engaging in acts of buggery as it was called. And sadly these three men were hanged to death. Because in 1533 a law came into effect called the buggery act that made it a crime to engage in acts of sodomy and the punishment could be death.
So these establishments needed to operate as covertly as possible to stay open and to protect their patrons- which makes it hard now to have accurate accounts of what these spaces looked like and where they were.
But we do know what sort of activities occurred. Sex occurred openly, sometimes in dark corners, sometimes in private rooms, sometimes in plain view. But there was also a large adoption of feminine mannerisms, feminine dress, and the using of women's names in a way we would now identify as either drag or transgender expression.
There were also allegedly marriage ceremonies that occurred that seemed to express genuine commitment, and most curiously they held mock births where a man pretended to be a woman giving birth and was assisted by other patrons dressed as midwives.
So these spaces continued to exist throughout the 1700s and into the 1800s but the record goes a little dark- presumably because after the tragic consequences of the raid on Mother Claps, people were driven much more underground.
The next incidence of a queer space being discovered happened in 1810 at a bar called the White Swan on Vere Street in Soho. The club had only been operating for 6 months when it was raided by the police. 27 men were arrested but due to bribery only 8 of the men were eventually convicted of criminal charges. And this is really dark, so be warned.
6 of the men were pilloried, meaning tied to a post, in Haymarket Square. And the public that turned out was violent and threw things like dead animals, fish heads, mud, and rotting vegetables at the men. It was so unruly that 200 police constables had to be called out to control the crowds.
Worse still, two more of the men were hanged, one of whom was only 16 years old. And neither of them had actually been at the INN on the night of the raid.
So early on were establishing this pattern of queer people start getting a little bit bold, only to be instantly shut down by the powers that be in extremely violent ways. Then queer people would retreat back into the shadows, And this pattern would continue even up to now. But were getting ahead of ourselves.
So London had been the capital of queer nightlife, but slowly Paris began to overtake London as the post-revolutionary society in France was more open. In fact sodomy had been decriminalized in 1791 so in Paris it was possible to be queer without the threat of arrest. I couldn't find specifics, but the areas around Montmartre and Les Halles were home to a variety of gay businesses including bars, cafes, and even Bathhouses.
I also need to note that Lesbian culture specifically really took off in Paris with a long list of famous women who loved women. And this was not something we saw happening in London in the previous century.
Artists like Oscar Wilde escaped to Paris where they could live in relative freedom, notably, Wilde had been put on trial in 1895 in the UK for gross indecency.
So then we get the first known gay bar, meaning the first one that was brazenly and openly marketed as an establishment for gay men, and that not in Paris, but actually in Cannes, on the Riviera. The name of this bar was Zanzibar, and it was opened in 1885, it was actually open for 125 years, only closing in 2010.
Simultaneously, by the 1900s gay bars had started to pop-up in Amsterdam and most notably Berlin. Berlin in particular saw an explosion of creativity and nightlife in the 1920’s, with one club named Eldorado becoming famous specifically for its drag shows. And the queer cabaret scene gave birth to the legendary actress Marlena Deitrich. This world was depicted by English writer Christopher Isherwood and his work was later turned into the iconic musical Cabaret.
Meanwhile in good ole’ murica. Nothing much was happening- because unfortunately at this time we had the rise of the Temperance movement which sought to outlaw alcohol completely, and they succeeded in 1920 with the passing of the 18th amendment which put prohibition of alcohol into the constitution. Canada passed a similar prohibition in 1918, but it didn't last long, being overturned in 1920- which is how we ended up smuggling lots of Canadian booze into the US.
Prohibition was ended in 1933, which is the same year some of the earliest gay bars in the US opened, including The Black Cat bar in San Francisco, the Double Header in Seatle, The White Horse in Oakland, and Cafe Lafitte in Exile in New Orleans.
Now there is one bar in the United States that predates all of these, But only unofficially. And that is the famous Atlantic House in Provincetown Massachusetts. Known locally as the A-house.
The A-house was not officially a gay bar until much later, but in the 1920’s it became a de facto gay bar when people like Tennesee Williams began summering in Provincetown and using the bar as their hangout in town. But the clientele was always a mix of local fishermen, mostly Portuguese, and artists from out of town seeking refuge from the rest of the world, many of whom were straight.
1933 was the end of prohibition in America, but 1933 was also the year the Nazis came to power in Germany, so while the earliest gay bars were opening in the states, the gay bars of Berlin were closing- with 14 Berlin establishments closing within a few weeks of the Nazi takeover of the government.
The Nazis swept across western Europe, invading both Amsterdam in Paris in 1940. And for a while, this was the end of the gay bar in the major cities of Europe. And the Nazis imprisoned many thousands of homosexuals and we don't know exactly how many were murdered in the concentration camps, but the number is probably somewhere around 10,000.
