Queer Bar

A queer bar is a nightlife venue that explicitly welcomes and centers LGBTQ+ patrons, a category that includes gay bars, lesbian bars, and mixed queer spaces. Throughout LGBTQ+ history these bars have been essential community institutions, serving as gathering places, organizing hubs, cultural venues, and refuges from a hostile world. Many turning points in the fight for liberation happened in or around them, most famously the 1969 Stonewall uprising, which began at the Stonewall Inn in New York. Over the past two decades many queer bars, and lesbian bars in particular, have closed in large numbers because of rising rents, changing socializing habits, and the rise of dating apps. Their preservation has become an urgent community cause.