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Gay bars vs straight bars

  
 
Ganesh
01:28 / 10.10.04
This is in the Conversation because it's a casual observation - and probably a rather fatuous one - based on this evening's pubular experiences.

Firstoff, I had a colleague's birthday do in ONANON, in Piccadilly. Despite sounding encouragingly like masturbation, it was anything but self-pleasure: an unappealingly corporate twentysomething meat-market, it exemplified a particular form of slightly-desperate straightness I've not tasted for a year or two. We managed approximately an hour before making our excuses and leaving. In that time, I had two people assume I was hetero (despite having introduced Xoc as my partner), one woman make 'ewww' faces when I commented on her male friend's cuteness, and one veil-toting female from a hen party drag me off to meet her friends ("I have to bring back a man with a goatee"). I really like the birthday colleague, but I'm slightly appalled at her choice of venue. I guess I'd forgotten what really big straight clubs can be like.

The other thing I'd forgotten was the edge of anxiety, the feeling that, if I brushed against someone on my way to the toilet or touched my partner too obviously, I risked violent confrontation with a mini-me alpha male in the making. That feeling was ever-present in ONANON.

Having fled, we headed south to Duckie, a familiar bolt-hole wherein we felt safe and sane. Tonight's cabaret was the rather wonderful LaQuisha Jonz, and the Readers' Wifes played '9 to 5', 'Teenage Rampage' and 'The Chant of the Ever-Circling Skeletal Family'. I could fondle my partner's bits without fear.

I realise this isn't entirely a fair comparison. Duckie isn't a typical gay venue (it's "post-gay" apparently) and I daresay ONANON isn't a typical straight bar. It seemed similar to some gay bars, though, in that it was basically a pick-up joint - albeit a mammoth eight-bar pick-up joint over three floors. I suspect that, over the last three years I've spent in London, I've got used to spending my Saturday nights in places where I can maul Xoc without having to watch my back - and hanging out in a central twentysomething straight bar is always gonna seem alien. It seemed particularly uncomfortable this evening.

I'm not sure what the point of this thread is. I guess I'd be interested to hear from Barbeloids of any orientation who've spent time socialising in bars designated either 'straight' or 'gay', and what they've experienced of each.

On y'go.
 
 
Mourne Kransky
02:11 / 10.10.04
Poor straight people. How do you stay so cheerful without the pretty boyz and the good music?
 
 
iconoplast
05:37 / 10.10.04
Rock nights, concerts, and clubs that aren't meatmarkets allow us to compensate.

Though, if you don't drink and you don't want to pick people up, any meatmarket bar - gay or straight - is equally obnoxious if the music isn't right.
 
 
Cherielabombe
09:21 / 10.10.04
I think back when I was 18, I really liked straight meat-market clubs. I think this was because I was not yet jaded and had just discovered the joys of being away from home, dancing and drinking, and kissing someone on the dance floor I'd just met an hour ago. I ignored the smell of puke that invariably emanated from the bathrooms, and I actually enjoyed downing one Sex on the Beach after another.

It was at about this time that I went to my first gay club as well, and, although I was still kind of getting used to seeing boys and girls kiss and cuddle each other, but I remember although I felt a bit freaked out by this sight, I loved the idea that people could "let their hair down" and be who they really were at the gay bar (gay bar). Needless to say I became a regular at said gay club (it was the 620 club in Iowa City, Iowa - I wonder if it still exists? ).

Anyhoo, now that I'm older and %much more sophisticated and wise about the world% I think most who know me know I gravitate towards the gay clubs, though as far as I can tell I'm not gay myself. Why?

Well for starters I'm not as "charmed" by the meat market of a large mainstream straight club as I once was. I don't really want some dude pinching my butt or trying to pick me up by telling me how much money he makes or that he's got a house blah blah blech! Not all straight clubs are like this, of course, but I've been to enough that ARE like this to put me off.

On the flip side there are straight clubs where the music is great and that aren't cheesy, but I have found, and maybe this is my own insecurity, that often such clubs are very "cool" and I am not as "cool" as the clientele. Maybe this is a London thing - or maybe this is a Hoxton thing, I dunno, but that's been my experience.

