A reader writes:
I graduated high school in 1982 in Long Beach, California, a beach town an hour south of LA. My straight boyfriend and I (a het girl) and our gay friends spent too many hours in the fantastic gay bars of Long Beach and LA. They weren’t as picky as they should have been about checking ID’s, which probably stemmed from an impulse not be judgmental or unwelcoming, which permeated these bars. These places were filled with couples and friends of every imaginable orientation, gender, etc. Even groups of nervous straight frat guys would slouch in every now and then, drawn in for the same reasons everyone else was: good drinks, nice people, fun. There was never an incident that I heard of or witnessed, of anyone feeling weird or hostile or unwelcome. Wrong town, wrong era. Mickey is full of it.
Every gay bar I have ever been in on earth, let alone early 80’s LA, is live and let live, polite, welcoming, whatever you are is fine with them (a shout-out to my boys at "Ripples", still an institution in Long Beach, where my very straight Dad and I go for drinks when I’m home, a family tradition for twenty years). Gay bars in 1982-83 Southern California made the best drinks and played the best music, were just the most fun. Who could forget all of the Crystal and Alexis nights, with Long Island Ice teas for a dollar?
Thanks for allowing me to remember good times – yes things got scary, tragic and unrelentingly grim pretty quickly right after that (death lists, hospital phone numbers as I recall, lots of funerals, I stopped counting), but I really resent Mickey for trying to defile these kind hearted places with his self-serving lies.
Another writes:
Kaus is clearly wrong that (hot) straight men would not be welcome in gay bars, but I can give you some examples of women being discriminated against in bars.
You may recall that Ziegfield’s/Secrets had so many women coming to see the nude dancers that male customers (including me) complained. The bar set a rule that women could not enter the bar unaccompanied by a man. I also recall reading Camile Paglia stating how, in 1970s NYC, she disguised herself as a man to gain admission into certain gay bars with strict entrance codes. Finally, back in the late 80s-early 90s, there was a lesbian bar in North Carolina that forbade admission to men. Lesbians were big into separatism in those days, along with vegetarianism, comparable worth, no-nukes, Sandanistas, etc.
Do you seriously think that women would have been permitted to enter the Mineshaft? Do you think any normal woman (not Paglia) would want to?
So we have one instance of one bar in the 1970s barring women. Probably a sado-masochistic bar like the old Mineshaft (which, alas, was before my time). No evidence of any excluding "breeders" like the faggot-guy.
The Dish 