I was looking forward to reading this however, i was unable to finish. This was due to the writing style. I found it very confusing and difficult to follow.

An incredible insight into queer nightlife over the years. Jeremy's account of his personal history with nightlife was intoxicating.

My review of this title was featured as part of my April reading wrap up on my Youtube channel: https://youtu.be/JV45ChWdrjE

My thoughts begin at 16:14

Jeremy Atherton Lin's book Gay Bar is a great amalgamation of bothe memoir and history book. The book centres on not only gay bars but the community he finds or at times doesn't find in them. With Atherton Lin we travel across the western world to look at the gay bars and what they mean to people. How they became a safe haven for the exploration of sexuality, something that has only been legal for just over half a century.

I did feel that sometimes Jeremy Lin Atherton kept you at arms length in the memoir part of Gay Bar and therefore I did find the history sections much more engaging. However, it is an interesting read but not for the faint hearted. If you are offended by reading about sex in its many forms then this may not be the read for you.

Gay Bar by Jeremy Atherton Lin is available now.

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Pretty good account of a subject which has changed so much over the decades. Would have liked a slightly broader history of London gay bars but entertaining nonetheless.

I really enjoyed this book, it is very much a look into the LGBTQ community and its culture and how it has changed over time. The author is very engaging and likable and I suspect that his story mirrors many young people's experiences growing up in this culture. This is a snap shot of the experiences of the author in different places and his experiences and attitudes. I think that this is an important book to read both for those who are part of the LGBTQ community and those who are not.

I loved the in-your-face vigour of this book. I learned a huge amount and felt I discovered these places again with the author. Bold, vibrant and, rightly, unashamed. It's an important work.

I was supplied a review copy by Netgalley for an honest review.

WOW ! This book is exactly what I needed to read currently. As a member of the queer community who has felt cut off due to the pandemic, this tells the story of queer places and their importance in modern society. It tells a vibrant history of queer culture while also being fun, entertaining and literally page turning. I literally binged the whole book in a day and it was worth it.

I really wanted to like Gay Bar: Why We Went Out by Jeremy Atherton, but despite attempting to get into it several times I've ended up DNFing it.

Personally, I found the writing to be similar to having a conversation with someone at a bar who is tipsily reminiscing about days gone by with people I've never met and don't have the chance to know about because the speaker is only sharing the highlights reel.

Over the pages I did read, the author refers to the gay bar culture and discusses the anonymous sex that took place between men, primarily in gay bars. He shares how he and his partner liked to regularly visit the establishments and anonymously join others in the back rooms and dark corners where they both took and gave pleasure with strangers. Unfortunately the memories felt hollow to me, and the emotions fell flat.

I am interested in the history and culture of the Gay Bar era and I had hoped to find myself emerged in the experiences I wasn't there to be a part of. Unfortunately I feel this book is better suited for someone who has a similar history and experiences as the author and is therefore in a position to already identify with them.

Despite this one not being for me, I would like to express my thanks to Netgalley and Granta Publications for providing me with a copy of Gay Bar: Why We Went Out by Jeremy Atherton Lin in exchange for an impartial review. All opinions are my own.

This book is a journey through the author's experience of going to gay bars, starting with an introduction to the bar, its history and also a social exploration of its clientele. He then writes about his own history, his own coming out and adjusting to his sexuality, his own relationships. At times fascinating, the queer and social history of these bars I particularly enjoyed, I was less absorbed by the author's own story, such as when he notices that the bar he frequents has a policy of not allowing any Black or Trans people in, yet he still goes there, even though he knows there are other more diverse bars such as Catch One (see below).
This book is an important addition to the lexicon of queer history, it is a homage to the importance of the Gay Bar even if it's focus is mostly on cis white gay men. For those who would like a more diverse story, I recommend Jewel's Catch one about the fabulous social minded Black lesbian who ran one of the most popular diverse LGBT nightclubs in LA. Or the documentary We came to Sweat about the oldest and longest running LGBT bar in Brooklyn also black owned.

With thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

an excellent exploration of LGBTQI history, weaving together queer theory, personal memoir and monumental occasions, i learnt a lot, would definitely suggest to others

I don’t think I’ve read a book in years that has been so important. Whilst there’s little information about the gay bar experience for POC this was a perfect memoir of the nights in my past.

Both political and fun a reminder of what we had and where we are now. Incredible. I didn’t realise quite how emotional this would be for me.

Brilliant

Reading this book is definitely like going to a gay club and being psychically pummelled by the music because it is so loud, not to mention drowning in a sea of sweaty men. There is a description towards the end of … someplace (names and locations do tend to blur after a while) where Jeremy Atherton Lin describes how the blocked toilets caused piss and spilled drink to flow together onto the dance floor. But all of the dancers had on sensible work boots, for one does not take the plumbing of a gay-men’s bar for granted. Gay men are just like that. Eminently sensible.

Not. ‘Gay Bar’ is an inspired account of what Kirkus politely calls “a writer’s intimate trans-Atlantic history of gay bars”. The word ‘intimate’ is a bit of a euphemism, because what Lin does with this book is give the so-called ‘gay community’ mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and a colonoscopy at the same time. Admittedly that is a strange description, not to mention combination. Then again this is a strange book. Wonderfully, fabulously so.
There are only seven chapters, each representing a specific venue (The Dark Walks, The Factory, The Adelphi, The Windows, The Neighbours, The Apprentice and The Borders), but these seven chapters contain multitudes. Well, continents, regions, districts, communities.

Ultimately, the eye-popping pogoing between a truly bewildering and eclectic array of watering holes across the world (well, at least Europe and the US, which is the entire world to many gays) is quite misleading though, because the real driver propelling the author and his ubiquitous partner is to be found in the sub-title: ‘Why We Went Out’:

We go out to get some. … We go out because we’re thirsty. We go out to return to the thrill of the chase. We want to be in a room full of penises wherein each contains the strong possibility that it is, to use the old-fashioned queer initialism, tbh – to be had. … We go out for the aroma. Some nights just smell like trouble. The city at dusk carries the scent of all its citizens commingled. We head out on the dopamine. There are nights that have an audible pulse, so we dance.
I thought then of two lines from Paul Verlaine: ‘I dance to save myself. And find / Swimming in sweat, it’s in our common breath I fly.’

The above quote is highly indicative of Lin’s writing style: Beautifully modulated and expressive, with a knack of turning a phrase as slick as a drag queen’s nail polish. An impressive array of quotes, ideas and intellectual sparring from commentators, authors, academics (and one suspects just hangers-on) litter the text like glitter on a queen’s boa. Lin wears his formidable knowledge lightly though, and is always careful to engage (and indulge) the reader.

One of the most disarming aspects of ‘Gay Bar’ though is one I only picked up on a fair way into the book. And that only because the character in question is such a part of the background. I am, of course, referring to ‘Famous’, Lin’s moniker for his partner, which apparently is derived from the Leonard Cohen song ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’. No, I don’t get it either, but it is clearly a term of endearment, and after a while becomes an indelible part of the character. Lin writes about his relationship with an aching sense of tenderness, even in such deliberately provocative and transgressive scenes where they take a boy home together from some bar and undress him with a sense of wonderment (and entitlement).

Of course, any reader in enforced pandemic lockdown is likely to be both highly envious, not to mention rather appalled, at the goings-on here. Of which the number is startling, to say the least, and engaged in with a commitment to synaesthesia and general wanton abandonment that is, well, quite alluring. I did say it was a strange book.

We all have fond memories of dingy bars filled with even dodgier people where, despite the tin foil serving as decoration on the bar shelves and the ever-present whiff of disinfectant from the toilets, we came together as some kind of a community. But has this actually ever been the case, Lin questions? “As long as humans survive, there will be social spaces, and they will contain hierarchies negotiated in terms of power and exclusion.”

