RIP Gay Clubs and their Affirming Debauchery

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 12:04pm

Wonderful article about gay clubs closing across the globe

[best12bars]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 12:08pm

The Internet is killing the clubs.

Just another version of shopping online.

[best12bars]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 12:19pm

I will add that I'm a little surprised that it's this widespread and causing so much impact. I guess it's a symptom of the on-demand behavior that our younger generations who grew up "pointing and clicking" at what they wanted have adopted.

For me, clubbing wasn't only about the "thrill of the kill" or even the "hunt." It was the whole process and experience. (Just like that ancient Japanese tea ceremony). I enjoyed the journey as much as I enjoyed the end result. A lot of wisdom in that ancient ceremony, actually.

I had fun in my clubbing days. I remember them fondly even if I have no desire to repeat them.

It's sad to me how much the Internet is robbing people of so many "non-virtual" experiences in the name of goal-oriented, results-driven impulses.

[Addison D.]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 12:20pm

I never tired of that moment when you had checked your coat and walked through the doors at the Roxy. The space seemed so cavernous--almost Piranesian--with the strobe lights shafting through the haze, and the crowds of sweaty, shirtless men packed together stretching as far as the eye could see. It never stopped feeling like an exotic, secret world.

In my day, straight boys had their "Glory Days" in high school. We had ours a few years later, when we came out and danced through those long, beautiful nights.

Read 'Dancer from the Dance' and let Andrew Holleran describe the beautiful, sacred sense of community that existed on the dance floor.

[HorseTears]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 12:29pm

Addison, Besty - Thanks. I love hearing these remembrances from the glory days of gay clubbing. And, I learned a new word: Piranesian.

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 12:40pm

"I have the urge to wear a black mesh top and dance to a remix of “Taps.”

That made me laugh

As we become more accepted, we become more gentrified and it's kind of a sad thing.

[Kad]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 12:47pm

It's easy to point a finger at the Internet and smartphones. But the clubs and the fond memories linked with them were from a time in which those clubs were some of the few safe, communal places for gay men. Those secret worlds have been opened up.

[best12bars]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 12:48pm

Are there more mixed clubs now?

[PalJoey]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 12:51pm

I feel like we are our parents, trying to describe how much fun it was to fox trot at nightclubs...

Updated On: 3/21/14 at 12:51 PM

[Kad]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 12:54pm

There are just clubs.

[SonofRobbieJ]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 12:55pm

My parents used to tell me about doing 'The Fish.' Apparently, it was filthy. In the mid-50's.

I was never much for clubbing. I only went to see how long it would take me to get in. I just told my Tunnel story a few days ago to a 30-year-old gay who was speaking of it with reverence. I should have punched him in the throat. When I did get the urge to indulge in the dance, Pyramid on a Friday night was what I enjoyed most.

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 12:55pm

And, (I'm going to sound like an old man here, but...) it wasn't that many years back that going out was dangerous. Kids today have no idea what it felt like to make a trip to the gay part of town. Maybe get laid, maybe get your ass kicked....

I liked that what we had was OURS, and it was like a fantastic secret. We would all be hiding a bit in our day to day lives, but when we hit the clubs, we were as FANTASTIC as we wanted to be!

Now, we are EXPECTED to be fantastic 24/7, and that takes all the fun out of it.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 12:56pm

I need to re-read Dancer from the Dance. One of the few gay classics that I liked even more than I expected to (I've yet to read anything else by Holleran, not that he has a huge output.)

I think the internet plays a part. I also think it's generational. I'm completing, after years, my grad studies so am around a lot of younger students (I'm in my early 30s) and they all go clubbing still just as much as I remember going. But there's WAY WAY less of an emphasis for the gay guys on going to gay clubs. I think Kad largely pointed it out correctly. It's easy to wax nostalgic, the way I have some older friends who go on about the joys of cruising. And in many ways I'm sure actual cruising was better than grindr or whatever, but in other ways I'm not sure it actually was...

[best12bars]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 12:56pm

They were called cotillions back then. Folks would go a-courtin' and "set" on the front porch after. LOL

I have no doubt the Internet has put a serious dent in attendance for the people who were just there to hook up and leave. But others went to dance and drink and socialize. I assume they're still going somewhere to boogie (oogie oggie).

[Addison D.]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 12:58pm

There's no point in yearning for the past--even an unambiguously perfect past, if such a thing exists.

In the case of the gay ghetto, there is too much that is wonderful, healthy and cause for celebration about the progress the LGBT community has made for me to ever wish for a return to the old days, and I'm grateful that I lived to see the day when (you can fill in the blank with so many things).

I'm also grateful for my years in the clubs and I am sorry they are gone.

Sorry/grateful, I guess.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 1:00pm

It's not the internet that has spurred this evolution. It's the assimilating world young people come out into. It's a world where the gay kids go out with the straight kids. It's different. You see it in all sorts of ways. Gayborhoods have shifted and many essentially disappeared. De facto community centers like gay and lesbian bookstores continue to dwindle. It's not like it once was because now isn't then. Has it ever been?

[JerseyGirl2]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 1:29pm

My club was my escape. I drove 45 minutes every other weekend or so and had an absolute blast. I never picked anyone up. That wasn't even on my radar. I just wanted to be surrounded by gay people. It was the first time I ever really allowed myself to even question my own sexuality. It was the first place where I really felt like me, away from my middle sized town and the people who had known me my whole life.

