The Bars Are Ours

Description

Gay bars have operated as the most visible institutions of the LGBTQ+ community in the United States for the better part of a century, from before gay liberation until after their assumed obsolescence. In The Bars Are Ours Lucas Hilderbrand offers a panoramic history of gay bars, showing how they served as the medium for queer communities, politics, and cultures. Hilderbrand cruises from leather in Chicago and drag in Kansas City to activism against gentrification in Boston and racial discrimination in Atlanta; from New York City’s bathhouses, sex clubs, and discos and Houston’s legendary bar Mary’s to the alternative scenes that reimagined queer nightlife in San Francisco and Latinx venues in Los Angeles. The Bars Are Ours explores these local sites—with additional stops in Denver, Detroit, Seattle, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, and Orlando, as well as Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Texas—to demonstrate the intoxicating, even world-making roles that bars have played in queer public life across the country. Lucas Hilderbrand offers a panoramic history of gay bars in the United States, demonstrating the central roles that bars have played in queer public life across the country. Lucas Hilderbrand is Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Irvine, and author of Inherent Vice: Bootleg Histories of Videotape and Copyright, also published by Duke University Press, and Paris Is Burning: A Queer Film Classic. Preface. Drunk History, or I Just Wanna Hear a Good Beat  xiii
Acknowledgments. I Feel Love/Can’t Get You Out of My Head  xxi
Introduction. We Were Never Being Boring  1
Part I. Cultures
1. Nights in Black Leather: Inventing a Bar Culture in Chicago  37
Interlude 1. Triangle Lounge in Denver  62
2. Show Me Love: Female Impersonation and Drag in Kansas City  68
Interlude 2. Safe Spaces in Detroit  94
Part II. Politics
3. Somewhere There’s a Place for Us: Urban Renewal, Gentrification, and Class Conflicts in Boston  101
Interlude 3. Seattle Counseling Service  124
4. Midtown Goddam: Discrimination, Coalition, and Community in Atlanta  127
Interlude 4. Gay Switchboard in Philadelphia  151
Part III. Institutions
5. Welcome to the Pleasuredome: Legends of Sex and Dancing in New York  157
Interlude 5. The Saloon in Mineapolis  192
6. Proud Mary’s: An Institution in Houston  198
Interlude 6. The Main Club in Superior, WI  220
Part IV. Reinventions
7. Further Tales of the City: Queer Parties in Post-disco San Francisco  227
Interlude 7. The Casa Nova in Somerset County, PA  255
8. Donde Todo es Diferente: Queer Latinx Nightlife in Los Angeles / Researched and Written with Dan Bustillo  260
Interlude 8. Mable Peabody’s Beauty Parlor and Chainsaw Repair in Denton, TX  289
After Hours. Pulse in Orlando  294
Appendix 1. Selected Bars and Clubs  303
Appendix 2. LGBTQ+ Periodicals  313
Notes  317
Bibliography  395
Contributors  425
Index

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