The question is: What function have they played for 40 years and why is that seemingly less important now? And further, are gay spaces even necessary anymore? It’s not enough, however, to note that gay bars are disappearing. The increased social acceptance of same-sex attraction has made it less necessary for the LGBT community to cluster in the same few neighborhoods or to socialize in limited spaces and the rise of hookup apps has made sex so obtainable that one need not even leave the house to get what was once available primarily in the darkest corners. Historically, gay bars have been in marginal neighborhoods where rents were low but what gentrification giveth it also taketh away, as yesterday’s periphery becomes today’s unaffordable hotspot.īut changing demographics aren’t entirely a function of the cost of living. In 2014 alone, the Mission District, S.F.’s nightlife capital, saw two of its three gay bars shutter, a loss made all the worse because one was the last full-on lesbian bar left in the city (the Lexington Club), and the other a working-class venue that catered to the diminishing Latino population ( Esta Noche).Īs with any complex social change, there are a number of reasons why this is so. In the last few years, San Francisco has lost the Deco Lounge, Marlena’s and Club 8. They can tick off dozens of shuttered spaces, recite slightly embellished tales of what wild things used to transpire in them and tell you about the friends lost to AIDS.īut what might have been written off as churn in an ever-evolving demimonde is actually accelerating. Scratch anyone who’s lived in an American gay mecca long enough, and this fact becomes almost a melancholy point of pride, of the I’ve-seen-it-all-kid variety.
Yet gay bars, once central to both a city’s gay community and to the liberation movement itself, are in decline.
#SOUTH OF MARKET GAY BARS SAN FRANCISCO FULL#
The drag scene has exploded in the wake of RuPaul’s Drag Race, hip-hop is now full of allies, lesbians can get married in Utah and the LGBT community has never been more affluent, politically engaged and-anecdotally, at least-still inclined to party as hard as ever. Over the last ten years, giant leaps in queer visibility have given way to a general decline in homophobia. To any LGBT American under 40, that could very well be life under a Stalinist client state, or a story set in some distant galaxy. when we weren’t legal, it was more fun.” We used to go to all these underground bars with signs saying, ‘You are subject to a raid at any time’. “Edith Piaf’s songs were real big at that time. That was the first gay bar I’d ever been in,” Nieves, who is now 78 years old, recalls. In the 1950s, it was the Embarcadero, then something of a sailor’s haunt. Herman Nieves’ memory stretches back to when the epicenter of San Francisco’s gay scene wasn’t the tony Castro, or the leather-and-Levi’s bars South of Market or even the hustler hangouts in Polk Gulch. Its current space features gilt mirrors, a disco ball and a small performance stage.I thought you might like this article. Wedged into a space in San Francisco's South of Market neighbourhood - the epicenter of the city's tech world - The Stud opened in 1966 and quickly gained a reputation as a spot with a hippie vibe and eclectic customers. In 2016 The Stud's current location was sold, and the bar’s then-owner received was notified that monthly rent for the 2,800-square-foot space would leap from $3,800 to $9,500.Ī co-operative group of 18 owners then bought the bar to keep it running. But previous situations were due to gentrification in San Francisco, now one of the nation's tech hubs. It's at least the second time the 54-year-old bar has faced the prospect of full closure. “Because of a lack of revenue due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the historic bar will be announcing that they are permanently closing their location and will be holding a drag funeral to honour the end of an era of LGBT nightlife,” said one of the owners, Honey Mahogany, in a news release. The 18-member collective that operates the club announced late Wednesday that they had decided to close the bar, though they will look for a new location. The Stud is the longest continually running gay bar in San Francisco and known throughout the country as one of the bohemian, gender-bending, anything-goes institutions that made San Francisco into a gay mecca. SAN FRANCISCO - One of the nation’s most celebrated gay bars is being forced from its home amid the financial fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.