Artist Inhwan Oh has memorialized Philly’s rich history of queer bars in an installation that highlights their importance as well as their fleeting ephemerality.
Titled “Where He Meets Him in Philadelphia,” the site-specific work is part of the featured exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, “The Shape of Time: Korean Art after 1989.“
It features the names of 36 queer bars and clubs that have existed in the city. The names are layered atop one another on the floor in powder incense. They were also burned according to centuries-old rituals and meditative practices, though due to fire hazard restrictions, that action is displayed on a small monitor beside the piece.
“I focus on the relationship between my work and the audience,” Oh, who is based in Seoul, told Billy Penn. “I hope that through my work they can sense and think of the history, memories, emotions, and sensations of the gay community.”
For Bob Skiba, curator at the Williams Way LGBT Community Center and author of the Gayborhood Guru blog, the burning process spotlights the short-lived existence of many of Philly’s queer cultural spaces.
“Although we think of them as signposts in a city, gay bars come and go. They are ephemeral,” Skiba said. Philadelphia’s last lesbian bar closed in 2021. “We build culture where we can and when we can, knowing that it might be gone in 10 years.”
The process of becoming and unbecoming is a central theme of Oh’s art.
“For me, queerness is process-oriented and performative,” Oh said. “I think it’s important for queer artists to realize this process-oriented and performative nature in their work rather than trying to represent it in its fixed form.”
Oh has exhibited in other cities around the world. “My installation stems from my experiences in New York, London, and Seoul,” he said. “I experienced gay bars being visualized and perceived differently, as if the same words were understood differently in different cultural contexts.”
A place for the culture to thrive
Many gay bars in Philadelphia have their origins in Prohibition-era hideaways. Tavern on Camac, Philly’s longest operating gay bar in Philly, can trace its roots back as the speakeasy Maxine’s. Throughout the city in these “semi-public spaces” all kinds of people were drinking and socializing together.
As public opinion shifted and laws were passed, queer culture in Philly experienced a kind of apex in the 70’s and 80’s, according to Skiba, of the William Way Center.
Nationwide, the total number of lesbian bars peaked in the 80s at about 200, according to the Lesbian Bar Project. Philly saw the opening and closing of bars and clubs like Sneakers, Rusty’s, Upstairs, and P.B.L.
The large number of venues was a boon for the gay rights movement, but it remained risky to frequent such places.
“Up to the 70’s and 80’s gay bars in Philadelphia were raided by the police,” Skiba said. “If you were seen going in a gay bar, you could be outed to your family, your friends, your congregation.”
It could be a worrying experience. “I have heard stories of women walking around the block six times before they finally got up the courage to go into a lesbian bar,” Skiba said.
Popular gay bars in Philly today invite all members of the LGBTQ community, though there are still issues around racial inclusivity, with some Black and brown people not feeling welcome at certain venues.
It’s now normal for LGBTQ+ people to hang at mainstream bars, but gay bars and clubs remain a historical epicenter, Skiba said, where the culture could thrive.
“I think what gay bars tell us is what it was like to be queer in America when you were just not welcomed,” said Skiba. “And for all intents and purposes, you didn’t exist.”
From Billy Penn
