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The State of the Gay Bar: Gay Bar Book Talk w/ Author Jeremy Atherton Lin
Does gay still have a place?
Are our queer spaces safe?
What does the future look like for queer spaces?
Join us for a special conversation with Gay Bar author Jeremy Atherton on the state of the gay bar. San Francisco is a safe haven for queer identifying folk but this is not the same for spaces outside our bubble. Let's find out what's going on within our nation and internationally as well.
About the Speaker:
About Jeremy Atherton:
An Asian-American essayist based in Los Angeles and East Sussex, England. Jeremy studied playwriting at UCLA then held an editing position in San Francisco but preferred to self-publish blogs and zines of indiscreet observations. He later settled in the UK where he completed the Writing MA at the Royal College of Art.
Jeremy has contributed to the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian, The White Review, ArtReview, The Face, Index, GQ, W, Literary Hub, Elephant, Little Joe, Fantastic Man, Tinted Window, Artforum and the Yale Review, for which he was named a finalist for the National Magazine Award in Essays and Criticism.
Jeremy’s debut book Gay Bar (2021) is a personal response to the demise of LGBT venues and was partly inspired by the Frank Ocean lyric: “Here’s to the gay bar you took me to. Here’s when I realized you talk so much more than I do.” The book went on to be selected as a Book of the Year by critics at the New York Times, NPR, Artforum, Gay Times and Vogue. It received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography.
About Gay Bar:
Strobing lights and dark rooms, drag queens on counters, first kisses, last call; the gay bar has long been a place of solidarity and sexual expression. Now they are closing, a cultural demolition that has Jeremy Atherton Lin wondering: Could this spell the end of gay identity as we know it? In prose as exuberant as a hit of poppers and dazzling as a disco ball, the author embarks on a transatlantic tour of the hangouts that marked his life, with each club, pub and dive revealing itself to be a palimpsest of queer history. Gay Bar time-travels from Hollywood nights in the 1970's to a warren of cruising tunnels built beneath London in the 1770's; from chichi bars in the wake of AIDS to today’s fluid queer spaces; through glory holes, into Crisco-slicked dungeons and down San Francisco alleys. Jeremy charts police raids and riots, posing and passing out—and a chance encounter one restless night that would change his life forever. The journey that emerges is a stylish and nuanced inquiry into the link between place and identity, inviting us to go beyond Stonewall and enter the underground. Elegiac, randy and sparkling with wry wit, Gay Bar is at once a serious critical inquiry, a love story and an epic night out to remember.
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By Manny's, Manny Yekutiel
5
66 ratings
Does gay still have a place?
Are our queer spaces safe?
What does the future look like for queer spaces?
Join us for a special conversation with Gay Bar author Jeremy Atherton on the state of the gay bar. San Francisco is a safe haven for queer identifying folk but this is not the same for spaces outside our bubble. Let's find out what's going on within our nation and internationally as well.
About the Speaker:
About Jeremy Atherton:
An Asian-American essayist based in Los Angeles and East Sussex, England. Jeremy studied playwriting at UCLA then held an editing position in San Francisco but preferred to self-publish blogs and zines of indiscreet observations. He later settled in the UK where he completed the Writing MA at the Royal College of Art.
Jeremy has contributed to the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian, The White Review, ArtReview, The Face, Index, GQ, W, Literary Hub, Elephant, Little Joe, Fantastic Man, Tinted Window, Artforum and the Yale Review, for which he was named a finalist for the National Magazine Award in Essays and Criticism.
Jeremy’s debut book Gay Bar (2021) is a personal response to the demise of LGBT venues and was partly inspired by the Frank Ocean lyric: “Here’s to the gay bar you took me to. Here’s when I realized you talk so much more than I do.” The book went on to be selected as a Book of the Year by critics at the New York Times, NPR, Artforum, Gay Times and Vogue. It received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography.
About Gay Bar:
Strobing lights and dark rooms, drag queens on counters, first kisses, last call; the gay bar has long been a place of solidarity and sexual expression. Now they are closing, a cultural demolition that has Jeremy Atherton Lin wondering: Could this spell the end of gay identity as we know it? In prose as exuberant as a hit of poppers and dazzling as a disco ball, the author embarks on a transatlantic tour of the hangouts that marked his life, with each club, pub and dive revealing itself to be a palimpsest of queer history. Gay Bar time-travels from Hollywood nights in the 1970's to a warren of cruising tunnels built beneath London in the 1770's; from chichi bars in the wake of AIDS to today’s fluid queer spaces; through glory holes, into Crisco-slicked dungeons and down San Francisco alleys. Jeremy charts police raids and riots, posing and passing out—and a chance encounter one restless night that would change his life forever. The journey that emerges is a stylish and nuanced inquiry into the link between place and identity, inviting us to go beyond Stonewall and enter the underground. Elegiac, randy and sparkling with wry wit, Gay Bar is at once a serious critical inquiry, a love story and an epic night out to remember.