I do think Duckie is unique in that it's "post-gay" and also the club is obviously not hung up on being cool or posturizing as many clubs both straight and gay are - which somehow makes Duckie "cool" by not focusing on it. I think you find more gay clubs that are just in general more friendly and chilled than straight bars, which is not to say that there aren't annoying gay bars out there as well, but maybe it's something to do with the letting your hair down and being who you wanna be is by definition more likely to exist in a gay club, whereas many straight clubs have the tyrranny of heterosexuality thing going on, in the form of "I MUST FIND A MAN/maybe tonight is the night I will meet Mr. Right," etc. Just a thought.

I have been to straight bars similar in a way to Duckie in that they were kind of quirky and laid back etc., I'm thinking in particular of Marie's Riptide Lounge and the Hungry Brain in Chicago, but again I think these places are the exception and you have to look harder for them.

Finally, I am continually amazed at the God-awful places that work colleagues in particular drag you to somehow thinking that they're cool or fun places to hang out at. If another work colleague tells me that her birthday drinks are taking place in Ha! Ha! I really don't know what I'll do.

That said, I should mention that I had an absolute blast with a work colleague at TGIFridays in Covent Garden on Friday. But of course we were enjoying the overpriced drinks and cheezy music/clientele in a knowing, ironic way...
 
 
Nobody's girl
12:05 / 10.10.04
Ganesh, I assume you have visited CC's in Edinburgh? Come to think of it, I wouldn't be at all surprised if you weren't a New Town Bar sorta guy... Anyway, when anyone talks to me about a club being a "meat market" CC's is my first revulsed thought. That's not to say I don't know exactly the sort of straight club you're talking about (for example- Revolution aka Century 2000 back in the day). That's why I hate clubs

Honestly, I don't think I've ever really enjoyed clubbing. Gay or straight; the music is predominantly shit and too loud to talk, the drinks are too expensive, the sordid shagging in the loos is depressing, dancing would be fun if the music were ever good and the constant air of potential violence is unsettling.

The only clubbing experience I ever enjoyed was an indie night in Manchester. The music kicked ass (they even played Morrissey) and I danced the night away.
 
 
Linus Dunce
21:56 / 10.10.04
CC Bloom's, right? Been there. Black Cap in Camden? Been there. Heaven (as was), Pop Stars (though that is mixed),etc., etc. A gay bar is a good place to go if you want to have a drink and a chat after hours without having to worry about the "mini-me alpha male" types picking a fight with you. That said, I mostly go to straight pubs/bars, whatever they are, or rather, I go to bars where people like me hang out. Onanon is a straight bar, but it is not an archetype. It is there to recreate the kind of provincial, territorial, homogenic bar that many of the transient, office-working, bridge-and-tunnel-and-beyond population of London grew up in. I would just as soon go to Onanon as I would march Pride in chaps and a 'tache.
 
 
Lord Morgue
07:35 / 11.10.04
I'm with you on the Alpha male shit. I can't walk into a club without some coked-up roid ape trying to steal a chair. I'm like "Do these handbags look like they're mine, Brainiac?!" but my "I'll fight you, but I'm not getting up from this chair" thing usually confuses them long enough for a passing butterfly to distract them into grazing somewhere else.
 
 
Hattie's Kitchen
11:51 / 11.10.04
These days I spend my time equally divided between gay and straight bars. When I first came to London, I did the whole CandyBar/Vespa/Minories thing (now they are prime examples of meat markets), being none the wiser, 'cos that's where all the lesbos where. I got jaded with that scene in, oooh, 2 weeks.

Flame me for saying it, but the gay scene is so much more geared towards picking up - it's rare to find somewhere where you can just sit down, chill out without feeling like you have to keep your antennas twitching. If I go to a gay place these days, it's likely to be something more selective like French Kiss or DTPM because at least I know they'll play music that I'm into.

