Ages ago, they used to print candid snapshots of partygoers from various nights of the Briti I don’t go out much anymore since I got sober but once upon a time I was a party boy and went out every night of the week. I’ve been reading it every month ever since. Freshman year, college 1996, I was introduced to the UK magazine Attitude. Thanks to this cross continental adventure and Lin’s dense, detailed examination of the scene-those memories that shaped my life can live on more happily ever after. I don’t go out much anymore since I got sober but once upon a time I was a party boy and went out every night of the week. Lin's book is an attempt to piece together the past, present, and future of spaces that have - for better or worse - been gay.more It isn't an anthropological study of queerness. Gay Bar isn't a historical account of gay bars. Gay Bar memorializes raunch, sex, friendship, and adventure it tells the story of a shifting identity trying to find grounding in physical spaces that are themselves equally as shifting.
Lin recounts his own journey weaving a story of drag bars in Blackpool, drugs in West Hollywood, and history in the Castro, but at each stop on this journey he does so much more: he asks readers to consider what it means to be queer, what it means to have queer spaces, and what telling queer history really means. But this home - from before his birth until today - has always been fluid, recast as a space as reflective of the outside world as of the gays then queers then others who congregate inside its walls. Jeremy Atherton Lin finds himself at home in gay bars be they in London, Los Angeles, or San Francisco. Lin recounts his own journey weaving a story of drag bars in Blackpool, drugs in West Hollywood, and history in the Castro Gay Bar is an unexpected memoir of queerness and the spaces it inhabits. Gay Bar is an unexpected memoir of queerness and the spaces it inhabits. Elegiac, randy, and sparkling with wry wit, Gay Bar is at once a serious critical inquiry, a love story and an epic night out to remember.more The journey that emerges is a stylish and nuanced inquiry into the connection between place and identity-a tale of liberation, but one that invites us to go beyond the simplified Stonewall mythology and enter lesser-known battlefields in the struggle to carve out a territory. He charts police raids and riots, posing and passing out-and a chance encounter one restless night that would change his life forever. In prose as exuberant as a hit of poppers and dazzling as a disco ball, he time-travels from Hollywood nights in the 1970s to a warren of cruising tunnels built beneath London in the 1770s from chichi bars in the aftermath of AIDS to today’s fluid queer spaces through glory holes, into Crisco-slicked dungeons and down San Francisco alleys. In Gay Bar, the author embarks upon a transatlantic tour of the hangouts that marked his life, with each club, pub, and dive revealing itself to be a palimpsest of queer history. But in urban centers around the world, they are closing, a cultural demolition that has Jeremy Atherton Lin wondering: What was the gay bar? How have they shaped him? And could this spell the end of gay identity as we know it? Strobing lights and dark rooms throbbing house and drag queens on counters first kisses, last call: the gay bar has long been a place of solidarity and sexual expression-whatever your scene, whoever you’re seeking. "Atherton Lin has a five-octave, Mariah Carey-esque range for discussing gay sex.” – New York Times Book ReviewĪs gay bars continue to close at an alarming rate, a writer looks back to find out what’s being lost in this indispensable, intimate, and stylish celebration of queer history. “ Gay Bar is an absolute tour de force.” –Maggie Nelson NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY: The New York Times * NPR * Vogue * Gay Times * Artforum *
National Book Critics Circle Award Winner NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY: The New York Times * NPR * Vogue * Gay Times * Artforum * “ Gay Bar is an absolute tour de force.” –Maggie Nelson "Atherton Lin has a five-octave, Mariah Carey-esque range for discussing gay sex.” – New York Times Book Review As gay bars continue to close at an alarming rate, a writer looks b National Book Critics Circle Award Winner