Gay Bar: Why We Went Out

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Honestly, this book is more of a 2 star, "it was [an] ok" book, mostly because I didn't find the author and his personal stories that interesting, and I found myself skimming as fast as I could over those sections, skimming/skipping over quite a lot of the book, in fact. But all of the dancers had on sensible work boots, for one does not take the plumbing of a gay-men’s bar for granted. 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. Journalists have been noting the rapid closure of gay bars for years and the economic strain of the past year's pandemic has certainly added to the demise of many more of these venues. Lin inhabits a place of difference, identifying as gay, but coming at it with an edge, and with the book, he tracks his experience of negotiating a perspective, and sex, in bars in LA, San Francisco, and London (where he met his husband, with whom he often cruises for sex).

Of which the number is startling, to say the least, and engaged in with a commitment to synaesthesia and general wanton abandonment that is, well, quite alluring. Perhaps the publisher's description of the book was just a bit misleading on this front, which may not be the author's fault.We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Rather than a minority band of merry misfits, they are the gatekeepers of gay culture, gay social norms, and gay beauty.

I was hoping to learn about gay bars from around the world that were influential to the gay liberation movement but what I got was a gay only going to white gay bars in white gay areas. He has contributed to the Times Literary Supplement, the Yale Review , the Guardian, the Face, the White Review and GQ Style. Coming back to the aspect of identity though, Lin stresses that gay bars as communal spaces helped individual people to find their own place and character, and this is why it is justified to tell the story of the gay bar as an autobiography, or an autobiography via non-fiction about gay bars - it's this smart idea that renders the book so unique. His life, sensibility and values are very different from my own but I appreciate the intelligent and skilful ways he considers how experiences in gay-designated spaces can positively and negatively contribute to our personal and collective sense of gay identity. This is an even more timely rumination in the time of pandemic when formerly rough and tumble gay bars have taken to pitching tables outside, under afternoon umbrellas for day drinking visible from the street.

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.