I've never had a problem going to straight places, and sometimes I prefer it - having spent a lot of time in various gay and lesbo pick-up places, I can go to a straight bar and not feel that kind of intimidation or pressure and can get on with the serious business of getting E'd off my face and dancing.

Obviously, some straight places are as rough as fuck and I would think twice before snogging my partner in there, such as any of the bars in Liverpool's cavern quarter, but in other straight places it's not an issue, particularly if the crowd are a mixed bunch - my partner dragged me along to a works leaving do at Strawberry Moons a few weeks ago, one of the straightest places I'd ever been in, handbags on the dancefloor and everything, and no-one batted an eyelid at us liplocking on the dancefloor.

Perhaps it's because gay culture is so much more visible now, and the divide is not so great as it used to be.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
12:00 / 11.10.04
A few months ago the girls who were my housemates at university came down to London and at first it was great- went out for a meal in Chinatown, went over to a party in some bar in Shoreditch- but then my mad old friend who later became my housemate let her bad taste kick in and dragged us to this bar off Leicester Square called Ruby Blue. Naturally I approached with trepidation, especially when I saw the typically awful entrance hall carpet and then I got inside and the part of me that's not so straight started screaming- get me the fuck out of here you stupid bitch, these men and women are monsters, if they find out what you truly are they may kill you. It really was that dramatic. I managed to stay in there for an hour and a half, managed to avoid drinking from the test tube they bought me, managed to avoid mauling hands and didn't experience too many predatory eyes. It was like a jungle though and I'm really more of an urban girl.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
12:12 / 11.10.04
Ahem. *Puts on dry academic voice*:

my partner dragged me along to a works leaving do at Strawberry Moons a few weeks ago, one of the straightest places I'd ever been in, handbags on the dancefloor and everything, and no-one batted an eyelid at us liplocking on the dancefloor.

Having been to Strawberry Moons (once. Never again), I think this might not be quite so acceptance-based as you think. Social affection between two women, up to and including snogging each other's faces off, is looked upon far more kindly particularly in masculine company, I suspect because there is something mystical about it in the first place that men can't entirely process, and so delineating it sharply is pretty much impossible, whereas the structured and furtive rituals through which straight-identifying men organise ways to touch each other are a lot easier for the straight-identifying man to comprehend and thus identify behaviour outside of. I'm not sure Ganesh and Xoc, as our sexual litmus, would have gotten by quite so easily. Then again, I may be underestimating massively the Gee army's metrosexuality...
 
 
Hattie's Kitchen
12:35 / 11.10.04
Social affection between two women, up to and including snogging each other's faces off, is looked upon far more kindly particularly in masculine company

Depends where you are and the context of the situation. Perhaps in Strawberry Moons no-one cared because they thought we were two straight girlies playing at being bi in order to get the attention off the men, and also because, like I said, some straight places have a more relaxed anything-goes atmosphere.

And also, again, there are some places were kissing my partner, regardless of whether we're female or male, would guarantee an instant torrent of abuse off the knuckle-scraping inhabitants of certain straight places I've frequented.
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
14:10 / 11.10.04
well yes. And in the moment of wanting to kiss your girlfriend, you're unlikely to care much about the difference bewteen a place where you don't get hassled because people are open-minded/don't give a damn, and one where you don't get hassled because you may be eyecandy.

Hattie, *are* you eyecandy? *g*

Actually, a slightly serious question, that About presentation.

As I'd guess, the more butch yr presentation, the less the eyecandy=acceptance thing operates...

Mind you, I do think that women have this second, lesser-of-two-evils(ie, not being harassed but being quietly perved over) option much more often because right now, only women are considered to have eyecandy status.

Which is very unfair, when you like watching cute boyz kiss. Ahem.

Hmmm.
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
14:30 / 11.10.04
Hmmm.

Straight vs. gay bars.

It's not, as I think several people are saying, quite that simple. There are other questions of style/culture of a place.

Nesh's original comparison doesn't work for me, in that, as he acknoweledges, he's not comparing like with like.

