Bar gay

One of the New York Times Critics’ Top Books of 2021An indispensable, intimate, and stylish celebration. “Gay Bar is an absolute tour de force.” (Maggie Nelson)"Beautiful...Atherton Lin has a five-octave, Mariah Carey-esque range for discussing gay sex.” –New York Times Book ReviewStrobing lights and dark rooms; throbbing house and queenly queens on counters; first kisses, last call: the lgbtq+ bar has long been a place of solidarity and sexual expression—whatever your scene, whoever you’re looking for. But in urban centers around the world, they are closing, a cultural demolition that has Jeremy Atherton Lin wondering: What was the gay bar? How have they shaped him? And could this spell the end of gay identity as we know it?In Gay Bar, the author embarks upon a transatlantic tour of the hangouts that marked his life, with each club, pub, and dive exposing itself to be a palimpsest of queer history. In prose as exuberant as a hit of poppers and dazzling as a disco ball, he time-travels from Hollywood nights in the 1970s to a warren of cruising tunnels built beneath London in the 1770s; from chichi bars in the aftermath of AIDS to today’s fluid queer spaces; through glory holes, into Cris