I said this was going to be a lighter episode, and so far it’s definitely not- but we can't talk about any aspect of queer history without talking about queer oppression. Ignoring this would be dishonest and irresponsible.
So World War 2 put a damper on the development of queer spaces and people- except it kind of didn’t. Because what happened is that men who were drafted into service found themselves in the close company of other men. Particularly the navy developed a bit of a recommendation for being a hotbed for gay men because of the realities of living on a ship, spending months in tight spaces surrounded exclusively by other men.
So during the war, and in particular after, a lot of these men ended up in coastal port cities, such as San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, etc. where they would be drawn to the covert queer spaces operating at the time.
I should also mention at the time gay bars were beginning to spring up in other places. Mexico City had a burgeoning gay scene beginning in the 30s and by World War 2 there were 15 gay bars in the city.
The First Gay bar in South Africa opened in Johannesburg in the late 40’s and catered exclusively to white men
In Canada, Montreal actually had the first gay business in all of North America, an Apple and Cake shop established in 1869. Which is so fucking cute. I want a gay cake shop, please. And by the late 1960s bar scenes had developed in all of Canada's biggest cities.
In Japan, the occupation by Americans after the war led to an opening up of society with a gay Tea shop opening in 1948, and by 1966 Tokyo had its first gay bar, and today it is the city in the world with the most Gay Bars with over 300 just in the one main area of Shinjuku. Now most of these are quite small, often seating like 12 people so these bars are highly specialised in subcultures.
Speaking of subcultures In Amsterdam, we got the very first leather bar in 1955. I couldn't find the name of this bar though.
In the States we get the first leather bar, the Gold Coast in Chicago in 1958, followed by the Tool Box in San Francisco in 1961.
In New York, a longshoreman bar called the Eagle’s Nest slowly morphed into a leather bar catering to gay men, eventually changing its name to just tthe Eagle in 1970- that name soon became a generic moniker for ‘leather bar’ that spread all over the world, with up to 50 gay bars using that name at one point in time
Now we haven't talked much about New York yet, but you’ll note the year the Eagle became a gay bar as 1970 as significant.
And that is of course because the Stonewall Riots occurred in 1969. And they occur outside of a gay bar.
Now this episode is not about Stonewall but just to give you a quick summary-
New York City bars were generally owned and run by the mob. And they were raided frequently by police. The mob would pay the police off, an act hilariously named ‘gayola’- but the bars were still routinely raided, once a month on average, and patrons were rounded up, harassed, and arrested.
In the early 60s then Mayor Robert Wagner Jr led a full-on campaign trying to rid the city of its gay bars in preparation for the 1964 World's fair.
For the bars themselves, the state's liquor control commission had the right to revoke the license of any bar for any reason, and this was often wielded as a weapon against bars catering to queer people- which unfortunately is still happening in 2024.
On the night of June 28th, 1969, the Stonewall Inn in Manhattan was raided, but this time rather than being compliant, the patrons dressed as women refused to go to the bathroom to have their sex checked by a female police officer, and the patrons dressed as men reacted by refusing to give the police their ids. The police brought in patrol wagons to round people up to bring them to the station, but as they did this word had spread throughout the neighborhood and at least a hundred other people had gathered outside. The patrons were put in handcuffs and one by one led into the wagons, but it was allegedly a butch lesbian who incited the riot by yelling at the crowd “Why don’t you do something” and so they did-
The crowd had grown to 500 or more people and they started throwing things like beer bottles, and most famously bricks from a nearby construction site, and nobody knows who initiated this.
What's more- is that nobody really knows why it was this particular raid on this particular night that resulted in a riot. And multiple participants reported there was no one cause and that it had erupted spontaneously. Later on, it became legend that the riots erupted on that particular night because of the death of queer icon Judy Garland some 6 days prior, and her funeral two nights before- but none of the participants seem to corroborate this connection. It’s more likely that the queer people in attendance had watched or even participated in the civil rights movement and anti-war movements that developed over the previous decade and this was a natural outcrop of the push for greater freedoms and rejection of systems of oppression.
Following Stonewall we get a coordinated gay liberation movement, and we see an explosion of gay bars and gay neighborhoods in the United States and other countries. By 1980 there were more than a thousand gay bars in the United States alone with 200 of those being lesbian bars.
The number of bars continued to grow into the 80’s and peaked in 1987 at more than 1700.
One type of bar I really want to talk about though is the rise of the Cruise bar- or bars where having sex was the main draw of the establishment.
There's an amazing documentary called Gay Sex in the 70’s that highlights this period of time, and it's free to watch online with a library card- and I had intended to rewatch this but my account password and cent reset it so whoops….
