Gay Bar Ledger

My photographic practice centers around the temporary nature of entertainment establishments. Mini-golf courses, tourist traps, once-loved arcades, rainforest cafes, and the like. In an era confronted with cheaply produced digital entertainment, these settings are in their twilight years, and deserve to be documented.

Unfortunately, the same rule applies to gay bars across the United States. With the rise of outwardly homophobic rhetoric and anti-queer sentiment, what was once a golden era of rainbow capitalism has pivoted towards a grey erasure of queer establishments. This ledger serves to chronicle these spaces as they face erasure.

C.C. Slaughter's (219 NW Davis St, Portland OR)

A historic gay bar that, during our honeymoon, was subject to imminent closure. Apparently, interested buyers successfully submitted a bid to purchase the establishment. At the time of our visit, however, things were pretty bleak. We were one of only a handful of patrons. The bartender was tender and charming, referring to my husband and I as "sweetie" as we ordered g&ts, and lamented the closure of the nightclub. A sex worker in salmon shorts and a backwards hat sat close to the bar, at one point taking what appeared to be an older gay couple into the bathroom. Rainbow lights festooned the atmosphere with an energy that just wasn't there. Needless to say, the owners have plenty of work to do to restore the energy of the place, but the staff was wonderful. It doesn't help that the bar is in an area of Portland with a large unhoused community that likely deters traffic. I pray that the new ownership doesn't partner with police or private security to change that. Despite its historic presence, it didn't look all that different than Sidetrack in Chicago. If keeping a business alive means displacing unhoused people in the area (or, god forbid, taking away the business of the sex worker) count me out - maybe it would be better to let it die. But we'll see. These things aren't written in stone, I'm just used to bad things happening.

Fluid (319 E Jefferson St, Springfield IL)

Springfield's newest gay bar has replaced and reinvented Club Station House, the latter being a grimy establishment next to the Amtrak station that has since been torn down. Painted in a startling, greener variant of Martha Stewart blue, Fluid is perhaps the most trans-affirming bar I have ever been to - in Springfield, of all places! Our Amtrak service got delayed twice due to "mechanical issues" (seemingly a catch-all term they use from actual mechanical issues to "we don't have a train, so that's a mechanical issue") so we actually went in twice. The cocktails weren't great, but they were cheap, and a woman across the bar bought us free drinks. The staff was incredibly kind. Most of the people there were couples, including two late-middle aged cis men and an age-dubiously-appropriate neon pup couple. Am I allowed to question age-inappropriate relationships, or is that not kosher? I worry for our youth sometimes! But let me say - I am so glad that a trans-affirming space exists in this more conservative pocket of Illinois. A poster was up for a house-techno show in Springfield. Dare I say culture is emerging in the land of Lincoln?

Clique (411 E Washington St, Springfield IL)

Or as my mother-in-law calls it, "cleek". We went after our wedding, and I had a nice conversation with an older gay man who had the same hair as that one gay villain in Diamonds Are Forever that also resembled Ralph the Muppet. I was a little drunk, and recalled DJ Sprinkle's mantra "this is a Madonna-free zone" when Madonna started playing. My older brother started macking on my friend Emma, and that rubbed me the wrong way. Good time though - I will ALWAYS support a gay bar in a small-midsize city!

Berlin (954 W. Belmont Ave, Chicago IL)

Once a favorite hotspot for a young Peter, Berlin was a small nightclub with a big footprint in Chicago. Catering primarily to queers in their 20s and 30s, events slowly shifted from DJ sets of 2010 pop favorites more towards drag events during its peak cultural moment in 2017-18. If you know me, you know I'm not a big fan of drag. When done well, it can be quite impressive, but I've seen far too many sets that are just young gays in bad makeup grabbing money from straight girls in the audience. Berlin was of vital importance for establishing up-and-coming drag queens through the event Crash Landing - winning the event opened the door for careers into the RuPaul Industrial Complex. During the pre-Covid era, Trannika Rex (who changed their name to T-Rex after minor backlash given their cis identity) was ousted for problematic behavior. I stopped following drag around this time, so it wasn't really my problem. Imagine something bad happened.

I was far less interested in the drag events and far more interested in the dancing. And when the dance nights were great, they were truly great - s/o to DJ Greg Haus for being the soundtrack of my early 20s. For Bjork night, I took a pink sweater that I thrifted from the job at the Brown Elephant and made a 3D-layered shirt with a gaping vagina on it, with bead pearls flecking it like an oyster. Robyn night was special to me. Admittedly, I began weaning off Berlin in 2019 when I grew frustrated with dance nights being subsumed by drag shows. When dance nights were happening, it ended up being mostly bachelorette parties - the swan song of any gay bar.

The pandemic lockdowns were a challenge for all event spaces across the world, and Berlin was no exception. During that time, the L in the Berlin sign disappeared - I often wonder where it ended up. When events were once again happening, I never returned to Berlin, but problems emerged when the staff tried to unionize, requesting hefty full-time salaries with protests in front of the building. At this time, one of the owners was diagnosed with cancer. Rather than showing up to the negotiating table, they decided to permanently close their doors on November 19, 2023 after celebrating its 40th anniversary. As of August 4, 2025, the building remains vacant. Signs are still put on it's blacked-out windows.

