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On the Grindr-isation of Sniffies

Al Pacino in the 1980 William Friedkin film ‘Cruising’

Last week my friend took me to her favourite cruise bar. It was, she told me, “democratic, proletkult.” Such unusual and precise adjectives, I thought, to describe a place where people, mainly men, go to have a beer and meet others, and have sex on the premises. But she’d suggested it while we were having a cocktail in another bar, which she described, pleasingly, not as bougie or even hipster, but quite specifically as bourgeois. I love when people talk like this, with direction and meaning and judgement in their choice of words, and so we went.

She was right. It was distinctly proletkult. The beer was cheap, the barmen friendly, and the decor the kind that isn’t designed but that accretes, the residue of thousands of nights of sociality: a pornographic drawing pinned above the door, some old streamers hanging from a lamp, a disturbingly large and thick dildo affixed to the bar. And democratic, yes. The crowd was a strong mix of ages and types, all looking for a match for a moment or an evening. For those who haven’t been, a cruise bar is a gay bar with space usually set aside for watching, touching, and fucking. Most gay bars aren’t cruise bars, although they can be cruisey; rules around sex on premise vary greatly according to city and nation. In this one, hidden behind a discreet door down a side street, sex is not just permitted, but encouraged.