But anyway, by the late 70s, there were a ton of bars dedicated specifically to sex. With names like the Anvil, the Ramrod, The Mineshaft. This world was also depicted in the infamous 1980 al Pacino movie Cruising.
What I find interesting personally is that these bars no longer really exist in the United States, but in Europe, they’re everywhere. There are a number of bars in most big cities that are effectively a small bar area surrounded by a dark maze for cruising and big clubs like XXL in London have massive cruising areas that take up like a fourth of the floor space. This is not to say that people don't have sex in bars in America, but there's usually no dedicated space for this the activity is discouraged or outright banned. I have thoughts and theories, and we’ll get to them
But first, something catastrophic happens to derail the decade of progress that occurred in the 70’s, and that thing is of course the AIDS Crisis. The first cases appeared in 1981 in New York and other cities. But what we didn't know was that the virus had been quietly circulating for years. We believe the virus entered the United States sometime in the 50s via Haiti, and there is a documented case of someone with Aids like symptoms dying in 1969. Because the virus can live for 10 or more years in the body before presenting symptoms many people had no idea they were already infected. And its estimated that by 1978, 5% of gay men living in New York and San Francisco had been infected.
As the virus spread and more and more gay men and other queer people became sick the gay bar started to lose its patrons and many closed during this time period.
According to a survey of listings done in Slate, San Francisco saw the number of gay bars the total number drop from 118 in 1973, to 92 in 1984, and then further drop to 57 near the height of the epidemic in 1989.
In Manhattan, there were 86 gay bars in 1978, and only 41 in 1989. So in both cities, the number of bars dropped by more than half.
So naturally the cruising bar is one of the big casualties as the convergence of moral policing by the community itself and literal policing by public health departments made it difficult to operate these spaces, and that’s a legacy we still have today.
Now this same slate survey actually showed something interesting when it came to other cities or localities. In the three other locations they looked at, which were Seattle, Atlanta, and Iowa- which is not a city but a state- the number of open bars remained fairly flat between 1973 and 2011.
But since this study was done in 2011 I wanted to look at 2024. So I turned to the website gay cities for their listings because it's the closest proximation the gay yellow pages used in the original article.
In the case of Seattle, there were 12 open bars in 2011, but I counted 15 in 2024. So a slight increase .
In Atlanta there were 22 open bars in 2011, and 18 in 2024, so a very slight decrease. And I wasn’t able to get a good count for Iowa but doing a Google Maps search there looks to be a similar number of bars there as well.
Finally, since the slate data ends in 2011, I thought I would follow up in New York and San Francisco as well.
In 2011 Manhattan had 44 bars, and in 2024 I count 53. So a decent increase.
Of course, there are more bars in Brooklyn and the other outer boroughs these days so overall things seem to be actually improving there.
In 2011 San Francisco there were 33 bars, and in 2024 gay cities lists 71- however cruising through these listings, a lot of them actually look like mixed bars so the real number is probably closer to 40
https://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_gay_bar/2011/06/the_gay_bar.html
That being said, in spite of these numbers It does feel like bars are closing left right and center- But the gay bars that have been hit the hardest are bars catering to lesbians and people of color. According to an article in the Washington Post between 2007 and 2019 the number of all gay bars declined by 37 percent, but the number of lesbian bars declined by 52 percent, and the number of bars catering to people of color declined by 59 percent.
A lot of people have been quick to point to the rise of the internet and hookup apps as a replacement for the bar- the theory being that if people can find sex in other ways they’ll skip the bar.
But I think some other things are happening that negatively impact the gay bar business. A big factor is the rise in commercial rents, which while less extreme than the rise in residential rents, is still out of line with inflation. I’ve heard stories of bars in major coastal cities having their rents doubled or even tripled when they're put up for renewal.
But a big thing we need to talk about is that people are drinking less. In 2001 72% of people under the age of 35 reported drinking, but by 2023 it had dropped to 62%- and the number of people in the same age group who had at least one drink per week declined from 67% to 61%.
During the same time period Marijuana usage doubled in the same age group- so it looks like people are increasingly turning to weed instead.
One factor might be that our attitudes toward how drinking affects our health have changed. In the recent past, we were told that drinking socially was actually good for your health, but now pretty much all the research indicates that any amount of alcohol is unhealthy.
In particular, a lot of the gays who are hyper fitness minded arent drinking very much- partly because there's a perception that alcohol is just empty calories- and this set of people is more likely to turn to other substances when they want to party like MDMA or ghb or ketamine.
As a side note here- alcohol does have calories but we are not sure how our body utilizes these calories and if it's comparable to food sources. We do know that if you consume no or little food and large quantities of alcohol your body seems to adjust and use the alcohol like it would food. So theoretically alcohol is not a preferred energy source but will do in an emergency, but there is no ethical way to study this on living humans so it's an unresolved question.