Within the queer community, infighting emerged around the issue. The Google reviews of the labor union representing Berlin employees, UNITE HERE Local 1, are littered with angry comments. One posted by Vegas Boy from a few months back reads "Stay away from this union! They keep losing people their jobs! Google Berlin nightclub and Signature Room. Two iconic Chicago business went bust because of their intervention and they lost all their members their jobs." Obviously this is my own perspective, but I think that this union plays too fast and loose with bargaining. Berlin's representatives stated that the cost of their demands would exceed $500,000/yr. Should they have paid staff more fairly? Absolutely. Should they have shown up to the bargaining table? Duh, but the cancer detail was not articulated at all before or during the protests, and led to bad blood and scrutiny between workers and patrons. The kind of benefits they were seeking is hardly chump change for an establishment that prides itself on $3 Berlin Bombs (Vodka Red Bulls), but I was also informed that commanding these salaries is not uncommon for servers in the Chicago Loop. There's probably a lesson in all of this in union organizing more generally - pick your union representatives CAREFULLY. These organizations also demand harsh scrutiny from workers, and poor execution can make justified outrage (demanding benefits and better pay) appear like bad behavior (destroying the lives of an old gay couple, one of whom is dying and cannot appear at the bargaining table).

The reddit thread on the closure offers especially revealing gossip. Take this nugget: "I've been a union supporter all my life, but this is unacceptable from any professional union organizer's standard. What professional would look at this club and see the numbers to justify this increase isn't in the business of helping labor they can't keep their doors open. Unless this is their opening salvo with the intent to give back half of what they're asking. If that's the case they need better representation." Another post: "I remember hearing from a regular there that about ~1-2 months back the employees were 'on strike'. Which is to say, they were going into work as scheduled, but telling customers and regulars to boycott them, and that they were crossing the picket line if they continued to frequent Berlin during the "strike". I imagine that this probably helped lead to this outcome."

I will probably have to join a union in the future, and I think I might struggle with it. I think to be in a union demands a certain flavor of moral absolutism, which is often justified in demanding better working conditions. But I always look at things from every angle, and I don't think that sort of proclivity towards nuance is tolerated by union membership, if not outright anathema to it. I've been too long in the corporate trenches of covering my own ass before assisting others - it's not a pretty way of looking at the world. And that's why unions exist, right? So I don't have to look at the world this way?

I am unaware of how the scene at Berlin has distributed itself across other bars and nightclubs since the closure of Berlin, but it seems to me a harder time than ever to be a career drag queen without fully buying into the RuPaul model. Berlin was a lesson for me in the impossibility of fully automated luxury gay communism - nobody hates queer people quite like queer people!

The Saloon (830 Hennepin Ave, MN)

The first gay bar I ever went to, and one that will always be special in my heart. It seemed so much larger to me when I first went - on a recent visit, there was some interior construction happening and a "straight guy just here to check it out" was telling me about how he and his "gay roommate and business partner" were doing some luxury handbag dropship thing. I'll talk to anyone though and love unhinged conversations - I was trying to encourage him to give money to the drag queen (and use subtle motivational interviewing to help him come to terms with his unresolved homosexuality) when my friends showed up and I completely blew him off. I can appreciate Minnesota drag - or maybe I just appreciate drag when the possibility of heavy monetization is out of the question. In his work Fuck Seth Price, Seth Price wrote about how artistic activity is directed around freedom, craft, money, and scene, and I think about that a lot. What is motivating you to do what you do? For me, the answer is craft, but freedom and scene are also powerful to me. When drag became about money and fame, it lost me.

If you're interested, here's a link to Fuck Seth Price. My friend Emmett read it after I gave it to them and wasn't much of a fan, saying it reminded them of thoughts about art that you'd have on bad acid. I, however, found this to be a useful distinction for the creation of art, but I didn't major in studio art and have less skin in the game.

In the main room there's a public shower. My mom apparently went to The Saloon with her chaos friend before their friendship exploded, and kept talking about the shower. She wants to go with me sometime.

Sidetrack (3349 N Halsted St, Chicago IL)

Man, fuck Sidetrack. I'm married, in my 30s, and not exploring the outer limits of sexuality - I am happily monogamous. I also don't have great hearing, so most of the time I'm just screaming "WHAT?!" Thus, Sidetrack is a place to look and be looked at, and I'm not liking what I'm seeing. I think they still do drag stuff there. We went to watch Kamala Harris speak at the DNC on their big screen. How depressing! Our friend, the drag queen Almaaaa (not sure how many a's) did this wonderful event at Berlin where she brought in four speakers to watch the Democratic Primary Debate in 2019 and discuss what was happening. It wasn't especially well-attended, but Almaaaa always had such a good sense for meaningful political activities, even if she is a Buttigieg stan. Really interesting and thoughtful makeup too, sort of like Hungry with an emo twang. She's in Albuquerque now, establishing herself in their parochial drag scene. I think she's doing well - I miss her. Anyways, their DNC screening, like everything they do, went down like a flat lemon White Claw in the sun. You won't find me there.