By Charles Karel Bouley II

Ozz nightclub in Buena Park closed recently. I know many of you may have missed that memo, but it did. The Boom Boom Room in Laguna Beach has been sold to a multi-millionaire (allegedly partnered with Brad Pitt and George Clooney) and it may end up a high-end hotel or bed-and-breakfast. Ripples is up for sale one minute, not the next, but word is it's still on the offing block. Fire Island in the Marina of Long Beach closed, with the owner concentrating on his other clubs The Paradise and The Falcon. Choices lost their liquor license for a month and who knows what will happen come December.

The fact is, it's not a good time to be a person that likes gay bars. Of course, none of you do, since everyone reading this, if they were to write a bio for an online service of some kind, I'm sure would say, 'Not into the bar scene'? as if it's some badge of honor that you don't attend a gay bar.

I would say it's not a good time to be a gay bar owner, but I have a theory about that one. Just as the escalation of real estate prices and the decrease in the amount of money money costs (interest) have helped people who bought cheap and now own expensive properties (even I couldn't afford to buy my own house right now), it has helped bar owners as well. Gay bars often start in areas yet to be redeveloped. After all, they don't want us in the good part of town. But, as happens, the area gets better, and guess what, that little bar is now worth a pretty penny and many owners, it would seem, are taking advantage of that. Or they're dying, since many tend to skew older. Either way, I don't think it's the bar owners that are suffering.

Now, I'm not into the bar scene either, if you mean the get-drunk-until-I-fall-down-go-home-with-whomever-while-taking-whatever-drug-is-popular scene. But I certainly don't want them to all go away. They serve a purpose: They breed our new activists.

What?

Yup. Lets not forget Stonewall, hey' It wasn't the drag queens from the coffee shop down the street that revolted, hurling their lattes and e-mailing authorities from their wireless hot spots. Nope, they were basically bar patrons who had taken all they could. Where did many find out about AIDS? In bars, from gay papers that are distributed there. Where is the only place for leather boys, drag queens, emos, circuit boys (insert adjective here) to hang around like-minded individuals? In bars. Where are local benefits held to help this or that person in need in the community? In bars. Where do you go when there's absolutely no one around, no one to call, and you just want to be around life, music, laughter? A bar. Where do you twirl to the latest Madonna song or sip a cosmo with a group of friends? A bar.

Historically, bars have served as a meeting place, a place to disseminate information, a place to form a community, a place of safety, of even isolation, from a sometimes hostile outside world. It's a place for younger people to hear older people rant and rave about this or that injustice and a place where friendships are forged or boyfriends forgotten.

That's historically. Today, for some reason, those things have homogenized themselves into other places, other activities, and the bars seem like dinosaurs. So when they close no one really raises a clatter.

We've moved out of the gay bars and in to the mainstream. Even in my town of Long Beach, one's just as apt to find a homo in O'Connels (an Irish Pub) or at The House of Hayden than Brit or Choices. Yes, it's cool to sip tea at the Library around other gay ghetto-ites, but run down the street to Hot Java or Portfolio and a gay boy or girl won't be hard to find.

We are blending. We are melding. We are merging. And that's fine. But as we do, let's remember, everything serves a purpose. I look at the bars as the frogs of gay culture, the canaries in the cave. When they start to disappear, I worry that so will our visibility. Because technically, we build a culture around the bars. Look at West Hollywood. I remember when it was just a street with a bunch of gay bars on it. Then, we moved into the houses behind the bars, around the bars, over the bars, and now it's WeHo. Broadway in Long Beach used to just be a street with gay bars and one gay store, Hot Stuff. Now, it's the heart of the gay ghetto. Castro Street, Christopher Street, take your pick. The bars came, and so did we.

I am one of those people who says we must integrate, we must not completely segregate, that we are truly a part of society and belong each and every place any other human does. But that doesn't mean we don't need places that aren't just ours, places we can go and be around other gays and lesbians, and yes, places for adult fun.

So, a note to the remaining bar owners: Please give us more than you have. Please realize today's gays and lesbians want more than a bar, some booze, and a TV monitor (and karaoke, drag and pool or darts). Times have changed, and so have our entertainment options. Be bold and innovative and open places that are multi-use, part bar, part coffee shop, Internet café, whatever. Theater, amphitheater, you pick. And hey, I'm all for making money, but if all of you cash in on the real estate boom, who's gonna be left to serve the community?

Community. I don't think much about this or that community. But there is a gay community, and bars are part of it. It's like the Irish. In Ireland, pubs are just a way of life; people meet there before dinner, after a show, or just after work. That's how our bars were, and could be again with some improvements.

Yes, negative things happen at and because of bars. But I fear if they all begin to shut down, to go away, to turn into something else we will loose something good as well. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm just old. Hell, I turned 43 on Nov. 7 of this year. But say what you will, when I travel, it's still nice to start my outing at the local gay bar no matter the country, and then go from there. They serve as signposts to many, but right now, it seems the only signs in them are 'For Sale,' 'Closed,' or 'Gone for Good.'