Grab a drink, play some free darts, and mingle with the diverse crowd of regulars. The laidback spot is primarily known as a lesbian bar, but all are welcome. This neighborhood institution has been welcoming bar-goers since 1978. This LGBTQ nightlife mecca has a bar or club on every corner, and The Closet is one of the originals. You can’t talk about gay bars in Chicago without talking about Northalsted (also known as Boystown). Come for trivia, the free Sunday night buffet, and the themed dance parties - then come back the next morning for brunch at attached sister restaurant Tweet. But don’t think for a second that makes the place feel pretentious - everyone is welcome at Big Chicks and everybody has a good time. The walls are plastered with the owner’s personal collection of paintings and photos, including big names like Diane Arbus. This lively and colorful spot is part LGBTQ hangout, part art gallery. Don’t miss the live entertainment, like karaoke nights, Silky Soul Sundays, and a lively dance floor featuring everything from pop to house music. The South Shore staple is also one of Chicago’s first black-owned gay bars, making it all the more meaningful for the spot’s many regulars. One of the city’s oldest gay bars, Jeffery Pub is a neighborhood institution. And each comes with their own unique history and vibe.Ĭheck out some of the best gay bars and clubs to experience Chicago’s LGBTQ+ nightlife scene. Our gay and lesbian bars have a little bit of something for everyone, with late-night lounges, dance clubs, burlesque and drag shows, and long-standing neighborhood watering holes in almost every corner of the city. This article appears in our October 2020 issue.Chicago’s nightlife is a lot like the city itself - inclusive, diverse, and welcoming to all. Confident of the bar’s staying power, he says, “Pretty much everything closes, but Bulldogs doesn’t.” Rumors of closure have become as much a part of Bulldogs’s lore as its heavyweight drinks, which Thompson attributes to how frequently venues come and go in Atlanta’s LGBTQ+ nightlife.
“I’m hopeful things will recover and we’ll weather the storm, but I can’t predict the future.” “Prior to the current conditions we’re all going through, I would have said there was no chance of us going anywhere at any time,” Cochran says.
Having withstood gentrification, the emergence of online dating, and even the AIDS epidemic, Bulldogs now tries to survive another crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic. “It’s never-ending,” Cochran says of the pressures the bar faces in an evolving Midtown. Bulldogs has outlasted other legendary gay clubs like Backstreet and the Armory, and it has stood its ground amid persistent threats from new neighbors and developers. Within a few years of Cochran starting to work as a doorman at Bulldogs in 1998, high-rise buildings were replacing gay bars and no-tell motels in Midtown, and the studio apartments and triplexes that attracted young queer people for decades were being phased out for single-family housing and condos. From young men dressed for the runway and others buff enough to be a UGA running back to older professionals who look like they just left the boardroom, the regulars at Bulldogs provide a snapshot of why Atlanta is considered a Black gay Mecca. on weekends offers a broader representation of Black gay men than media depicts. The line of folks who begin gathering along Peachtree Street around 11 p.m. “I think we would kind of be lost when it comes to nightlife without Bulldogs,” Thompson says of the bar that has been the only constant in a Black gay party scene which often feels transitional, with promoters renting venues across the city rather than hosting at a consistent location.Ītlanta would lose something if Bulldogs ever closed as well. Although Bulldogs is known for a mature crowd, it became Thompson’s favorite bar, and he considers it a guidepost for Black gay Atlanta, linking generations throughout decades of dynamic change-although it served a predominantly white clientele until the late 1980s. “We went over to Bulldogs after an event because I guess it was tradition,” says Thompson, owner of the clothing line 79th & Magallenes. Magellan Thompson was 22 years old when he arrived in Atlanta from Chicago during Black Pride weekend in 2012 and found himself at Bulldogs on his first day in town. “I’ve had people who would come here from Paris tell me they knew this was where you had to go.” “It’s not just a landmark in Atlanta it’s a landmark globally,” says Brent Cochran, operations manager at Bulldogs, which has been located in the heart of Midtown for 42 years.
Just one story tall and tucked between 7th and 8th streets on Peachtree, a tiny gay bar has built a reputation that towers over many of the skyscrapers that surround it.