There used to be a nightclub on Belmont Avenue in Chicago tucked between a grilled cheese restaurant and cellphone repair shop. The windows were blacked out and featured original art, the facade was adorned in black and white tiles, and drag queens often — and rightfully so — skipped the long line that backed up under the train tracks of the L’s Belmont Station. The interior was exceptionally dark, the walls painted black and the accent lights deep shades of indigo and crimson. There were three bars, the biggest of which ran the entire length of the right-side wall and featured above it a large mural of elegant partygoers, clad in tuxedos and ballgowns and sipping from coupe glasses. There were, of course, several shirtless, muscular men painted into the scene as well. They didn’t serve as a juxtaposition though; the big gay party in the painting intimated the energy of the 40-year-old bar it presided over.
This alternative, loud, bawdy space was Chicago’s legendary Berlin Nightclub. It was a venue dedicated to welcoming the new, especially in the form of live performance. Without question, Berlin’s Saturday night show was one of the best regularly scheduled drag shows in Chicago. Performers pulled all sorts of stunts, from smoking cigarettes on stage as part of their homage-to-the-career-woman-of-the-1980’s number to wearing larger-than-life looks, including RuPaul Drag Race’s Season 14 winner Willow Pill in her willow-tree-in-bloom Season 15 step-down look. After the show, the lights dimmed, the DJs blasted house music, and the bartenders poured drinks for the crowds that quickly lined up at the bars.
The drinks, which were typically straightforward well drinks, were some of the heaviest pours I’d ever had at a bar. A heavy-handed pour in a gay bar, sometimes referred to as “the gay pour” or “the gay bartender pour (GBP),” is a well-known and often amusing cultural hallmark of queer nightlife spaces and gay bars. Its origins and persistence in the queer community, however, are murky.
A Very Expensive Hobby
“Bars were always one of the only third places we were tolerated, at least going back to the 1910s and 1920s. It is also the case that alcohol is an ancient symbol of hospitality, and something you offer somebody to make them feel welcome,” says Greggor Mattson, professor and chair of sociology at Oberlin College and Conservatory. Mattson has researched extensively on LGBTQ+ communities, gentrification, and sex work, and is a subject matter expert in the function of gay bars and queer nightlife spaces in contemporary America.
Third places, a term that entered culture’s vocabulary upon the 1989 publication of Ray Oldenburg’s “The Great Good Place,” describes a place outside of home and work where a person can socialize and connect with their community. Traditional third places often include beaches, libraries, cafés, and the like. Only with broader social acceptance in the past few decades have openly queer people been able to safely socialize in daylight and full public view. Bars and nightclubs, on the other hand, have been a safe third place for the queer community for more than a century.
“Everyone said, ‘There’s no money in gay bars. This is like a very expensive hobby. But for them, it’s so important to see the joy that 21-year-olds have who come into a gay bar for the first time, to see people who are in the closet and come see a whole room full of queer people and their eyes light up.”
“In my visits to 300 gay bars and interviews with 130 gay bar owners and managers, I was really struck by how often ‘business decisions’ were not driving the way that they operated their small businesses,” Mattson says, speaking to research he conducted while writing his book “Who Needs Gay Bars?”. “They were running these bars as community centers, in a way that I think straight bars are not.”
Gay bar owners are instead often driven to make decisions that allow their establishments to feel welcoming to all, but especially to members of the LGBTQ+ community. Although everyday life has significantly improved in recent decades for openly queer people in America, members of the community are still subjected to taunts, slurs, and violence beyond the walls of the venues the community has built to foster its own sense of safety and ease. And even though a gay pour is more expensive for a bartender to serve, the prevalence of it in queer nightlife spaces is indicative of bar owners’ desires to cultivate a prevailing atmosphere of wellbeing and welcoming for their guests.
Increased social acceptance from the general public has also dramatically reshaped social life for queer Americans, and bars and nightclubs are no longer the linchpin that holds the queer community together. Today there is no shortage of LGBTQ+ kickball leagues, softball teams, reading groups, choral ensembles, and numerous additional social activities for the community beyond being in a bar. According to Mattson, the gay bar owners he spoke with have noticed a decrease in their alcohol sales, but are surprisingly happy to notice less drinking in the community overall. Bar owners’ satisfaction with selling less alcohol overall versus the strong drinks bartenders pour in those same owners’ bars illustrates a larger point beyond the act of imbibing itself. That the gay pour persists is emblematic of a larger attitude of welcoming the community in one of its historically safest spaces.