Nowhere is this perhaps truer than in a gay bar, where the dewy-eyed youngster wandering in from some rural idyll to ‘find himself’ is simply regarded by the lurking old predators as fresh meat, as opposed to an acolyte to which the Torch of Gay Knowledge™ can be, er, gaily passed. And if we still think that gay clubs and bars are a ‘safe space’ to retreat to from an increasingly hostile and dangerous world, we should never forget the Pulse shooting, or the numerous people who have been beaten up or assaulted simply for the socially stigmatising crime of attending a ‘gay venue’.

Lin accuses the bar and club industry of appropriating gay culture for commercial gain, and the LGBTQIA+ community for not only agreeing to, but actively encouraging in this appropriation. Is the bar/club a symbol of the amorphous gay community we belong to by default due to our sexual orientation, or is it a convenient corral or ghetto that keeps the deviants and weirdos safely sequestered from ‘normal’ society?

This is a complex issue, and it is also riven by generational fault lines. Lin notes sniffily that youngsters these days are not only fluid in gender but also in terms of their sense of community, and generally do not have a need to gravitate towards gay-only places and spaces (of which many in their day were racist, misogynist, classist, exclusionary and just generally pretty fucking awful on so many fronts, so who can blame them).

The youngsters, of course, delight in what is politely called ‘roleplay’, but what the Old Guard knows as gender fuckery. This means that not only do they feel equally at home in a ‘straight’ venue, but have no compunction to engage in gratuitous PDAs outside the (mythical) protection of a bona fide gay space. What’s to boot, even if you see two (or more) strangers snogging in such a situation, you have no idea if it is two straight guys just taking the piss, two real gay guys (whatever that means), or a gay guy and his straight friend taking the piss out of each other. It is, as Master Jack noted, a very strange world we live in.

And do not get Lin get started in on the subject of History, which the youngsters seem to think refers to what version of smartphone they currently own, or whether or not their hook-up apps have been properly updated. Youngsters just, well, live in the moment, with nary a care or interest in Culture or Heritage, those other Big Letter words that the Old Guard think they have sole proprietorship of.

If it wasn’t for our Struggle for Gay Rights, or the Sacrifice of the AIDS Era, Where Would You Be Today, Young Man? Lin considers this as circular logic, for the mere fact that we have gender-fluid, well-balanced, relatively sane and unfucked-up kids wandering around is the ultimate affirmation of the Struggle’s success. We hope.
I found it a bit difficult to figure out which side of the fence Lin himself straddles (sorry, one has to beware of bad puns in a review of a gay book). On the one hand, he excoriates the homonormative behaviour of ‘gay couples’ wanting to ‘marry’. But then he notes that all he has to do in order for Famous to get a visa and for them to live together forever, happily, is to become homonormative. Yes, Lin seems to say, there is a great big old rainbow out there for everyone.

