[Vol. 60] Make San Juan Gay Again 2021
After a devastating hurricane and global pandemic, Puerto Rico's queer spaces are hurting.
Hello! Welcome back, folks ;)
After my last newsletter, about fiending for queer spaces in San Juan, I did some on-the-ground research (AKA I went out and danced at all the gay bars I could find). I know, a difficult task, but someone had to do it.
Well, as it turns out, “all the gay bars I could find” in San Juan were just about 3 total.
One was by the beach in Old San Juan, but my friend and I decided to *swivel* our asses right round and turn back the way we came when it looked deader than opening day at a Chick-Fil-A in Provincetown.
A Chick-Fil-A in Provincetown, ya’ll – let that imagery sink in.
The other two were almost a mile away from the first beachside joint. Of course, the New Yorker in me told me we should just walk it, which we did, but we quickly found that the neighborhood these clubs were in was a lot less, let’s say, well lit than the first place. It felt a little seedy, in all honesty.
After coming straight from the loud and packed La Placita – the main party district in San Juan – the “pink light district”, the area where all the gay clubs were, felt as though it was purposefully squared away in the dark.
Although we did end up meeting a cool couple around our age, most of the men in the club were older – *ahem* a lot older. After a few drinks and chatting with our newfound friends, we left the bar pretty quickly and called it a night.
And so goes my *limited* experience of gay night life in San Juan.
Obviously a couple nights out in the city guided by a Reddit thread on gay nightlife in Puerto Rico does not an expert – of any kind – make. Nevertheless, I did notice an imbalance that I want to share with ya’ll.
San Juan is pretty gosh darn gay, but there aren’t that many gay spaces.
If you’re walking around downtown San Juan on a weekend night, you’re going to notice groups of gay men pass you by pretty quickly. There’ll be tight T-shirts, there’ll be heavy eye-contact, and there’ll be lots of queer vibes, guaranteed.
If you take advantage of living right next to the beach and lay out on the sand after work, as I have been, you’re bound to be flanked by one or two, maybe even three muscle-gay couples playing bocce ball or splashing around in the water.
So ya, San Juan is pretty gay, but where the hell are its gay spaces?? For a place with this much gay energy, you’d think there were more accommodations – right?
I knew there was a story there, and as it turns out, there was.
As I was searching around for more queer spaces in San Juan, trying to find evidence of something we’d missed on our night out, I stumbled across a New York Times story detailing Hurricane Maria’s devastation of gay bars in Puerto Rico.
After the storm hit in 2017, the island was forcibly flung into an era of rebuilding. I know we all know how badly Maria battered Puerto Rico – it dominated the news cycle for at least a couple of weeks – but hearing stories from people here, in person, has given the ordeal a new reality for me.
Our AirBnB host on Vieques, an island off the coast of Puerto Rico, told us over a glass of wine that after returning to the island post-Maria, they didn’t have power for almost a year.
“The first thing I turned on when the power finally came back was my coffee grinder,” He admitted, laughing to himself.
Overwhelmed with rebuilding and out of luck with the usual throng of incoming tourists, many business in the area had no other choice then to close down – and gay bars/queer spaces were no exception.
Only a handful of establishments directly served an L.G.B.T. clientele before Hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico in September 2017, splintering thousands of homes and leaving the island’s power grid in shambles. The economic hardship that followed the storm forced at least three well-known establishments in the San Juan area to close their doors, leaving even fewer places for regulars to socialize and feel connected to a larger community.
Alejandra Rosa and Patricia Mazzei for the New York Times.
And right as they were on the up-and-up, Covid came to shutter new businesses.
As the Times story mentions, lots of gay/queer folk stepped up to bat when their favorite spots were destroyed by the hurricane, taking it upon themselves to build new spaces. That was in 2019, a little over a year before we now know these new business – still in the early stages of establishing themselves – would be forced to close down once more.
Two disasters – one deadly hurricane and a global pandemic – lead to the Puerto Rico queer scene we see now.
Now I know what you might be thinking – who cares about a fucking gay bar? People had their homes flooded and destroyed and died in the hospital with Covid. What’s more important here, someone’s life and livelihood or a drag show and a few watered-down vodka cranberries?
To those people I’ll say that, for some queer folks, a gay bar and their life and livelihood aren’t all that far apart.
Roma Rodríguez, a 23-year-old transgender woman interviewed for the Times piece defined the need for queer spaces perfectly, I think.
“When I was in high school, there was one bar that lasted for about two years,” Ms. Rodríguez said. “Then it closed, so there was never a defined place for queer people to get together and feel good and feel safe.”
Alejandra Rosa and Patricia Mazzei for the New York Times.
Rodríguez also told the Times that she knew of “many” LBGTQ+ people who’d committed suicide after the storm. I can only imagine how many more we lost with the Covid shutdowns.
I think that’s why I interchange “gay bar” with “queer space”, because it’s really so much more than just a bar – they’re not equivalents. For the straight/cis majority, a bar is a place to drink, relax and have fun. For queer folks, a bar can be the exact same thing, but it can also be lot more.
For queer folks, a queer-friendly bar can be an oasis
– a place where men can drop it low without being stared at, where women can wear beautiful dresses regardless of whether or not they were born female, where a world exists separate from the homophobia and transphobia that so often permeates bar-culture.
Maybe that’s why that first, completely dead gay bar my friend and I tried to go to was called Oasis. Maybe I’ll give it another try tonight, on my last night here.
Here’s to recognizing the importance of safe queer spaces, and here’s to all the Puerto Rican queer folk and allies that have recognized that importance for years and fight hard to keep their queer spaces open.
Have a great weekend, everybody.
Much love,
Till
Find me on Instagram: @till_kaeslin
Check out the newsletter’s home on Instagram to see this post there, and more like it: @thatsgaynewsletter
See you in Volume 61, folks!
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