Gay Bar: Why We Went Out

(Paperback)

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Description

'A brilliantly written and incisive account of gay life in Los Angeles, San Francisco and London' -Colm Tibn

'An absolute tour de force' -Maggie Nelson

Neon lights and dark rooms; pumping house and drag queens on counters;first kisses, last orders; the gay bar has long been a place of joy, solidarity andsexual expression, whatever your scene, whatever you're seeking. But inurban centres around the world, they are closing. With this cultural demolition,we must remember to ask: Who were the patrons What did the barsmean to them And where can we go now

Gay Bar is a sparkling, richly individual history of the gay bars of London,San Francisco and Los Angeles, focusing on the post-AIDs crisis years of the1990s to the present day. It is also the story of Jeremy Atherton Lin's own experiencesas a gay man, and the lifelong romance that began one restless nightin Soho. In prose both playful and challenging, he immerses his reader in theunique experience of a life lived in and out of these spaces.

From leather parties in the Castro to the Black Cat riots of Los Angeles, fromglory holes and Crisco-slicked dungeons to Gay Liberation Front touch-ins,from disco at Studio One to Britpop at Popstarz, from irony to abandon, fromhedonism to love, Gay Bar is an intimate, stylish and necessary celebration ofthe institution of the gay bar.

Reviews

A brilliantly written and incisive account of gay life in Los Angeles, San Francisco and London... Atherton Lin's book is a history lesson, a travelogue, but it is also a display of a rich sensibility, a kind of autobiography using bars as its thread -- Colm Tibn * Guardian *
I can't remember the last time I've been so happily surprised and enchanted by a book. An absolute tour de force -- Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts
Each page made me yearn for the dance floor and made me think about our need for queer spaces. I'm so glad that someone has written this definitive book about gay bars -- Amelia Abraham, author of Queer Intentions
Searching, erudite, and sexy. It wears its erudition with verve and grace, probing the past, the present, and the future of queer life while refusing easy binaries. Gay Bar is about pleasure, but is deeply serious too. One of the best books I have read in ages -- Katherine Angel, author of Daddy Issues
I am utterly blown away. We can never have enough complex, intersectional writing about queer experience, and this is a welcome, needed addition to the canon -- Niven Govinden, author of This Brutal House
Shot through with vibrant intellectual adrenalin. With keen original insight, Atherton Lin celebrates the gay bar as a site of ribald, sensuous and urgent resistance. A must-read for all -- Cathy Park Hong, author of Minor Feelings
Lively and dirty, intellectual and gossipy, Gay Bar is the rare book that feels both like a guilty pleasure and like it is making you considerably smarter as you read. An important document of queer lives -- Michelle Tea, author of Black Wave
Painstakingly researched and tenderly written, Gay Bar marks queer bars as sites of resistance and reinvention. I longed for nothing more than to club hop with Atherton Lin -- Alex Espinoza, author of Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime
A book of rare dream-like power, an exacting anthropology of queer life through the lenses of London, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Blackpool. Brainy, audacious, funny, vulnerable, and sexy -- Paul Lisicky, author of Later: My Life At the Edge of the World
Gay Bar exemplifies the multidimensionality Atherton Lin admires: it's at once erotically gamey and intellectually playful, combining soft porn with social theory, semen with semiotics... utterly unique -- Peter Conrad * Observer *
Electric, immersive, and impossible to look away from... an illuminating, sexy, vibrant examination of place and identity * Buzzfeed *
Playful, hilarious, arousing, shocking and challenging * The Face *
Expansive, exuberant and horny * Attitude *
A restless and intelligent cultural history of queer nightlife... Beautiful, and original * Parul Sehgal, New York Times *
Gay Bar commemorates a way of life without reducing it to one thing or fixing it in time; rather, it revels in variety and incident * Edward Behrens, Literary Review *
Gay Bar reads like a cult classic... Atherton Lin's writing vividly itches with the pulse, heat and chaos, the acceptance and rejection of gay nightlife * Paul Flynn, Evening Standard *

Author Bio

JEREMY ATHERTON LIN was raised in California and is now based in the UK, where he studied writing at the Royal College of Art. His work has been published in the Yale Review, Literary Hub, The Face, the White Review, and the Times Literary Supplement. He is an editor at Failed States, the journal of art and writing on place.