How time flies! It seems like only yesterday when some smart gays thought mobbing an unsuspecting straight bar would be a good gay neighborly thing to do. Called the Guerrilla Gay Bar, it’s a moving-the-mountain strategy to bring LGBT and straight people together. It also serves, ostensibly, to break our gay ghetto mentality and get out, so to speak. In case you’re unfamiliar, it goes like this: It’s a Friday evening in some trendy straight bar. Regulars, mildly buzzed, sit on their barstools talking about whatever straight hipsters talk about, when suddenly, dozens upon dozens of reveling gay folks descend on the place. Then, in a frenzy of fruity cocktails and freshly tapped micro-brews, prejudice dissipates while gays and straights merrily mingle. Just as suddenly, the gay guerrillas withdraw into the night, to an after party in one of their gay ghetto bars. In the afterglow, everybody’s happy, especially the bartenders (gays are famously generous tippers). Score another one for LGBT equality.
The one thing we’ve learned is that homophobia tends to fade away when straight people discover they have gay friends, pastors or children...or, in the case of bartenders, that gay people tip better. Besides, for bar owners, the windfall of LGBTs packing their venues is enough for them to consider producing drag shows or at least show-tune karaoke nights to bring them back. If nothing else, gays certainly maximize the bottom line.
It all began in 2000 in San Francisco. The Milwaukee Guerrilla Gay Bar (MGGB) contingent took over its first straight bar in 2007. And, while the movement has run its course elsewhere, it’s still alive and well in Milwaukee. Anyway, social media announces the secret target location at the last minute. Actually, hours before, so it might not be such a secret. After all, if your establishment is about to be inundated with a bevy of booze-guzzling gays, you need to be prepared. So, over the years, it’s become more of a traveling LGBT T.G.I.F.
Speaking of which, for the last couple of years, the LGBT Community Center has been holding monthly T.G.I.F. events. Yes, the whole idea of the Center was to provide a healthy redoubt away from the bad gays a-boozing, but it’s Milwaukee after all. Again, most of them take place in so-called gay-friendly straight bars or restaurants. Like the Guerrilla Gay Bar, this outreach intends to raise the Center’s profile and bring our disparate communities together.
And who knows? In the spirit of acceptance, someday there might be Guerrilla Straight Bar nights. Well, maybe that’s not such a great idea. Charming when outnumbered, a hoard of drinking straight people in a gay bar may not be as endearing once they’ve had enough, and even less so when they’ve had more than enough. The nicest part about the Guerrilla Gay Bar is we get to retreat to more familiar haunts. Ghetto or not, “There’s no place like home,” quoth Dorothy.