And for me, there are plenty of place 'on both sides' where kissing my partner would be a big no-no

Like Hattie, on discovering I liked gurls, I tried the Candy Bar. I hated it. DIdn't like the atmosphere, the attitude, the style.

Got into several (not physical, tho' once or twice, not far off) fights because I was young and nervous enough to want acceptance, but old and bolshy enough to refuse to hide the fact that I like boys too.

And to point out the 'so you want me to hide/lie about who I am' hypocrisy.

Looking back and with a far broader experience 0of women's bars, gay space etc, I never was going to like the CB as to me it's not much different to a type of straight bar that I wouldn't touch with a bargepole.

A wise friend pointed out that I wouldn't be likely to go to any of the bars in the area, so why, just because it was a women's bar, did I feel the need to go there?

These days, it's a mixture.

My favourite local gay pub is one that's very much queer space first, but has aimed to foster queer mixed space, gay boyz and grrls together (the scene down here is IMO(and I'd be interested in others' opinions on this)), very segregated along gender lines.

And whose old management, bless their hearts, were really keen on the idea of our bi group making their home there for this reason.

Our pub nights there are great, and I'm still processing how good and odd it is to have created bi social space...

And *then* in London, there's The Bi Underground.

Which is a)somewhere where I know quite a few people, and b) to my knowledge is currently the only specifically bi pub space (and that's only monthly) in London.

There are groups, workshops etc, but this is basically a temporary Bi Bar.

And in these, I really feel what 'nesh is talking about, that freedom/sense of being among yr own/not having to 'watch yourself'.


Then there's a womens' (90%, I'd say) pub I like, which cleverly has a young 'un (stripped pine, dj's, young grrrlies) and and old 'uns side (dark wood, plushy chairs, good but quieter music) I'm generally to be found on the old side! I like it alot, but am conscious of not being 'properly gay' in there at times. Generally, I find lesbian bars/space quite intimidating. But that is partly just my own stuff.

Then I have alot of straight friends(some of my best friends are...!), with whom I'll generally go to straight pubs, but again, really quite selectively these days, in terms of style/clientele...

Then again, lots of gay places are incredibly *white*, which I sometimes find a bit spooky. If i really want to shake that, I go to Club Kali...

phew.

So in short:

Gay/straight pubs can both be difficult in different ways, much easier if there are other subcultural/associations/personal preferences eg I usually feel comfortable in capital Q queer gay spaces, pubs I go in alot with groups of friends/feel like they're part of my 'home' landscape... Bi pubs=blimey, wow etc...
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
14:42 / 11.10.04
And to point out the 'so you want me to hide/lie about who I am' hypocrisy.

Way-ulll... I think it's a bit more complex that that. If something is avowedly a lesbian bar, then those using it may want it to be a space free from heterosexual "energy", including from their point of view talking about being attracted to men, even in the context of being avowedly bisexual rather than straight. That's a question of safe space, isn't it? That is, is it fair to downgrade the Candy Bar because it isn't a place where one can be comfortable talking about one's bisexuality (or heterosexuality), when the actual problem is the lack of *actually* bi-friendly bar spaces, rather than the presence of one notionally exclusively gay (rather than queer) space?

Of course, a lot depends on how it brands itself. If it advertises itself as a queer-friendly women's bar and *isn't*, then it is going to find bisexual women, despite being notionally invited, don't come back and instead seek out their own space. The bar then has to decide what it wants to do about that...
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
15:03 / 11.10.04
hmmm. I will have to think abotu that, will get back to you.

very quick and tired thoughts are:

It *is* more complex than I made it sound, but it's also more complex than your response, Haus.

As there are lots of issues around bi women's entry into (gay)women's space anyway, and how one isopen/presents while respecting space and getting to explore one's own needs...

That's the bset i can do, right now.
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
15:19 / 11.10.04
but I will say that my wording gave an inaccurate impresh.

I didn't exactly march into the Candy Bar shouting about how much I loved cock and wearing a 'Sex With Men: YES!' t-shirt.

