Queer nightlife is full of dreams, which at their best improve waking life. Coiled within conventional hopes for an evening is a utopian vision of society. “No one man owns house / because house music is a universal language,” Chuck Roberts announced on Mr. Fingers’s legendary 1988 single “Can You Feel It,” virtually a summation of the egalitarian intentions of not just dance music but the queer spaces that nurtured it too. Yet the LGBTQ+ scene also reflects the inequalities of the world at large. Rich, white, cis-gendered males in city centers usually have more access to queer bars and clubs, and when such spaces move to neighborhoods that are working-class, non-white, or on the urban outskirts, they’re often portents of gentrification. House’s idealism can become real when night falls, but only in exceptional environs. And these days, our reverence for queer establishments might direct the hetero mainstream to their doorsteps.
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