Straights Not Welcome
How the corner of 4th and 2nd became a straight line.
In the heart of the East Village, half a dozen gay men above the age of fifty sit at an L-shaped bar, nursing strong cocktails in front of a gruff bartender. They sit opposite multiple groups of college-aged straight patrons, singing a little too loudly along with the pop music they have queued off the TouchTunes machine. Boiler Room is a thirty-four-year-old dive, one that recently announced its relocation. Queer regulars are already skeptical of the new location. In the soon-to-be reopened Boiler Room, the addition of a basement dance floor seems like an undeniable attempt by management to appeal to the younger, straighter crowd. While many dance clubs throughout Manhattan are explicitly and unapologetically queer, this establishment has always been known for its dive-bar environment: one that is laid back and does not match the younger, more hyper energy of the clubs in Hell’s Kitchen. Its history as a no-frills queer watering hole hangs in the balance due to this shifting demographic.
Boiler Room’s shifting environment is one small example of a larger problem. According to Eater, 50 percent of gay bars across the US have closed from 2012 to 2021. There are a myriad of factors at play—including Covid-19, rising rent costs, and inflation—but the continued presence of straights in queer spaces has further heightened the losses. Patrons of dwindling LGBTQIA bars are facing an influx of people with no respect for the safety and community a gay space provides. A queer space cannot be truly queer if the comfort of its LGBTQIA patrons is at stake for the sake of extra revenue. Many of us grew up feeling small and insignificant in majority-straight spaces. Many of us moved to New York City for the opportunity to be surrounded by gay people, and only gay people, on our nights out. Why on earth do straight people need to be in gay bars anyway? There are a million straight bars who would be thrilled to have the business.
The idea is not, of course, that all straight people are bad or that any straight person who has ever visited a gay bar is in the wrong. The crux of the issue is that straight people have little understanding of the significance of gay bars. To enjoy a night out with your gay friends as a straight person is one thing, but inviting your partner and their friends—creating a straight-majority group in a purportedly queer space—has a measurable impact on the comfort of queer people. These spaces are more than just places to drink or dance. For us, gay bars are a refuge. For others, a night out to the queer spot is equivalent to a trip to the zoo. Even if we are no longer dealing with the threats of physical violence that once plagued queer people (and, let’s be honest, many of us, particularly trans individuals, cannot take the subway at any time of day without some concern), is it too much to ask for nightlife without y’all?
Gay spaces were never created for intermingling. In the 1970s and 1980s, NYC’s queer nightlife was the only sanctuary in an otherwise anti-gay society. These sanctuaries were hard won; the oldest gay bar in NYC, Julius, is now on the National Register of Historic Places due to the 1966 Mattachine Society’s Sip-In. In the 1960s, queer spaces allowed same-sex couples to dance in community (without touching, of course, which was cause for being arrested.) Still, these establishments were an enormous step up for LGBTQIA members who often fled to NYC with dreams of finding some semblance of the family that had rejected them. As anti-gay laws slowly crumbled, queer nightlife became more prominent, even iconic. Queer elders often lament the fall of these opulent times. NYC no longer hosts a myriad of mafia-run lesbian dive bars or the racy members-only leather clubs like Mineshaft that inspired Tom of Finland’s illustrations. Queer nightlife is dying, and with the loss of these spaces comes a loss of community. It is imperative that we protect the spaces that do remain.
“Patrons of dwindling LGBTQIA bars are facing an influx of people with no respect for the safety and community a gay space provides.”
“Playhouse used to be fantastic back when it was actually a gay bar,” says John, an ex-regular of the West Village club that has colloquially lost its title of gay dance bar. Playhouse, which sits across from Stonewall and six blocks south from the AIDS memorial, has recently seen an influx of straight women and men, mostly college-aged. The dance floor seems to be a battle between the shirtless, muscular, pruned men of Chelsea or Hell’s Kitchen dancing with vigor and a variety of plain-clothed, half-hearted groups of straight people who just cannot seem to start dancing or find a dollar for the drag queens. It is one of the more measurably changed gay bars in Manhattan.
“We go to gay bars because we don’t want to deal with creepy men,” says Grace, a straight student from Auburn University visiting NYC for the weekend. It is a commonly shared sentiment; it is also flawed logic. Straight people in gay bars bring more straight people, effectively diminishing the supposedly safe environment. Of course, women should feel safe wherever they go, but should it be on the queer community to bear that responsibility? It is one thing for straight people to accompany their queer friends, it is another to take eight or nine recently graduated frat bros to a beloved safe space to pre-game. (Boiler Room, which is celebrated for serving some of the cheapest wells in the city, is often the first stop for thirsty college kids and recent grads hoping to save money on weekend nights.)
“We’ve had more and more straight people in here. A lot of boyfriends following girlfriends. Young kids,” says Jason, an off-and-on Boiler Room bartender of nine years. Susanne Bartsch is an NYC nightlife legend and host of On Top, a Tuesday night summer season party at Le Bain, the eighteenth-floor rooftop venue in West Village. The party, which is the only queer night of the week at an otherwise (incredibly) straight venue, has lost some of its spark as more and more straight men attend. The last few times I went to On Top, I saw fewer high-camp outfits that characterize On Top’s crowd and more and more men in suits and ties. “That guy’s just masturbating. It’s gross,” says a visiting finance firm worker from London to one of my girlfriends at our last visit to On Top. He was talking about the go-go dancer, a staple in gay spaces, who was very much not masturbating. I do not think most patrons would have found it gross if he was, though. In dance settings, straight groups can also cause a shift in DJ setlists. Nathan Williams, an up-and-coming DJ in Hell’s Kitchen, says the requests he receives from straight audiences differ from what queer people expect to hear: “Gay guys like Ariana and other pop girls…Some straight guy asked me to play Imagine Dragons last week.”
This conversation has existed, at least online, for quite some time now. A recent TikTok posted by @thelexistout, a disgruntled straight woman, about her experience at Cubbyhole, one of three lesbian bars remaining in NYC and one of twenty-three remaining in the whole country, received massive backlash. The main response, of course, is, why the hell are you there in the first place?
There’s no fool-proof vetting process that bouncers can enact at the doors of bars and clubs to ensure that only the “right” people get in. Unfortunately, it would make little sense (and possibly lead to discrimination) for bartenders to refuse service to straight people; queerness is not always visually identifiable. The responsibility, then, falls on non-queer patrons to monitor their own behavior and decisions. Before you plan your night out, consider leaving gay people alone for just a little bit. Have a little self-awareness. Of course, support and love your queer friends. Do shots with them, and spin in circles at all the places you’re invited to. Leave your “partner” at home, though. You know, the one who’s really just your straight boyfriend or girlfriend? I promise we’re all better off without them.