While we are sort of obliged to disagree with the obsolete publication’s roundup of the world’s best gay bars, we’re honest-to-God horrified by the two-note list. Either the bar is a ferny, boring neighborhood spot that you hit up in the late afternoon before moving on, or it’s a circuit warehouse club for flag-dancing G-heads who are too twisted to realize that the beat has not turned around once all night.
Let’s start with the cities that the roundup did not completely fuck up. Out gets Miami right, choosing Twist and Buck15, the cities’ hottest, raunchiest corners. And a kudos for singling out Termix in Prague, even though the review makes no mention of slutty Czech boys and Itali-disco heaven, choosing instead to focus on the club’s “hunger-inducing orange wall.” Right. It should be no surprise that a reviewier who gets excited by the color of a wall is the same reviewer who makes the following heinous errors.
New York City gets no mention of sleaze. Instead, the focus is on asexual, yuppie theater-queen bars, Therapy and Vlada, and on Splash, a nauseating spin cycle for wet rags. This pattern of including neighborhood pubs on one end of the spectrum and circuit clubs on the other — with nothing in between — is most abhorrent in the picks for cities like London and Paris. Some of the hottest cruising in the world happens in makeshift dungeon bar basements in these cities, but you won’t find them on this list.
In fact, there’s only one backroom in sight — Tom’s in Berlin, a sleazy spot that the reviewer describes as “uber-naughty,” a vomitous, giggly phrase which proves conclusively that he wears braided belts and has a gag reflex. As for San Francisco: Hole in the Wall? Badlands? Jesus Christ. The former is empty; the latter is a city-wide punchline.
But perhaps the most offensive pick on the list is for Chicago. A city with a vibrant, hopping gay scene gets written up for Spin, which is the gay bar equivalent of an ingrown pubic hair. The reviewer has clearly not heard of The Jackhammer, proving that this entire list is an irrelevant outside scoop. And what about Mirabar in Providence? Please go back to covering marriage rallies, Out.
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Dear Swordsmen:
One of the most bitterly brilliant pieces I’ve read since my own Will & Testamentary Draft V13. Its in Powerpoint, btw.
In the future, when your objective is to make me spew my cocktail all over my shiny Macbook Air, please have a little courtesy, and warn me 1st.
That said, you have laid down the gauntlet — and so now you must, MJ-like, raise that sullied white glove back up from the darkened stage upon which it has fallen, which is in this case the lifeless dregs that was once (or ever?) gay journalism.
Publish a fucking guide, for godssake.
And leave out nothing, even if it means the price of your Czech boy-man-whore goes up a few bucks.
You can afford it.
OOOH! I totally agree.
“Uber” is over!
Acerbic, caustic wit! Yay!