LGBTQ+ rights are under attack, Black trans and nonbinary people are being murdered at unprecedented rates, and white supremacists are storming drag queen story hours. The problem isn’t that gay bars have changed post-pandemic it’s that they’ve stayed exactly the same - even though the world, or at least our collective conscience, has finally changed. In fact, just last week at a bar in Brooklyn, a gay white man made a bottom joke and pushed a cue stick against my butt cheek. The same, tired scene plays out pretty much every time I cross the threshold: Shirtless men with abs look me up and down, there are seldom any queer or trans women present, and people of color are often belittled.
But in the year since I’ve personally added gay bars back into my social repertoire, something about them has felt lukewarm.
Two years later, some of the bars and clubs I loved did indeed close, while many others miraculously survived. The future looked grim back then, and the general consensus was that COVID would probably spell the end of many already-struggling gay bars. In the summer of 2020, I donated money to keep some of my favorite queer establishments open.
