Her place is around Piedmont, a nexus of the city’s very crowded queer scene. In the spring, I flew to Atlanta to visit my mom. Now I wanted to see how they were faring themselves.
They’d taught me how to make a way in the world. I worried about how the pandemic’s upheaval would affect these bars, and other queer spaces writ large. I’ve learned more about myself, and found more comfort, spending time in them than just about anywhere else. I never went inside, but the proximity felt important. Its streets house most of the city’s gay bars-some of them were closed, others open intermittently. The neighborhood is the nucleus of Texas’s queer scene. In Houston, while ambulance sirens blared at all hours, I occasionally spent my afternoons walking up and down the roads of our own local gayborhood, Montrose. As ever, queer establishments were particularly vulnerable, whether the handful of surviving lesbian bars throughout the nation or the sole queer outposts in deeply conservative regions (to say nothing of the absolute paucity of trans-friendly spaces). Last year, the pandemic shuttered more than a hundred thousand bars across the United States. Then he added, Maybe I’m just not that comfortable yet-being here’s more than enough. When Boots clunked away, I asked my New Friend why he hadn’t seemed interested. He told my New Friend that he was very handsome, and my New Friend thanked him, grinning, before turning back to his phone. A moment later, a hulking whiteboy in boots wedged himself between us. We agreed that the weather felt entirely unseasonable (Global warming, my New Friend smiled), and he told me that he’d been coming out to the bars ever since the COVID shutdowns had lifted. I sat next to another Black guy, one of the room’s few masked patrons, and soon enough we struck up a conversation. The sidewalks were dimly lit, and I glided from light to light through the deeply balmy evening, and beyond the patio I found a pandemic-era simulacrum of a Texas gay bar’s usual weekday crowd: a few (white) guys watching sports on their phones, a (white) man talking to the bartender, alongside a handful of skinny (white) dudes looking to get laid. On my first evening in town, after pretending to write but mostly crying over K-dramas, I headed out to Oak Lawn, the city’s gayborhood. I’d driven to the city for a research trip, from my home in Houston.
Puerto Vallarta has been observing some of Mexico’s strongest restrictions, prohibiting mass public gatherings of more than eight people, as regional hospitals reach tipping points – but that has not stopped legions of gay men descending on the resort in recent weeks.The first gay bar that I passed through this year was in Dallas, Texas. Startling mobile phone footage uploaded to social media showed the moment blue waves engulfed the PV Delice Party Cruise catamaran. Gay men attending one circuit party in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, got more than they bargained for on 31 December when the boat they were celebrating on sank. The “GaysOverCovid” Instagram account has gained more than 100,000 followers since it was set up. One anonymous queer person has taken it upon themselves to publicly share information about gay influencers travelling abroad and going to parties as the pandemic worsens. The controversy is just the latest to befall high-profile gay influencers, many of whom flocked to resorts in Mexico and Brazil to ring in the New Year, despite the fact that coronavirus cases and deaths continue to surge in the United States and other parts of the world. PinkNews has contacted Schock for comment. As a lawmaker, he had ardently opposed a number of pro-LGBT+ measures, including marriage equality and the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”.