“You can tell which bars are really in it for the business aspect — and yes, it is a business — but for queer people, nightlife is a safe haven, an escape.”
The hospitality these bars exhibit through a generous serving of alcohol isn’t without real financial costs, though, and in Mattson’s research bar owners noted that there are far more lucrative career paths they could have chosen.
“Everyone said, ‘There’s no money in gay bars. This is like a very expensive hobby,’” Mattson says. “But for them, it’s so important to see the joy that 21-year-olds have who come into a gay bar for the first time, to see people who are in the closet and come see a whole room full of queer people and their eyes light up. The bar owners really talked about those community moments as being the reason to keep doing it.”
A Different Purpose for Older Gay Bars
While the gay pour is a widely observed phenomenon by patrons of queer nightlife spaces, it isn’t present at every gay bar or party. It is also somewhat unique to queer American culture since some jurisdictions abroad, including the United Kingdom, have stricter legislation concerning standard, measured pours that licensed bars can legally sell. The prevalence of the gay pour also varies depending on clientele, type of establishment, and owners who do decide to make decisions concerned with the bottom line. That said, there are still gay bar owners who feel compelled to keep patrons coming back by demonstrating their generosity through pouring strong drinks, whether their venue makes much money or not.
“I think the bars that are regularly seen as homes a lot of the time have a different customer service tactic,” says Laila McQueen, nightlife drag entertainer and Emmy Award-winning makeup artist. McQueen began her drag career at the age of 16 and now has more than a decade of experience as hired entertainment. “You can tell which bars are really in it for the business aspect — and yes, it is a business — but for queer people, nightlife is a safe haven, an escape,” she says.
McQueen noted in her extensive work as an entertainer across the United States that older and more established bars, like Berlin, tend to foster a familial environment of community and belonging, echoing Mattson’s beliefs that gay bars are, as he puts it, “not-quite-for-profits.” This noted difference in older queer nightlife spaces is rooted in the era in which they were opened, when LGBTQ+ people were believed to be inherently indecent and unfit for public socialization. Older, institutional queer bars’ attitudes for cultivating a clientele that is aware of the community these spaces provide are prevalent in their programming, including drag shows, cabarets, musical nights, bingo, and more. Certain queer bars and nightclubs also provide an environment where patrons can engage in activities that are faux pas in other public spaces, including wearing nothing but lingerie or cruising on the dance floor.
“These bars are fulfilling a certain need. It’s like a home for us, and I’ve always felt that way even when I wasn’t performing. I feel at home and safe in some of these spaces that offer more to us than we can get in everyday life.”
“When you go to these certain bars or shows or parties, it’s like an awakening,” McQueen says. “In some of these spaces, you’re allowed to act how you want to act and be who you want to be and dress how you want to dress. That variety is very welcomed.”
More Than Heavy Pours and Dancefloors
The energy in a gay bar is palpable, and the queer people who patronize them imbue those spaces with a true sense of belonging. The liberation on a queer nightclub’s dance floor — in the dark, surrounded by strangers who walk through the world with somewhat similar lived experiences — makes it feel like the world beyond the club’s walls doesn’t exist while the music is playing. A strong drink in hand helps make dancing a little more fluid for clubgoers, socializing with their acquaintances a little easier, and the feeling of being in the right place at the right time sit a little heavier in a queer bargoer’s chest.
“I think we all like to have fun and look out for each other and get, you know, lit,” McQueen says. “These bars are fulfilling a certain need. It’s like a home for us, and I’ve always felt that way even when I wasn’t performing. I feel at home and safe in some of these spaces that offer more to us than we can get in everyday life.”
On Nov. 21, 2023, Berlin Nightclub announced it had permanently closed. It has been difficult to imagine how that particular crowd of queer partygoers has been displaced, though sometimes, at crowded gay bars and with liquor on our breath, we see each other. We kiki in the bathroom and ask how the other has been, and drag one another just a little bit for a good laugh. We rarely mention Berlin. Some things are better left unsaid, or are at least too difficult to talk about at a party. Instead, we order another round of exceptionally strong drinks.