I really liked the premise of this non-fiction work. Jeremy Atherton Lin explores, largely via memoir, the significance of the gay bar in the forging of the LGBTQ+ community, bringing with it a sense of belonging. At a time when bars and pubs and nightclubs have greatly diminished in number and where the survival of those left is threatened by extended lockdowns and coronavirus restrictions it is important that we recognise these venues as part of our LGBTQ+ history, our present and hopefully, our future.
The author focuses on those places he knows well beginning in more or less present day South London, moving to the Los Angeles of his college days, back to London where he meets his long-term partner, referred to as Famous Blue Raincoat, to San Francisco where the two set up home together returning to London once civil partnerships becomes legal here, with a brief sojourn to the bars of Blackpool.
This book is strongest when it is dealing with history. Initially, we are plunged graphically into the sleaze of the cruising bars in Vauxhall and then on to the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, an institution for generations, which does deserve its own thorough examination and the author does well to bring this extraordinary venue to life. I used to frequent it regularly over 30 years ago and memories and the unique feel of the place is evoked by Jeremy Atherton Lin’s writing.
The focus on all the bars is great, I enjoyed the author’s perception of them at the time when he was frequenting them. It is no fault of his, obviously, but you often get the sense that he has missed the boat, time-wise. The LA of his college days is a pale shadow of its heyday, ravaged by the decimation of the gay population through AIDS and in most of the other areas he is visiting places past their prime. This is due to chronology but in many ways it feels typical of the gay bar set-up, on a quiet night there will always be someone to tell you how busy it was the night before!
The author broadens his focus to encompass, well everything, and this is where the book slips for me. He has much to say about the gay experience and it is extremely worth saying but it’s a scattergun approach of digressions and the books loses the structure I was enjoying so much initially. It becomes a mish-mash of history, of gay culture, of memoir, of essay. I would have got more out of the memoir aspect if I felt I knew more about the author and Famous but I was kept very much at arm’s length, which for biography doesn’t work that well for me.
I do think that there is a tremendous book hidden in here with some extremely quotable passages which sum up the gay nightlife experience better than I’ve ever read. Here are a couple of examples:
“It dawned on me that many of the people we used to know to say hello to we never really knew. We just enjoyed recognizing faces.”
“Gays can relax in a gay bar, people will say, but I went out for the tension in the room.”
“We once flattered ourselves that all popular culture was subversively designed to amuse gay men. It’s become apparent gay men are there to make popular culture amusing to everybody else”.
And with February’s LGBT+ History Month just behind us he quotes Michael Warner from “The Trouble With Normal” (1999), which is another reminder why our stories still need to be told;
“In the queer world memory is very fragile. You don’t learn from your parents how the gay world is structured. So there’s not a whole lot of intergenerational transfer.”
I think that this is a significant work but for me it was a little overpowering in its structure, the many elements did not mesh as well as I had hoped, so it just misses out on being a book I would want to keep on my bookshelves. Just occasionally I wonder if I am too harsh in my judgements and that time will see a book linger in my memory, displaying a lasting power that I had not anticipated. This might be one such book where I could become convinced to revise my opinion. The audience for it is niche but that audience would certainly be drawn by Jeremy Atherton Lin’s attack and relish of his subject.

Gay Bar was published by Granta on 4th March 2021. Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

This book manages to weave together vast stories of the changing nature of queer nightlife, the joys and sorrows that it can bring, and a truly wide sense of history, but never loses its sense of fun.

Focusing mostly on various spots in the UK and US, we trace the movement towards wider queer acceptance, and what this means for the clubs, bars and community spaces around them. Some bars and pubs act as the centre of revolution, revolt and change. Some merely mirror these changes. And some close or morph beyond recognition when the community shifts- either growing younger, older or less inclined towards a certain demographic.

Jeremy Atherton Lin has done something truly special here, and this book feels both so fun (packed with sordid, sexy and silly anecdotes) but also so political and vital.

I received an advance copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

Gay Bar: Why We Went Out is a fusion of memoir and cultural history as Jeremy Atherton Lin charts the gay bars he's visited, their importance in his life, and the wider history of gay bars as spaces in cities like London, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Split into sections that broadly cover different locations that he's lived or gone out in, the book looks back both through a personal lens and a historical one, thinking not only about gay bars as a place, but also about the cultural around them and how 'gay culture' has evolved.

Starting this book, I expected more of a history of gay bars, but the subtitle is important: it's more about that personal 'why' and how places impact a person. Jeremy Atherton Lin weaves his life throughout, notably a romance that starts on a night in Soho and reflects on being a mixed-race man in gay spaces. The memoir element is enjoyable, giving a sense of being out with him in these places and bringing together a topic that otherwise might seem disparate (so the focus is on the gay bars that he's been to, not all the 'best' examples, whatever that could be). There's something great about people's personal experiences with LGBTQ spaces, like you or a friend are describing how places have been important to you, or you've met someone in a bar explaining the history to you.

It's a weird time to be reading a book like this, when people haven't been able to go out in a long time mostly, and that adds to the yearning sense of losing history as many gay bars close. There's a good underlying criticality and reflection about some of the issues around gay bars, from race to what rules spaces impose, but ultimately it is about one person (well, at many points, two) and their experiences in gay bars, and that gives it a lot of heart.