Reviews

Gay Bar: Why We Went Out by Jeremy Atherton Lin

jaclyncrupi's review against another edition

4.0

Part memoir, part cultural history, part queering the archives project, Gay Bar is a fascinating deep dive into the role and place of the gay bar through history. Spanning LA, London and San Francisco, Lin inhabits these queer spaces and interrogates their function and even, brilliantly, who they excluded. There is so much joy (and occasionally a tinge of melancholy) in his descriptions of some of the more salacious experiences he has had in gay bars. His exploration of gentrification, the AIDS crisis and race/class in the queer community is revealing. I love gaining bookish access to clubs I couldn’t actually be a member of. That said I feel this book was written for queer people, as it should be. There is a shorthand straight people need to decipher and I am more than happy to do that work

ebooklover's review against another edition

DNF @ 44%

Very disappointing. I found that I could not relate to a lot of this; which shocked me because I love going out to gay bars! I'm still not 100% sure what didn't click for me. Some of my experiences lined up with the author - but a lot of it seemed alien. Gay bars have, yes, been notorious cruising/hook-up spots for gay men. The book focused too much on that aspect when there really is so much more to them.

The author delves a little bit into the political/social aspects of gay spaces, but didn't have anything interesting or new to say. I barley recognized any gay bars mentioned I guess because I have never lived in any one of the three cities the author focuses on. But I feel like that shouldn't be a requisite to enjoy this book.

In terms of the writing it was very unfocused, and overwritten. The chapters are way too long, even worse, the whole book felt like one big long chapter (aka a ramble).

holliewong's review against another edition

informative reflective medium-paced

3.0

clobio's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional funny informative reflective sad slow-paced

3.5

padraigmm's review against another edition

adventurous emotional funny inspiring lighthearted reflective sad medium-paced

4.25

emhinse's review against another edition

informative reflective slow-paced

3.0

kumpkump's review against another edition

informative slow-paced

2.5

This was a super frustrating book because while it has a lot of great history and some thoughtful ideas, they're all buried under vapid memoir stores about how great it was to go out to have sex and name drop celebrities. It's not that the book doesn't touch on the bad parts of the world of the gay bar, especially for those who aren't traditionally attractive usually white cis dudes, but it does seem to only bring them up to check off the 'acknowledged privelige' box. It would have been great to see any of those moments result in introspection from the author, but even in the moments at the end when that starts to happen it's turned into a "kids these days are just different I guess and I suppose I don't really fit in". This book made me more accepting of the continued closures of gay bars because it inevitably means I'll never again have to try to pull conversation out of a twink whose stories only have to do with this party and that. Also the writing is pretty decent but also super pretentious. You're gonna need a thesaurus for this one. 

dinojsilva's review against another edition

adventurous emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.0

estlin_is_out_there's review against another edition

emotional funny hopeful informative reflective relaxing

4.5

floessendes's review against another edition

informative reflective slow-paced

3.5