In the past a lot of people in general, but in particular queer people used alcohol as a form of self-medication, and this was considered socially acceptable as long as these people were still able to function in society. In my experience, people in the upper and upper middle classes are still often drinking in excess but it's magically not a problem because they are drinking wine, craft beers, and high-end liquors like cognac, aged whiskeys, single malt scotches, etc. and consuming them at home. I once had a friend refer to this as ‘upper middle-class drinking’ and it stuck with me how a behavior that would be considered a problem for the working poor or unhoused is suddenly ok when someone has disposable income and a place to live.
I say this as someone who was a functional alcoholic for a chunk of my twenties and was surrounded by friends and co-workers who had the same behaviors. And even in my current job, there's a good chunk of my coworkers who are out drinking after work nearly every damn night.
And in terms of self-medication, though life is still hard for many queer people it's certainly gotten easier for a lot of us, particularly those of us who are cis-gendered. When you watch colder depictions of gay men, such as in the play The Boys in the Band, there is often a character of the self-loathing homosexual who becomes a drunk to cope. Whereas in 2024 a lot of us have the luxury of existing without being under the constant threat of violence or oppression.
We’ve also gotten much more accepting of mental health treatments and open about medication usage and therapy so we have other outlets for our emotions. Even just having social media to vent is an alternative outlet.
Another factor is that alcohol has become more expensive. If the average drink costs ten or more dollars, that's going to limit the number of drinks you might be able to afford to consume. Meanwhile here in Oregon marijuana retails for $4 per gram, so it offers a significantly better value proposition.
Another factor is how we feel about social interactions post-pandemic. When we were all shut inside with limited opportunities to socialize, it was assumed that when the pandemic was over there would be a lot of pent-up demand and we would see something akin to the roaring 20s in this decade, but that has not materialized.
What seemed to have happened instead is that a lot of people got in the habit of staying home and never got out of it. I’ve also observed that parties are petering out earlier and bars that used to close at 2 am or later are closing at midnight because people just aren't going out that late. When I ran my bar in 2022 and 2023 we rarely were open after 1 am because people just wanted to go home before then.
For lesbian bars in particular, but to some extent any bar that labels itself a gay bar- I think one issue has been the shift in the wording we use to identify ourselves and the sort of groups we feel comfortable being around. The lesbian label- used historically to talk about cis women who exclusively date and sleep with other cis women- is one that a lot of queer femmes have moved away from. People who in the past who might have identified as a butch lesbian are now coming out as non-binary or transmasculine, and they're often dating other non-binary or transmasculine people and so the word lesbian is no longer an appropriate descriptor.
Similarly, bars that have traditionally catered exclusively to gay men, are now finding they need to expand their audience or risk having a shrinking pool of customers. I think about the leather bar in my town that has recently hired a women bartender and regularly books trans femmes to host events.
And in our cities, another phenomenon has emerged and that is that more and more bars that are not explicitly gay bars are hanging up rainbow flags in the window, and throwing events that would normally be the domain of gay bars like drag shows. If you go on Google Maps and search for the term gay bar in a particular city, you’ll see listings for bars that aren't actually gay bars, but merely gay-friendly. So if all of a sudden every bar is potentially a gay bar with the right event, or at the very least presents itself as a safe space for queer people, then we can start to question if we need dedicated queer spaces
On a related note in a lot of cities, bars and other businesses used to be heavily concentrated in one area affectionately knows as the gayborhood or the gay ghetto. And while some of the bigger cities definitely still have these, in other places the forces of gentrification have swept in and scattered what was there. Here in Portland, we used to have an ultra-compact area called the Stark Street Triangle where there were like 8 or so bars on a three-block stretch. And these bars supported other businesses like an all-night diner, a leather store, and a bathhouse.
Then in the early 2000’s the area just north of there underwent a massive redevelopment project that transformed like 40 blocks of what had formerly been warehouses and industrial spaces into condos and high-end retail. The Whole Foods moved in, the Patagonia store, and the West Elm. And sure enough over the next few years all of the gay businesses were pushed out. The bathhouse became a boutique hotel. One bar became a ramen shop, another became a jean store, and so on.
But if I do a count of the bars we have in the city- We actually have as many now as we've had at any point in the city's history- and more than we did during the glory days of Stark Street. But the bars have become a diaspora all around the city with several miles in between them. Downtown there are 4 bars within walking distance of each other, but getting between any of the others requires a car. So on the one hand it is nice that most areas of the city have a gay bar somewhere nearby, but we don't benefit from the bar hopping that can happen in places where there are a lot of businesses in proximity.
