Archives for December 9th, 2004

Girl, I wanna take you to a Gay Bar.

This is part one of a ten-part essay on gay bars in Eastern Europe, and takes place in Metelkova mesto in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

An excerpt:

"This particular gay bar is located in one corner of the former Yugoslav army barracks. The vast, abandoned complex sits in a lonely, dark corner of Ljubljana, Slovenia’s capital city. To enter the bar we have to grope our way through a pitch black courtyard.
Only the red tips of cigarettes sparking the darkness clue us in to the fact that there are others gathered at the courtyard’s edges, sitting on the invisible ground, leaning against invisible walls.

We learn that skinheads squat here too, right next to the gay people. Slovenia is the first stop on our journey; we are here for what is being touted as an International Conference on Homosexuality to which Kevin has been invited to present his paper, Queer Nationalism. The actual conference is a little less grandiose than the name implies. There are a small handful of Slovenian activists participating, along with a smaller handful of international guests. The Serb press will later report, in an article entitled The Political Elite Congratulate the Fags, that there were 500 international guests in attendance and that we were all given police protection and stipends from the state. If only it were so! Thus far, we have found the Slovenian activists to be, if not inhospitable, at least indifferent to our presence in their country."

The complete article, Barrack Night Life in Slovenia, is here.

Gay Bar by Electric Six, as animated by Joel Veitch is here.