Among my pet peeves, e.g. mothers who push strollers with kids in them out into traffic to stop it so they can cross the street, letting people into the main traffic flow from side streets and parking lots without regard to how that affects the people already on the road behind them, doing the same with people wanting to make left turns when the light finally turns green and the person at the front lets a line of cars turn so the poor Schlepper in the last car won’t make the light, waving someone on out of turn at a four way stop so the normal flow of traffic is disrupted, and calling a Gay event “Family Friendly” so that attendees have to work hard at appearing straight in an open air or public closet so as not to offend the non-Gays which is an offense to the Gays, I count the convenient cover charge as one of the worst things that pulls my chain and burns my corn

There are bars that never charge customers to enter unless it is for a generally rare evening where there is a charity event with all the money going to the charity. These are often annual events and not things that spring up spontaneously. The result at such bars is that the clientele is the most mixed as people from the most desperate crackhead to a judge on the state supreme court mingle as they never would have the opportunity to do in their daily lives. And people are taken for who they present themselves and, by and large, every level of society gets along.

Although many bars are free entry during the week when business is slow, on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights a lot of money is pulled in as bars are crowded on weekend nights, and people come into the big city to spend money and enjoy themselves.

Some bars usually open only on weekends and always have a cover charge. Usually these are large bars with all the lighting, sound system, and accoutrements that make the place special that appear to the party crowd. You plan to go to these places as destination bars. Depending on the bar, the cover charge might be low so as to get some extra money and not drive people away, or so high as to guarantee a higher and more selective class of patron. These cover charges divide the community into the haves and have nots.

In the past when safety was a major concern, Gay and Lesbian bars would gather in one section of town, usually a derelict part of town that self-respecting people would never go to at night. There was a degree of safety in numbers. Eventually, as cities gentrified, these areas became prime real estate and the Gay bars had to move and this resulted in a community bar diaspora.

Bar hopping went from walking from one bar to another, to something that requires a car.

Because of the existence of the Gayborhood, if you were unable, or unwilling, to pay a cover charge, you could walk to a coverless bar not too far away.

A person had options.

Over time, as places became more educated and open minded, the need for the refuge that Gay and Lesbian bars afforded to a persecuted segment of society and the need for this community circling of the wagons became less necessary. Today the number of Gay bars has been greatly reduced and many are basically similar to neighborhood bars where people of like minds can meet, and which also afford some safety, security, and privacy for those still in situations where being openly Gay can have negative consequences.

I live within walking distance of many downtown bars but occasionally, I will get in the car and drive to a Gay bar to be among kindred spirits where I can be as Gay and talk as Gay as I want without explaining a reference or a joke to straight people who are not as into Gay-Speak as the community is.

Where I live, there is a gay bar desert.

There is a major stretch of an interstate that has Gay bars on both ends 120 miles apart with an option to go 30  miles out of your way to get to one bar that might be considered close to the highway if your world is all relative, or you stop at the one bar just off the highway that is ¼ of the distance between the state line and the end of the highway where it runs into the ocean, that 120 mile stretch.

At both ends, as one is a major city and the other a gay resort area, there is a concentration of bars all of which are on some point of the cover charge continuum. They both have bars that allow for options when it comes to ambience, cover charges, price of drinks, or clientele so bar hoping is a convenient option as is whether or not you will pay the price of two drinks to get into an establishment to buy actual drinks or opt to go somewhere that along with being able to just enter and buy more drinks you can mingle in a very eclectic crowd.

If any of the bars in those locations that do not normally have a cover charge has a fundraiser and has one for a particular evening, patrons who choose not to pay the charge, or can’t, can walk to other similar places. Just as important, even with a surprise cover charge no one has to just go home.

I have been to bars that never charge an admission fee, and who, on a fundraiser night rake in a lot of donations because people like to voluntarily give to a cause, not pay an excise tax to support it.

I live on a tight budget, not always faithfully. On a night on the town, I will decide ahead of time the number of drinks I will pay for with the eternal hope others will include me in a round on them.  Because of a past experience this practice helps avoid any police interaction on the way home. My usual limit is three drinks and I will bring enough money to cover those drinks, the tip, perhaps enough to buy someone else a drink, and gas money, so if I go to a bar whose cover charge is equal to or greater than the price of a drink, I am not paying to get inside in order to spend a lot more money that I don’t have on me. My evening out gets limited by someone else or, to have the evening I had looked forward to, I have to hit an ATM with the added charges having my evening cost more than planned for or I could be limited to being able to just buy one drink with a tip.

On nights in places, like mine,  with only one Gay bar in town, when an otherwise free entry bar charges admission with nothing more to show for the fee than that you got in as there is no entertainment of any kind, nothing tangibly different than any other night, just basically the same people you see every weekend except you had to pay to see them this time, the three viable options are to drive over 25 miles in one direct, over 30 in another, about 90 miles in a third, or add to the fun of driving long distances and looking for parking that does not cost an arm, a leg and your first born, and go the 60 miles into downtown Boston or to a T station on the outskirts to get the commuter rail knowing your night will be early as you have to pay attention to when the last train leaves the city.

When the only Gay bar in  town adds a cover charge, regardless the importance of the object of the fundraiser, it locks people out first because of the honest objection to having to pay to go into a place where you spend money regularly resulting in not going, perhaps not having enough money to pay to enter and still buy a number of drinks, maybe having the cover charge half of what you were planning to spend, it could be you do not support the particular cause for any variety of reasons, or there is nothing special about what is inside that could really explain why you are paying to get in, or you can enjoy your evening in another establishment for more of the evening than the cost of the admission fee might allow.  

You might go to the bar for Community and, for older people, it might be to hang out with people you grew up with to reminisce and laugh with longtime chosen family, but drinking not being your thing, you drink water while socializing, but have to pay the cost of multiple bottles of water just to get in to drink water.

In a one Gay bar town the choice becomes paying the charge, going to another bar, or going home. unless you are willing to take the round trip drive and chance a DUI on the way home, you are forced to modify your plans which often means either going to a heteronormative bar and have the night you had not planned for, or simply going home.

The negative purpose of cover charges is to control the make up of the clientele. Anyone can enter if they pay, but not everyone can pay the charge. The positive is that gets money to a worthy cause.

Where there are options, a cover charge might limit access to the one bar that has it in a location that has many bars, however, in a location with only one bar the cover charge prevents entry into all of them.

The existence of options does not lock someone out of a community experience, but where there are no options people get locked out.

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