It would come up in conversation, for eg when people would ask how long I'd been out as a lesbian, or ask me a qu which specifically used 'lesbian' or 'dyke' as my assumed ID. At which point it felt like lying/
dissimilation not to correct the asker.
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
15:22 / 11.10.04
Oh and on a purely personal note, I am primarily downgrading the Candy Bar because I don't like it. *g*
 
 
Triplets
21:54 / 11.10.04
I've got something to put in you(r stomach) at the straight bar.

As Hattie has rightly pointed out Liverpool is a hotspot for the over-sexed, over-aggressive, hetero nightlife. Especially near Matthew Street, which is not worth going to for said atmosphere as the music is shit repetive 60s rock anyway. I would say the Cavern area is like a time capital for Liverpool, it never really seems to change on a symbolic level. It's stuck in the (wide) boys night out, Beatle-mania, two pints of lager and a packet of fists mindset and doesn't seem set to change.

The rest of Liverpool city centre is better although you do get some bad spots. Saturday I was at the bar with a lady friend when some bloke who looked like he'd been hitting the Venom a bit too hard sidled up and shoved her out of the way. Words exchanged, bloke groans out 'don't fuckin get in my way right, I'm SCOTTISH'. Well fuck off back to Scotland then. Asshole!

The alternative/indie [blech] clubs in Scouseland are a bit better again than the regular cheesey dance/pop clubs. However, definitely a lot more lesbo/bi-girl friendly than gay-friendly. Especially among the goth/raver crowd. Apart from the actual gay clubs [such as Garlands] it's probably best to keep under the Gaydar in Liverpool most of the time.
 
 
Char Aina
22:10 / 11.10.04
i by far prefer a bar to be mixed, with only wankers and the far too wasted excluded. i feel it keeps everyone together in a nice we-can-all-be-friends-no-matter-what-our-sexuality way that i appreciate.
i dont want to ever miss a birthday again because i am percieved as straight and male, nor do i want to upset a whole bunch of people by getting to the party.

i think a bi-bar might be awesome, if any of you fancy building me one.
 
 
w1rebaby
22:22 / 11.10.04
I don't think it's a bad thing to criticise a bar just because you don't like it.

I don't make a point of going to any particular orientation of bar because I don't go to bars to pull and I'm not bothered about the orientation of the other patrons, as long as they're interesting. It's not an issue. If I felt that the place I was in was going to exclude those of any particular orientation I'd be less likely to go there. Similarly if the whole ethos of a place was people trying to pick each other up I wouldn't feel comfortable - I don't like meat markets, gay or straight, I find them all equally dull and irritating. These are all issues to do with liking a bar. They're considerations just like "they play shit music" and "the place is full of coked-up wankers". The atmosphere is the most important part and all sorts of factors can affect it.

The worst places in London I know are definitely straight - e.g. Tiger Tiger - but that's probably because I've had more experience with going to them. I'm sure if I went to more gay bars I'd be able to point out ones which were awful too.

I suppose if I was going to pick an ideal place it would be one where anyone could snog anyone without feeling intimidated by the atmosphere. I do *occasionally* like to do that sort of thing myself and I wouldn't want to think that anyone else was being put off. I'd rather have as many happy relaxed people around me as possible.
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
23:23 / 11.10.04
"I don't go to bars to pull and I'm not bothered about the orientation of the other patrons"

Hmm. One can want to go to a 'sexual orientation-based-culture' bar with no intention of pulling.

I can, for example, want to hang out in a gay men's bar that's for gay men, but comfortable with queer women, precisely because it is non-sraight, explicitly non-pulling space....
And you would seem bothered about some of the orientations of the punters, just not the strictly 'right here right now' sexual ones.
 
 
w1rebaby
23:36 / 11.10.04
But your motivations for going to a "sexual orientation-based-culture" bar are that it's "comfortable with queer women", apparently. Places like that don't have to be specifically gay or bi, though them being straight would indicate an internal cultural bias that might conflict there. The key point is that they are comfortable and allow all patrons to behave how they like, surely.

No, I'm not bothered by the orientations of other punters in any sense.
 
  
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