Gay bars are closing, but queer nightlife is still thriving

Open this photo in gallery:

Amin Ghaziani is a professor of sociology and the Canada Research Chair in Urban Sexualities at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of the new book Long Live Queer Nightlife.

Vancouver is hosting Canada Pride this year with the theme of “Infinite Horizons.” More than just words, the phrase is an invitation to look beyond the immediate view toward the limitless potential of LGBTQ+ lives.

As a resident of this coastal city, I have felt an incredible energy building in the weeks leading up to the celebrations. Yet I can’t help but wonder about the symbolism of an abundant horizon in the context of alarming public conversations about the state of the gay bar.

In London, a global capital of finance and culture, the number of gay bars declined by 58 per cent in the first two decades of the 2000s, falling in number from 125 to just 53 remaining venues. This decline is part of a much bigger pattern. In the United States, 41 per cent of gay bars closed during the same period. Germans call the crisis “clubsterben,” translated grimly as “club death.”

Canadian casualties also abound. Club 120, once described as “one of the most inclusive nightclubs in Toronto,” closed in 2020 after 14 years on Church Street. Fredericton’s Boom! Nightclub, the only gay bar in the city, shuttered a year later. And then, just last year, The Backlot, known as the Cheers of Calgary’s LGBTQ+ communities, closed its doors for good.

A dour tone is widespread these days as we catch on to a growing problem of boarded-up bars. But what does this mean for the future? Are we in the midst of a nightlife drought – or worse, its death?

I have been studying these questions for nearly a decade. The answer to me is clear: No. But nightlife is evolving.

Gay bars were and often still are a radical invention. No matter how much better things become, knowing there is a door you can walk through where you can be yourself and be surrounded by others like you is a source of unending power. Historically, that power derived from experiencing the gay bar as a refuge from the heteronormative world.

But today, there are people who need a refuge from the refuge.

One study found that 80 per cent of Black respondents, 79 per cent of Asian respondents and 75 per cent of South Asian respondents reported experiencing racial bias from within LGBTQ communities.

Opinion: The LGBTQ community has Pride, but it also has prejudice

Far from the gay bar, with its largely white, cisgender, gay male clientele, buzzes a dazzling scene of underground parties – club nights – where queer, trans and BIPOC individuals are reclaiming the night in the name of those left out for too long. Club nights, as one reveller told me, are designed for the most marginalized groups within the queer community.

These parties are popping up around the world: QNA in Los Angeles; Bubble_T in New York; Rice Cake in Vancouver; Club Koi in Miami; New Ho Queen in Toronto, as well as Jerk, a biannual party that follows the influence of the Caribbean on club cultures. Bambii, the organizer, explained its origins in ways that clarify the idea of a refuge from the refuge: “A big issue is lack of representation. The people with power, money and access to venues are older white males. For a lot of artists who fall outside those margins, DIY spaces are the only way to make noise in the city on their own terms.”

Unlike gay bars, which are anchored in particular parts of the city, club nights are spatially mobile events. “You have to look much deeper to see what’s really happening right now,” Laurie, the organizer of The Chateau in London, said to me. “I think queer nightlife is thriving, but things are just changing.” How so? I asked. “The way that queer people are operating now is outside of permanent venues. That doesn’t have to be the way that queer spaces operate.” How do you operate? “We are a temporary space; we’re a pop-up.”

The gay bar might be in trouble, but bars are not the sum total of nightlife.

I think loss can be an invitation to create something new. And so, the shuttering of gay bars has sparked a revolution through evolution. When you hear that word, revolution, it’s easy to imagine something big and dramatic and impossible to miss. But subtle or softer revolutions are also possible.

Whether in Britain, the U.S. or here in Canada, club nights are places where queer, trans and BIPOC groups imagine something grand, like infinite horizons of intentional inclusion, and enact that vision on the dance floor. These parties create “a space that allows you to starfish and stretch out,” one partygoer remarked in joyous tones. I smiled and repeated the phrase, to starfish and stretch out. “Yeah, to starfish out. That’s what I want to do. In most spaces, I don’t necessarily feel I can starfish,” but at club nights, “you feel at home, like you can just take up the whole bed.”