East bay gay bars

A year-old self-identified gay man, Murphy has been coming to the White Horse for 17 years and working there, as needed, for The bar is his anchor, what gives him a sense of place and belonging in his east hometown. During his first week in Berkeley, newly arrived and without a place to stay, he found an apartment through the White Horse.

A little after that, he found his husband there too. Gay bars have long been at the center of the bar for equality. And tragically, they have also been its targets. Murphy describes the White Horse generally, and gay bars specifically in nearly spiritual terms. Like Murphy, generations of Americans gay gone to gay bars to find and make their own families.

Yet gay bars are closing. Some of the reasons are relatable to any business, such as rising rent, aging clientele and competition from the internet. Bars are less romantically necessary when you can open an app and double tap. But the biggest single factor driving gay bars out of business is the broader trend of national acceptance.

Gay bars have become a casualty of progress. Americans who identify as something other than heterosexual no longer have to seek out segregated facilities for a drink. They can go to any bar. Sullivan and Fuentes wanted to flip that by opening a bar that was not just queer-friendly, but queer-centered. Coupled with a bay housing market, many of those same individuals remain living at home well into adulthood, said Sullivan.

But they find home here. In the traditional sense, gay bars may be closing, but the world is also getting more queer. The more accurate statement is definitively gay bars are closing. The ones that remain serve a role and a community that is more than historic artifact. And that had seemed unfathomable earlier in the evening.

There were people crying here, hugging each other, and I really just felt so blessed to have our community united for each other, to know that we will be here tomorrow, and take care of each other.

Shades of the rainbow: East Bay gay bars evolve, stay relevant with the queer community

Sullivan notes that though the gay rights movement was started by queer, trans people of color, its primary beneficiaries — and most frequently depicted victims — have been cisgendered white men. In the film Stonewall the first brick of the riot is hurled not by Marsha P. Johnsona trans African-American woman most often credited with having lobbed the salvo, but by the fictional Danny Winters, a cis white man with model good looks.

Though historians dispute who actually threw the first brick, unlike the fictional Danny Winters, Johnson was actually present. Carlos Uribe, general manager of Club 21 and Club BNB in Oakland, sees the ongoing role of queer spaces as venues for the culture to grow while increasing representation for all of its members.