Another thing that seemed to have happened, is that there is a group of young people who came of age during the pandemic who don't really know how to go out, and I’ve observed some really weird behavior from young people who don't seem to understand how to order a drink, what they like, how to tip, etc. It's as though all of the sort of experiential knowledge that has been traditionally passed down just skipped these people because they missed their opportunity. Now that's just an observation based on my experiences working at two bars in one city. But people in their early 20s have always been a key driver of nightlife, so perhaps this is a developing potential issue.
Now, I’m going to go over the expenses that go into opening and running a bar that will hopefully explain why drinks cost what they do and why going out has become so expensive. And I'm going to base this off the businesses I have experience with, including my own, and in the places I’ve lived, so certainly there are other possible economic realities for businesses in other places that might really reduce the expenses required.
So the cheapest way to open a bar is to actually buy an existing bar that is already open and making money. If the business doesn't own its real estate, meaning it rents, then the business sale price is usually going to be something like the equivalent of 1 to 2 years of net revenue. This could be as low as the price of a new car if the business isn't making a ton of money, or upwards of several million dollars if the place is big and well-established. But it's not unrealistic to buy an operating business for a similar price as a downpayment on a decently nice house in your area.
If the business owns the building and or land beneath it, now that price gets factored in because you have a fixed asset that retains its value regardless of the success of the business occupying it.
Sometimes you can find one that is sitting empty and fully built out. This is how I was able to start the bar that I owned. I found a bar space that was fully equipped including even things like glassware. I opened my bar in 2021 in a space that had been a bar for a few decades but the most recent business was struggling during covid. And of course, in the summer of 2021, Covid looked like it was over so it felt like a great idea at the time…
But of course, you may need to remodel and replace equipment and whatnot, so you can potentially spend tens of thousands of dollars modifying an existing space to meet your needs. And if that space has previously had a similar business that failed you should probably be prepared to do a lot of critical thinking as to what factors might have gone into that.
The most expensive option is to build out a bar from scratch. Depending on where you are, designing and building out a bar can cost anywhere from like 200k on the low end up to 2.5 million on the high end. The average bar and restaurant buildout is currently about 400 dollars per square foot. So a fairly average three thousand square foot bar could cost 1.2 million on average.
But while the space is under construction you’re still going to be responsible for paying the rent and utilities and any other fixed costs even while the business isn't making any money.
Another hassle you’ll encounter is acquiring a liquor license. On the extreme end, in the city of Boston, there is a limited number of full licenses available and in most areas, they have already given out all of the licenses available, so the only way to acquire one is to buy one at auction from a business that is closing, and you can spend between 400,000 and a million dollars.
Now here in Oregon where I live the liquor license costs less than a thousand dollars, but there are a ton of requirements around the person owning the bar- so anyone with a criminal record, specifically a drug or alcohol-related offense is going to have a really hard time getting approved. Another difficulty I encountered is that the liquor authority consults with the police department and a license can be denied based on the crime rate in a particular area. And my liqour license was initially denied by the police department because there had been too much crime in the area in the preceding 18 months- an 18 month period where the city faced an escalating housing crisis on account of the pandemic shutting down shelter beds driving more people onto the street, and civil unrest over the violent actions of the police towards black people.
Now the liquor licensing authority was able to grant me the license because they used different crime statistics to determine their final approval- but this is a lot of power to place in the hands of the police and liquor control commission. And if crime is being used as a way to deny people the ability to open a bar- I can only imagine that the potential exists within the system to discriminate gainst bars that are owned by and cater to people of color because these are often in more crime-prone areas because of systemic factors beyond their control.
I also know of stories, via a lawyer friend of mine who was working on a case, where the liquor licensing authority was used as a way to shut down existing businesses if crime was occurring in the vicinity that they could vaguely blame on the bar- and in the few cases where this was used in the state, all of the bars had been owned by and catering to people of color. So liquor licensing can be used to reinforce white supremacy and deny people of color the right to own and operate businesses.
And just a month ago, Gay bars in Seattle were targeted by a task force made up of the police and liquor authority, and two bars were issued fines because at one bar a staff member had an exposed nipple, and at the other a patron had a visible jock strap peaking above the waist of their pants. Why the fuck does the liquor authority in Washington state have the power to police people's bodies. Now there was a substantial backlash to this and the fiend ended up being dropped and the liquor authority is now saying they won't enforce whatever archaic statutes they had been using.
And so this I think is why we don't see cruising spaces in US bars anymore, because liquor licenses are either controlled by the police force or a state or local authority that kowtows to the police. Even here in Oregon where it's fully legal to be naked in public, we can be naked in a bar but we can't engage in any sort of sexual activity or be visibly aroused legally. And bars that don't comply can have their liquor licenses pulled and then they’re shit out of luck because they have no way to make any money to survive.
