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The general population was either unaware of them or saw them as sinister.īut in 1969, New York police raided the Stonewall Inn, a rather boisterous Greenwich Village bar, and the gay patrons unexpectedly fought back. The bars opened up a whole world of possibilities for me."įor decades gay bars kept a low profile (unmarked doors, blackened windows), and were often run by mobsters or underworld figures, since more respectable businessmen weren't crazy about the prospect of frequent police raids. "It was a chance for us to socialize off campus, meet new people - including new boyfriends - and figure out how we fit into the larger gay world. "When I was in college, I'd go out to a few different bars with my friends every week," says gay novelist Wayne Hoffman, who came to Boston in the late '80s and now lives in New York. They were also a nexus for political organizing and charitable work, they promoted safer-sex education after the onset of AIDS, and they served as a welcome mat for gay newcomers to a city. But if you were a gay man in the late 20th century, the place with all the qualities of an ideal third space was the gay bar.įor many closeted gays, bars were the only places where they could safely be themselves. Besides taverns, he cites drugstores (the kind with soda fountains), pool halls, and barber shops as examples. Oldenburg calls public gathering spots a "third place" where we can temporarily step out of our household and workplace roles. But as a wide range of gay bars dwindles to a handful of survivors - and the city's diners, indie bookstores, and dive bars yield to high rents and shifting patterns of commerce - that air is becoming the province of an increasingly narrow set of people. "City air makes free," a saying that dates to medieval times, was a favorite of urban-studies pioneer Jane Jacobs. This change is a serious challenge to the city, which has historically been defined by the breadth and variety of its street-level experience - and the wide diversity of people it threw together. In the Boston area, many of Harvard Square's bookstores, Kenmore Square's student eateries, and myriad other places that guaranteed a diverse urban experience have closed their doors, replaced by a far more uniform lineup of bank branches, chain stores, and upscale restaurants.
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In New York, the Jewish deli - a staple of the city's identity - has all but vanished. As gay bars vanish, so go bookstores, diners, and all kinds of spaces that once allowed "blissful public congregation," as sociologist Ray Oldenburg described their function in his 1989 book "The Great Good Place."
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The disappearance of places like Buddies and Chaps may sound like a problem limited to gay men, but it is part of a much larger trend reshaping American cities. (Lesbian bars were never numerous to begin with.) The gay population may have political clout and the right to marry in Massachusetts, but it has fewer and fewer public spaces to call its own. None of the bars I've mentioned are still in business, and most of the city's seven remaining gay-every-night bars have sparse customers for most of the week. Today, that number has been cut to less than half. In all, there were 16 gay bars in Boston and Cambridge, according to Pink Pages directories from 19. In other parts of town, there were Sporters, a friendly Beacon Hill dive, and Playland, a Combat Zone bar known for its sketchy clientele, banged-up piano, and year-round Christmas lights. A few blocks away, Luxor was a video bar for younger guys nearby were Buddies (all ages) and Chaps, a dance club where dressing conservatively meant keeping your shirt on. The Napoleon Club was a piano bar near Park Square that attracted theater students and older men who left big tips on small glasses of red wine. Some of us needed to walk around the block four or five times before finally pushing open a dimly lit, unmarked door.Īt the time, there were plenty of dimly lit doors in Boston. This was not so unusual in the early 1990s, when few gay men identified as such before they left high school. THE FIRST THING I ever did to identify myself as a gay man - before coming out to a friend or relative, before putting a rainbow-flag pin on my jacket - was to walk into a gay bar.