A review by jaclyncrupi
Gay Bar: Why We Went Out by Jeremy Atherton Lin

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