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We want to meet in bars that are pretty stereotypically hetero, or that aren’t accustomed to a gay crowd - like Match, for instance. JG: Yeah, we’re trying to make a statement, but more than anything, we’re just trying to have fun. Our entire goal is to go out and have fun with a bunch of fellow gays in a straight bar.ĭB: Are you trying to make a statement, but a somewhat cheeky, innocuous statement? We want people to look around and say, ‘Oh, what’s going on?’ But we don’t want people to think we’re against them or that there’s any sort of negative connotation on our part. And, you know, we like to shake things up in a few bars and see those places maybe … slightly uncomfortable. The idea is to organize a large group of gay people and bring them to bars they don’t normally go to and that don’t normally experience large groups of gay people. JG: It sounds more subversive than it’s intended. We basically stole the image, in true guerrilla form.ĭB: Explain the concept of Guerrilla Queer Bar. It was originally, in the ’80s, a cover for a rock magazine in England. So it already existed but had never been associated with the Guerrilla Queer Bar concept before us using it as our brand. We thought we had invented something really exciting. We were trying to come up with something that represented guerrilla-ness and gay-ness at the same time. I can’t say it’s entirely original, though.
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I wanted details, so I arranged a Q & A with Gerber over cocktails at one of his, and my, favorite bars, Green Street.ĭrinkboston: Is Cher Guevara a symbol for the other Guerrilla Queer Bar groups? “I think we pretty effectively took over the bar,” he said. He intrigued me again when he told me that, on only its third meetup, the group attracted 120 people to the Hong Kong in Harvard Square. Gerber, who runs Cambridge’s two 1369 Coffee Houses, intrigued me when he first told me about Guerrilla Queer Bar a few months ago. said of that group’s infiltrations, “We don’t look at it so much as a takeover as a … blending.” As the founders of Guerrilla Queer Bar in Washington D.C. Just several dozen people creating their own gay bar within a bar. The idea, which started in San Francisco in 2000, is simple: a large group of gay men and women gather once a month at a “straight” bar to have a little fun by a) skewing the demographic a bit and b) doing what everyone else does when they go to bars - hanging out and ordering drinks. Josh Gerber, an Asheville, NC, native in his late 20s, co-founded Guerrilla Queer Bar – Boston edition with his friend Daniel Heller. Some of them are waging what you might call guerrilla barfare. They’re just not limiting themselves to gay bars. They’re here, and they’re still meeting up in bars. Yes, the South End may have less of a gay vibe these days, but that doesn’t mean all the gay people have left Boston. As usually happens the minute people get misty-eyed over the passing of a cultural phenomenon, a reincarnation of sorts is bubbling up right under the noses of the bereaved. “ Last Call,” a recent Boston Globe article by Robert David Sullivan, lamented the demise of gay bars - and of their influence on urban life - in Boston. December 13th, 2007 Re-thinking the gay bar