Another big expense upfront is going to be insurance. With all of the various coverages required my insurance was 30,000 for the year and they usually want all that money up front. And generally speaking, you can't get a liquor license without insurance and it's a condition of final approval that you obtain a policy.
Now let's talk about rent. Unlike apartments, commercial rents are usually priced by square foot per year. And that cost gets broken down monthly. So in my city, Portland, the average retail space is going to between 18 and 25 dollars per month per square foot depending on location. So our 3000 square foot bar is going to cost between 54 thousand and 75 thousand a year to rent. Now we’re not a cheap city, but we're probably just a little above average when it comes to commercial leases. Bars in smaller cities or even suburban or rural locations may pay as low as 10 a year per square foot.
In San Francisco, I'm seeing commercial rents that range up to 100 per square foot, but I did conveniently find an available bar space right on Castro Street listed at 30 per month. Now that space is 6000 square feet, but going back to our example. Our 3000 square foot bar is going to cost between 90 and 290 thousand a year.
In New york I'm seeing rents in the 80 to 200 per month range- and like on the first page of my search, i saw a listing for a space in the bottom floor of the apartment building I lived in on the Upper West side going for 190. So our three thousand square foot gay bar is going to be between 240,000 and 600,000 a year.
So in all here we get a range for our example bar of 30 thousand to 600 thousand in rent per year. So location is absolutely going to play a factor in expenses.
Your next biggest expense, and probably your biggest recurring expense after opening, is going to staffing- but this completely depends on where you are.
For example in Europe where bar staff don't generally receive substantial tips they receive a higher hourly wage anywhere from like 10-15 dollars an hour in the equivalent local wages. I’ve read in Australia it can be closer to 25 an hour. But I can't confirm that.
In the US how much you pay your staff is going to depend on what state you’re operating in. In most states, you are allowed to pay tipped employees less than the federal minimum wage of 7.25 an hour. Meaning in these states if you make more than a few dollars an hour in tips then they can pay you a lower hourly rate to compensate- as low as 2.13 an hour. So if you’re in one of these places your wage bill might be very low aside from any management staff.
Here on the west coast employees still receive the state minimum wage which is between 11 and 16 an hour.
Also on the West Coast, any bar with a full liquor license is also required to sell food. Some places will have a bartender dish out some hot dogs or pizza and call it a day, others will have more elaborate menus and a lot of bars have full kitchens that require multiple staff members to run. And the going rate for kitchen staff is now usually at least 18 an hour.
You then have to factor in about a 20 or so percentage on top of these wages in payroll taxes and other local taxes.
Now it's clear that having customary tipping is a way to have employers pass the cost of their labor directly onto the customers. So we can sit around and debate whether that system should exist or not. But I will say for someone who has bartended on and off for years- the system of tipping does really incentivize hard work because how much you can make is directly tied to how fast you can be. Consequently, a smaller staff can serve more people because they’re more productive.
And this system is good for providing part-time employment for a lot of artists and creatives who can work part-time at a bar and afford to pay their bills and have more time for their other pursuits. I'm saying this as someone who is literally doing this right now. I make more money bartending part-time than I was at my last two salary jobs and I have time to do a research-intensive podcast, make music, workout 5 times a week, and still have a social life somewhat.
Another expense we’re going to run into is Utilities- so electricity for all of our bar coolers, our lights, our music system, our air conditioning. Gas for our kitchen equipment, and water, a ton of water. Your toilets are flushing all day long and dishwashers are being constantly cycled. Our water bill could be more than a thousand dollars and our electricity was usually around 500 a month. Surprisingly gas was only like 50 a month because we didn't have too many pieces of kitchen equipment. You also have to pay for internet and phone and you have to pay a music license fee and any cable fees if you have televisions so you can screen drag race or whatever the kids are into.
On that note, you will also need to pay for your entertainment. Justifiably, DJs, KJs, event hosts, musicians, and drag performers all need to be paid for their work and the people they bring to the space. Booking fees depend on the level of the person you’re booking but it might be as low as $100 for a new DJ to several thousand for a big name, or up to $10,000 for the latest drag race winner.
By far the most annoying expense you’re going to encounter is repairs and maintenance. For example, my walk-in refrigerator died and it costs 3000 to replace the condenser that makes it cold, and then three months later another part dies and you’re out another thousand. Or, just before I opened the water heater that ded into my dishwasher sprung a leak and flooded the business on the floor below, so I had to pay 3000 to replace the water heater, plus another two thousand in electrical and plumbing, and another thousand to cover damages to the space below. Or the one time I needed a fire shutoff valve installed on my gas pipes, and was quoted 50,000 for the work. Or the multiple broken windows that needed to be replaced at a thousand dollars a pop. And because these things are random by nature the only thing you can do is just keep putting money aside just in case.
