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“People like to think of gay bars to be just drag clubs. Others are simply pushed out by the rising prices that a now-affluent and now-established gay community has wrought.
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Many bars amp up the camp factor to bring in tourists and transition into entertainment spaces. Upsell co-host Dan Geneen and I spoke with Stafford to discuss the launch of an Eater documentary he starred in called Boystown, in which he explores the changing hospitality industry in America’s oldest gayborhood. Many blame dating apps as the digital access to potential partners obviates the need for in-real-life flirting and, as Stafford notes on this week’s episode of the Eater Upsell podcast, “People can make any space through the apps a gay bar, a gay club, and you kind of now understand that gay people are everywhere.”Īlso changing gay bars as we know them across the country: gentrification and a pressure to cater to straight audiences and sell them caricatures of what pop culture says a gay bar should be. "Their men are coming in here and they don't like it," she said.A confluence of factors contribute to the rapid disappearance of gay bars and queer spaces across America, according to Zach Stafford, editor-in-chief of Grindr’s magazine INTO. "We run it on strict rules."ĭreyer has her own theory of why neighborhood residents want the place closed. "This is a meeting place where men get together before they go home," she said. Waitress Donna Dreyer, 28, said many of the customers show up on a nightly basis. "I've been coming here for 11 years, and the dancers and the bartenders are my friends," he said, as Brandy slipped out of a see-though lace body suit and accepted a dollar tip from a man seated by the stage. "I know everybody here," said Parr, a plate maker for a nearby printing company. Tuesday night, longtime customer Mike Parr, 30, leaned against the bar talking to friends. It could be several months before the court rules on the case, and in the meantime the bar will be serving nonalcoholic drinks to its all-male clientele. "We plan to get that decision reversed by the court of appeals because of what we consider to be outside pressure on the board."
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"The board was ready to approve our license and then, boom, they changed their minds," he said. Nichols, who was an ABC board member 25 years ago, said he feels it was political pressure that forced the ABC board to revoke the bar's liquor license. When they couldn't beat us on the format, they went after our liquor license." Lawyer Louis Nichols, president of the corporation that owns the bar, said, "The bottom line is they don't like the nude dancing. Larsen and other community residents succeeded three years ago in closing three other nude bars along Georgia Avenue and more recently in getting a library built on land where a fast food restaurant was to be located. "There were a number of these nude bars, and because of our location near the Maryland line, we anticipated an increase in discount liquor stores. "We saw Georgia Avenue in danger of becoming a strip," Larsen said. But it was only in the past few years that residents of the upscale, integrated neighborhoods have protested the entertainment at the bar. The bar featured first topless, then bottomless, dancing for more than 16 years. "But there will be no real victory for us until they close." That bar has impacted the neighborhood of Shepherd Park for much too long," he said. Hans Larsen, the immediate past ANC chairman for the Shepherd Park and Brightwood neighborhoods, said yesterday's decision was "long overdue. If our customers think it is essential to have alcohol, we will be out of business." "We are serving nonalcoholic beer and fruit juices. "I'm sitting here watching $1 million go down the tubes," Joe Dail, one of the bar owners, said two hours after the court's ruling. The Alcoholic Beverage Control Board decided in December to revoke the restaurant's license after six years of protest by the local Advisory Neighborhood Commission and a community group that wanted the bar closed. Court of Appeals ruled 2 to 1 against the request of the bar owners to stay the revocation of their liquor license pending a ruling by the appeals court. It seemed like any other night at the popular and controversial bar on upper Georgia Avenue NW, but it turned out to be the last night liquor would be served. Nude dancer Brandy stretched her leg over her head and smiled down at the young men with drinks in hand seated around the elevated stage of the Shepherd Park Restaurant not long after midnight yesterday.