My Sister’s Room has stayed afloat after 24 years and four moves largely because of its inclusive philosophy and its willingness to experiment with events. “We try to do parties that will be inviting to all different types of gender expression and sexuality.”
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“When I go to a bar, I don’t want to see one type of anything,” says Jon Dean, the event producer and founder of queer magazine Wussy, which often stages shows at bars such as My Sister’s Room, a lesbian bar where all are welcome. The lines that had once defined gay bars are blurring. “Having a bar specifically for cisgender gay men is still important, but people are looking for more inclusive spaces now.” “Nineties queer nightlife is different from 2000s nightlife and what we have today,” says Taylor Alxndr, who founded Southern Fried Queer Pride, a nonprofit centered on Black and brown trans youth. By the time same-sex marriage was legalized in 2015, many wondered whether the very nature and definition of gay bars needed to expand.
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Burkhart’s closed in early 2018, after it was boycotted following accusations of racism. The scene’s more recent loss of bars can’t be blamed on one thing but many: Rising rents and gentrification shut down many bars, including influential Cheshire Bridge Road club Jungle in 2017. “You could find, chat, and hook up with guys without leaving your house.” Jungle was forced to shut down in 2017, a casualty of gentrification. “Almost overnight, everything changed,” says Alan Collins, the manager of gay bar the Heretic. The 1990s brought antiretroviral therapy for HIV and a population boom to Atlanta, but nothing in that era affected the gay bars more than online dating. “We were losing people and dancing to save our lives.” “When I started with AID Atlanta, the HIV test wasn’t even out, so we just thought most of us were positive,” Teague says. The dance floor became a place to escape the grief. “It was a horrible moment, but the gay community really got together and gave what they could,” he says. While the AIDS crisis brought the gay community and its bars together, COVID is driving them apart.Īt the height of AIDS, Grooms remembers attending up to five funerals a week-followed by benefits at the bars. And gay nightlife is now further imperiled by the threat all bars face as a result of the pandemic. In the 1970s, there were 2,500 gay bars across the country today, there are half as many. Yet as queer culture has gone mainstream enough for the crosswalk near Blake’s to be repainted as a rainbow, the gay bar scene in the city and nationwide has contracted. “Then, there’s a new wave that is a little more artistic and free.” “The South has always had a particular style that’s very glam: big hair, jewelry,” says Future Lounge entertainment director Phoenix (who goes by only his first name). Even the drag shows, past and present, have been fashioned to appeal to specific subcultures: classic pageant in Midtown and more alternative in East Atlanta. “I’m not going to argue with the fact it was segregated, but Atlanta was and is the gay capital of the South, and so, you went to the bars that catered to what you liked,” says Reverend Duncan Teague, one of the first Black AIDS outreach workers for AID Atlanta. “We called it ‘doing your ABCs,’” says Mitch Grooms, a bartender at the Armory from 1987 to 2001. But almost everyone ended their nights at the Armory, Backstreet, and the Cove because they were open so late-or never closed. In the 1990s, lesbians counted the Otherside Lounge and Revolution as mainstays, and the Black gay crowd frequented the likes of Bulldogs. “Gay bars felt like a safe space to open up the possibility of figuring out who you were.” Doug Craft, a bartender at Blake’s on the Park for 30 years, says the purpose of a gay bar transcends mere socializing: “I’ve felt like a counselor who helped others make the transition into self-acceptance.”
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“We were still not really out as a society, even in the 1990s,” says Alli Royce Soble, a mixed-media artist and queer documentary photographer. Back then, those were the only places where he could comfortably hang out and be himself. When Smith first discovered Atlanta’s gay nightlife, the scene was booming with dozens of places to drink, dance, and watch drag. They decided the next day to move to Atlanta.
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“We were so overwhelmed by the feeling of inclusion and energy in the gay scene,” says Smith, who lived with his boyfriend in Nashville at the time. Revelers at leather bar the Eagle in 2015, six years after an infamous police raidĪrt Smith’s first Atlanta gay bar experience was when he danced in the new year at Backstreet during a weekend getaway at the end of 1982.