And of course you have to pay for everything that you sell. A bottle of well liquor might run you only 5 or 6 dollars, but most of your bottles are going to cost between 20 and 30 with premiums going much higher. Of course, you can get showcase bottles that cost several hundred dollars and rarely get ordered but bring a certain prestige in having them. Ideally, you’ll get close to 20 drinks out of one bottle but if you’ve got staff that like to pour heavy, then maybe you’ll get 10 or 12 drinks.
But you also have to pay for everything else that goes into the drink glass, mixers cost between 10 and 30 cents per ounce, straws can cost several cents each, ice, any garnishes, and of course the glass or plastic cup. All of these small costs can add up and on average it costs 1 to 3 dollars per drink to make. Most bars aim for something like a 20% margin, meaning all the costs that go into the drink should be 20% of what it sold for but a Bar I used to work at in Provincetown was able to sell for closer to 10% and some dive bars with low prices might be closer to 30% or even higher.
And on paper, we the consumer see those markups and think, damn that's ridiculous that I'm paying 10 dollars for a drink that costs 2 to make, but now that you have the idea of all of the money that goes into opening a running a bar you can hopefully see why things cost what they do. Because unless the bar is just a toy for a rich owner who can afford to lose a bunch of money, then you actually need to make money to stay open.
As alluded the number one way we do that is by selling drinks. In some bars, this is the only source of income. So as a simple example, we have a bar in an inexpensive area that needs about 20,000 a month to stay open and pay all the bills. That means we need to do 24,000 in drink sales because we also have to cover the costs that go into those drinks. At an average cost of $8 a drink-we need to sell 3000 drinks a month. That sounds doable as that's only about 100 drinks per night. And these days the average patron is consuming about two drinks, some obviously consume more, and others only have a soda- so it averages out to 2. That means we need to get 50 people through the door a day on average just to break even. Which isn't crazy- but it might be hard to do on Monday or a Tuesday. Or if it's raining, or snowing. or if it's really hot, or if there's a big event going on somewhere else like pride in the next closest city, or if the end of the month and rent is due for most people, or if it's summer in a college town, or winter in a beach town. Or if there's a global pandemic.
Now this is a bar that's cheap to operate, we can scale up this basic model.
A bar that costs 50 thousand a month to stay open will need to sell 200 or more drinks and see 100 people a day on average just to break even. Or they might just need to charge more per drink to compensate.
What are some other ways we can make money?
We can charge people a cover to get in. This of course only works if people think whatever you’re offering is worth paying for. A bar in Manhattan with a big drag show might get away with charging 20 to get in, but try charging even 5 to get into a mid-size city bar on a weeknight and people will just laugh at you and go somewhere else.
And the main thing a cover charge does is offset your entertainment and security costs. Only in the busiest tourist destinations during the high season will this probably be a substantial source of revenue.
We can try and get people to spend more money by selling food- but from my own experience and talking to other bar owners, even at bars with really good food programs at most 20% of their sales even come from food- so it’s often kind of just a loss leader in the sense that having food might get some more people on the door but it's getting them to buy more drinks where you actually make that money back. And making food costs much more than making drinks, usually closer to 50% of the costs of the food item go into the ingredients and preparation.
Finally, if you’re lucky you might live somewhere where gambling can legally occur in a bar. Here in Oregon, it's legal for a bar to have up to six slot machines, and having seen the financials of some bars that had it, In some cases, those six things are generating 100,000 or more a year in extra revenue and that might be the only thing keeping the place open.
And this opens up a big conversation about ethics because we know when it comes to gambling a small portion of the population with a compulsion to gamble are the ones doing a majority of the gambling, and these are often the people at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. We can also have this same conversation about the ethics of selling alcohol as well- as we have no idea whether the people we are selling to are addicted or not and we do not know what potential harm we might be causing
So, It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to get the bar open and then tens of thousands to keep it running and what sucks about that is that the only people who can afford to open a bar are people who have money from inherited wealth or success in other highly lucrative fields like real estate, technology, medical. And if you know anything about people with a lot of money you know that these people are often really boring dull uncreative people, and now they're the ones in charge of deciding what happens in our nightlife spaces.
Of course, many people without a ton of money are able to make things work and I was lucky and privileged enough to be one of them for a brief period of time.
The highly condensed version of this story is this.
I’ve been bartending on and off since I was 19, and going to queer clubs since I was 15. I’ve also been a drag performer on and off since I was 21 and I spent summers working in Fire Island and Provincetown, in addition to traveling all over, so I’ve seen more queer nightlife and spaces than most people will in several lifetimes.
