![gay bar book review gay bar book review](https://s3-media0.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/Ghd_GroyrordUOryo_TM7Q/o.jpg)
![gay bar book review gay bar book review](https://static.designmynight.com/uploads/2013/04/Sidewalk-Birmingham-optimised.jpg)
(“After thirty years, sleeping is the new having sex.”) Even more serious stuff rolls off him. His relationship with his partner, Hugh, remains contentious, but it’s mellowing. On tour, he collects sheaves of off-color jokes and tales of sexual self-gratification gone wrong. He’s bemused by his sister Amy’s landing a new apartment to escape her territorial pet rabbit. On a trip to a gun range, he’s puzzled by boxer shorts with a holster feature, which he wishes were called “gunderpants.” He plays along with nursing-home staffers who, hearing a funnyman named David is on the premises, think he’s Dave Chappelle. There’s bad news in this book, too-most notably, the death of his problematic and seemingly indestructible father at 96-but Sedaris generally carries himself more lightly. In his previous collection of original essays, Calypso (2018), the author was unusually downbeat, fixated on aging and the deaths of his mother and sister. Sedaris remains stubbornly irreverent even in the face of pandemic lockdowns and social upheaval. “The best ones were always a departure.”Ī vibrant and wistful report on a bygone era in gay culture. “Gay bars are not about arriving,” he writes. As last call descends on many iconic gay bars, Lin’s unfettered reminiscence and sharp wit will resonate especially with older readers, who will enjoy the sweet nostalgia embedded in this entertaining history. Though the narrative occasionally darts around too frenetically-it would have benefitted from a tighter organizational structure-the author remains locked in on his subject, creating a consistently engrossing story. I wanted to eat it all up.” Lin grounds his randy travels with sobering ruminations on the deleterious effects of lingering prejudice, gentrification, cultural assimilation, and homonormativity. “The streets,” he writes, “were like advent calendars: I wanted to open each door and reveal a bisexual hippie, leather daddy, elegant transvestite, friendly bull dyke wielding tattoo gun, sleazy yogi, stoned poet, skateboarder too lazy to resist my advances.
![gay bar book review gay bar book review](https://www.gaytravel4u.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Stammbar-big.jpg)
Lin vividly describes the evolution of gay hot spots in London, including details on a two-mile viaduct channeling through the city, which has housed “raunchy clubs” and even “a small theater on gay plays.” He also looks at the ever evolving nature of queer life in San Francisco and vividly recalls his memorable early experiences there. Lin chronicles his experiences with his husband, “Famous,” and their barhopping days cruising together for sex, but there’s a lot more here than just sex in dark corners. In his first book, Lin examines queer history through the lens of what he sees as a vanishing institution: the gay bar, which, in recent years, has been “under threat not so much by police, but a juncture of economic factors like unchecked property speculation and an upsurge in stay-at-home gays.” With raw, voyeuristically explicit detail, the author escorts readers through the crowded, smoky gay bars of London before turning to erotic adventures in California, where he came of age in the early 1990s. A writer’s intimate trans-Atlantic history of gay bars.