I suppose now kids can create their own escapes online. It's just not the same.

[Kad]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 1:41pm

A lot of kids now don't need to move out to the city and go to a club to find their community. There are gay-straight alliances in high schools, and if not there then teenagers are certainly more open and are able to come out in their grade school years.

And yes- the internet does facilitate that and I don't get why it's being generalized as something anti-social. It's the opposite, and it's bringing what was once one of the major drives of moving to the city to the homes of gay kids in small towns. It's the dissemination of acceptance, from the cities to the rest of the country.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 1:45pm

I've met more people to date and/or screw around with since the advent of the internet than I ever did before. I've never really been the type that gets hit on in public. Going out, I always tended to feel more like a nuisance than anything else.

I was never much of a club person. I don't really like crowds and thumping music. To me, clubs were for doing drugs and even then I'd still rather get the drugs there and take them some place more peaceful.

Updated On: 3/21/14 at 01:45 PM

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 3/21/14 at 4:06pm

It's the assimilating world young people come out into.

I agree. The attraction of gay clubs to the young had to do with being something of a unique and protective haven of escape. For me, in the mid-to-late 80s, there weren't many other options in Houston. I started sneaking in at age 17 (a fabulous story involving drag queens and an aggressive teen lesbian). I had something of an unhealthy addiction to them for about a year when I was 19, but by the time I was of legal drinking age, I was pretty much over the clubs.

Now, it's no longer about the exclusivity or the mystique. Yes, there is still the underlying camaraderie (which is far more prevalent in bars than clubs) and perhaps some sex appeal to the dance floor, but (and this may just be my age showing) the music playing usually kills it. The only dance clubs in the US I have enjoyed in the last decade or so have all been C&W. Better music and better crowd.

[HorseTears]

Posted: 3/22/14 at 3:34am

I love this thread. I know I'm totally romanticizing an age I never experienced, but just for a day, I want to go back there and walk into some magical club like The Trocadero Transfer and get lost in the disco lights and body heat as Sylvester serenades us from the balcony.

BTW, if you're ever in London, SF or NY the "Horse Meat Disco" club nights are great fun. Excellently curated dj sets that loving reference, but don't parody, the feel of late 70s/early 80s disco, gorgeous "alternative" (you know, tatoo'd, un-plucked, natural looking) guys and a surprisingly unpretentious and friendly atmosphere.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 3/22/14 at 8:35am

Is it just the online connection option, or is it that with greater visibility and acceptance in many places, people find it easier to meet through friends, relatives, work, interests, etc.?

I find it odd that online connections can fully replace the fun of meeting people out and about. Whether we are talking about looking for Mr. Right Now, Mr. Right, or bar buddy rapport, I can't relate to it. How can one possibly know if there's any real interest in getting to know someone - however that's defined - from a little text and two dimensional photos? In terms of looking for Mr. Right, how many coffee dates can one go on when so many of them are so likely to disappoint? If it's just sex, then isn't it hotter to cruise in three dimensions? Isn't the seductiveness of cruising and flirting in three dimensions still alluring to people? I'm an "old married guy" and this may be a Countess Aurelia question, as:

My memories all are enchanted,
My memories burn in my head with a steady glow;
So if, my friends, if clubs are dead,
I don't want to know.




Updated On: 3/22/14 at 08:35 AM

[Addison D.]

Posted: 3/22/14 at 9:40am

I certainly agree with you Henrik. The on-line hook-up experience seems so coldly efficient and linear. There was no way, though, that the Internet was not going to become a tool for men--and that goes double for the gayz--to find sex. The ease and efficiency of it--get your trick and some porn delivered to your door with just a few clicks!--made its popularity inevitable, and likely contributed to the demise of the romantic, seduction of cruising and flirting. When you consider that "romantic cruising and flirting" for many people meant driving 100 miles to the nearest gay bar or looking for sex in highway rest-stops--only to get the crap kicked out of them--I don't think it's wrong to say that technology made hooking up better.

In the 1940's and 1950's, we discovered all the myriad ways in which technology could improve our food--preservatives, fast food, emulsifiers and tenderizers and flavor enhancers and all the other goodies that promised a life of nutrition and convenience. Many people now feel that we lost too much of value in the process--flavor, texture, variety and nutrition to name a few. The notion of buying "real" food that has been grown and produced locally by "real" people is, increasingly, informing the way we shop, prepare and eat food. People are discovering that our Grandmothers "knew" a tremendous amount about nutrition and diet without really knowing anything about nutrition and diet.

No doubt, if we live long enough, we will see "the kids" discovering the joys of the experiences whose passing you lament. Just sit tight, eat your (locally grown and sustainably harvested) vegetables and wait.

Updated On: 3/22/14 at 09:40 AM

[best12bars]

Posted: 3/22/14 at 10:13am

Look how much time people spend on message boards like these, or on Facebook, rather than talking face to face in a (non-virtual) social setting.

I don't think you can put the entire reason of a lack of "bodies in clubs" on the Internet, but to say it doesn't have a huge impact? I don't agree at all. It has plenty to do with it.

[DottieD'Luscia]

Posted: 3/22/14 at 11:22am

Like I've said before, we're so connected that we've become disconnected.