And then I take my business degree and 6 years of running a local gym chain and it felt like a bit of inevitability that I would eventually try and create a new queer space.
And like so many people, The Pandemic was a great reckoning where I found myself with a lot of time to sit around and think and dream. And I decided I was no longer content to just occupy other people's visions of queer nightlifte, and run other people's businesses.
And perhaps more critically, I had money that family members were willing to invest into me and my vision, and without this nothing would have ever happened. Which is where the privilege absolutely plays a factor.
So in the spring of 2021 it looked like the pandemic would be waning with the rollout of the vaccine so I began looking for a space. And sometime around the memorial day I found a vacant bar listed, on Craigslist of all places, and toured the spaces, and was immediately interested in making it work. I drafted a business plan and began talks with the landlord. And all that summer it looked like the pandemic was over, and people were back out on the streets.
I was able to sign the lease in late summer and begin the liquor license application process. As I mentioned before this process did not go smoothly and after two months of waiting I was told by someone at the Liquor Control Commission that I might not be able to get a license. I had already put in months of work and thousand of dollars at this point, so this was obviously devastating. I spent the next week or so desperately scrambling for solutions- but a miracle happened and the liquor license was granted in late october. So now I went from possibly not being able to open for 6 months to be able to open immediately so I shifted into hyperdrive to get the space open, get my staff in place.
And from here on the whole thing becomes just a wild blur of intense emotions and crises after unanticipated crises. The least of all crises was that in the fall of 2021, as we were getting ready to open, we experienced another wave of Covid, and everyone stopped going out again. But by spring we were able to fulfill the vision of having a truly inclusive space with an awesome roster of shows and entertainment. I had between 8 and 12 shows a week. Like at one point I was providing about 40% of all the paid drag gigs in the entire city.
More critically for me I was able to give myself a space to do the shows I wanted to do because I didnt have to pay myself and I was able to experiment. I had a weekly show where I just occupied the stage and sang whatever songs I felt like doing that week, including all the work I was writing for myself. And that, by far is the thing I miss the most and may never have the opportunity to do again.
I was proud of what were able to put on, and I was proud of my staff. Almost every member of staff was a performer and half of them were trans or non-binary. Half of my bartenders were femmes, and most importantly the queer people who didnt feel safe anywhere else felt safe in my bar. And so many times people would find out I was the owner and just thank me, genuinely, for providing this space and this experience this.
Most memorably one night we had a trans woman propose to her lesbian girlfriend on our smoking patio, because in her words this was the first place they ever felt truly safe outside of their own home.
But the business never made any money. We did everything right and still could not get the business required just to break even, and my only option was to keep finding more money and if you’ve ever had scramble for money over and over again you know how emotionally draining this can be.
Meanwhile, the stress of this had already put me in the hospital once for, we’ll just say, severe mental health problems and I just wasn't willing to push myself that close to the edge again.
So eventually I ran out of places to get money, and I did the incredibly difficult thing of closing the business. And that was beyond devastating, and i spent the next 6 months basically in hiding, and I’m still not over it now a year and half later- but I’m moving in that direction.
And I know I’m skipping a lot of details, especially all of the trials in tribulations that happened while were open, and the staff members I had to fire, and the producers who became problematic, and the people who tried to come for us online- but maybe I dont want to share all that stuff and keep it for myself like a little goblin treasure im hoarding under my bed. And maybe I’ll someday tell that story.
But in the meantime, I still have a mess to clean up, growth to do, and people to somehow pay back someday. And that's where I am now.
But Im incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to even try, and incredibly grateful for the time I did have running the bar before it closed. And even though it almost killed me I think that was all incredibly worthwhile and I dont regret trying.
And should you ever have the resources or desire to open a gay bar, by all means, try. It's going to be incredibly expensive and incrediblydifficultlt, and you might fail, actually, you’ll probably fail. Because regret is more expensive than failure, even if failure can be pretty damn expensive sometimes.
But here is the other thing I need to leave you with. Most of y’all will never open a gay bar, and alot of you may not even like going to them. I know I dont like going to them unless I’m traveling most of the time. But if you think queer centered businesses are important, if you want them around then you need to actually go there and support them by spending your money.
I’m not saying you need to live there, but one of the things that I noticed with my bar is that I saw so many people, not just members of the wider community, but friends of mine, who maybe came in once or twice while we were open because they thought we were doing well and just assumed we were going to be there for when they felt like dropping in. But of course, our existence was constantly in peril and that is the case for many if not most queer-owned businesses.
And if I sit with that it can make me feel very bitter. But bitterness isn't an emotion you grow from, it's a trap. So instead I'm just going to advocate for you all to keep going to gay bars as often as you can tolerate and afford.
Well, that wraps up this incredibly long episode. Take care bros, and see you on the dance floor.