Jeremy Atherton Lin

“Gay bars aren’t what they used to be“ — a complaint that you hear everywhere you go these days (especially if you’re somewhere other than a gay bar…). If people aren’t campaigning to keep their local bar open amidst threats of redevelopment, they are complaining about the way it has filled up with hen-parties, or how drinks are too expensive, or that they’re fed up with listening to disco, or that the only men you find in there are the ones who are too decrepit to work out how to use Grindr...
Jeremy Atherton Lin has lived in Los Angeles, San Francisco and London, and he has drunk, danced and cruised in numerous famous establishments that have subsequently closed down or changed their characters (even the London bar featured in the opening chapter has closed its doors by the time we get to the end of the book). In this book, he combines a kind of personal memoir of going out with a more objective look at the history of the gay bar as a cultural phenomenon, and tries to debunk some of our cosy preconceptions. Bars are inherently risky places where we go looking for the thrill of meeting strangers, and where the owners are trying to make money by selling us a lot of alcohol. Any sense of “safe space” or “community” is an accidental side-effect.
There probably never was a “golden age” when everything was better: in the fifties you would have to be in the know even to find a gay bar, and would risk getting beaten up by cops if you frequented it; nowadays gay culture has become so mainstream that it has almost been diluted to nothing, and it’s easier to meet strangers for sex on a mobile phone than at a bar. And in between we had to deal with AIDS and Thatcher and queer-bashing and all sorts of other lovely things.
Although Lin has a lot of bad experiences to describe here (perhaps his lowest point is when he and his partner go to Blackpool for a weekend…) he manages to be very funny about a lot of them, and to convey at least some of the nocturnal magic that has kept him partying against all reason and common sense for the last few decades. Fun.… (altro)

I agree with one of the reviewers in the back of the book. This is hard to pin down.

Originally I thought it was going to be some sort of sociology thing but the first couple of chapters are a kind of cris de couer and I feared it would turn into an old man shouting at clouds. But then it changed into a kind of annoying circuit boy tour from London to SF to LA to London.

But I finally realized it was a memoir of someone getting older with the changes in attitudes that come along with that and at the same time being winsomely nostalgic. He swings between thinking things were better in the past then becoming aware of his privilege and realizing things were better in the past /for him/ even though that past was often dangerous and brutal (especially under Thatcher).

Early on, I was ready to dismiss the book but it's an engaging read even if it takes a while to figure it out. The author seems similar in age to myself, and from much larger cities, so it experiences don't parallel exactly but much of it is relatable.

The most interesting part of the book, as in most of them, are the thoughts you have after you've finished it. And it has a perfect ending.… (altro)