Clean And Sober

The Gay Bar

Not convinced? Google "gay group" and the name of your town, and the search engine should cough up a range of organizations from sports leagues to book groups, gay churches to the local men's chorus. (I swear, half the same-sex couples who make it into the New York Times unannounced on a straight bar and turn it gay for one night only. And in most cities, freelance promoters produce regular "parties" at straight venues as an alternative to the "gay every day" bar scene. The trend took off in the 1980s, when the community's desire for variety outpaced the supply of gay venues, and accelerated after 2000, when it became easier to publicize events via email.

Lesbian party promoters are especially busy: Even in the largest metropolis, lesbians rarely have more than one or two bars to choose from, so it's natural for women to crave new vistas. Maggie Collier, of Maggie C Events, currently runs two weekly women's parties in Manhattan. "Stiletto," on Sundays, is a daytime event at the swank Maritime Hotel, and since it's an outdoor bash, shorts and flip-flops are appropriate. On Wednesday nights at "Creme de la Femme," the code is "dress to impress." When I asked why she set that tone, she told me, "We should set the bar really high for variety. We deserve every possible option. Everything that the heterosexual nightlife community has, we ought to have those options as well."

This sort of event is not popular with gay-bar proprietors. Former owner Elaine Romagnoli told me, "They will empty your room out. Your customers will all go to that event and come back at 3 a.m., when you have an hour to go, and they're already trashed." As easy as it is to understand the bar owners' annoyance at losing their regulars to the irresistible appeal of the new and different, Collier is right when she says, "I don't think that we should stop ourselves from giving women more options just because we respect—and I definitely do—these establishments that have been around forever and that do it every night." And given the appealing economics, these regular parties are probably here to stay. Party promoters generally work on a commission basis, taking a percentage of the bar takings, so naturally their overhead is a fraction of the bars'.