Gay Bar: Why We Went Out

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Another important argument is that to him, gay bars were not safe spaces, and he did not want them to be - the conversation around this seems to have changed considerably. With wit and erudition, Lin interweaves stories from his personal forays into gay nightlife with the social history of various bars and clubs.

Interesting insight about the evolution of gay bars and their role in LGBTQ culture — focusing mostly on London, Los Angeles and San Francisco, so the work is naturally of particular interest to readers with an interest in those cities.With keen original insight, Atherton Lin celebrates the gay bar as a site of ribald, sensuous and urgent resistance. I came to this book through Parul Sehgal's NYT review where she notes, correctly, that at its best, this book finds profundity in the regular mundane descriptions of bars, drugs, lovers, sex, being in an open relationship, having younger men to fuck (loved the 20-something guy who refuses anal because of the "administrative work" involved). Promotion for this book started late last year and when I read advanced reviews about it, I was excited.

With verve and grace, Gay Bar probes the past, present and future of gay life, while refusing easy binaries. Atherton Lin emphasizes his membership in communities of people making similar choices, for similar reasons. We want to be in a room full of penises wherein each contains the strong possibility that it is, to use the old-fashioned queer initialism, tbh – to be had.But the overall impression is a world that is careless and easy, irreverent, and in itself a clichee of gay masculinity: here we are, we're ready to get dirty, we don't need to feel, we're teenagers high on rebellion and sex. No, I don’t get it either, but it is clearly a term of endearment, and after a while becomes an indelible part of the character.