"The rise of the gay sports bar"

An interesting article in The Classical, including a consideration of the notion among some gay men that interest in sport is a "betrayal" of gay identity (h/t Outsports):

I grab a seat near the entrance at Nellie's, Washington DC's top gay sports bar. The walls are covered in vintage felt pennants and flickering high definition televisions. Above the door, situated below the Penn State and MSU banners and between a Washington Capitals pennant and an American flag, is a signed color glossy of Madonna. “Good luck, Nellie's,” the handwritten inscription reads.

The giant projector screen is tuned to the Veterans Day matchup between Michigan State and North Carolina. In terms of all-American pageantry, the event is unbeatable: an outdoor basketball game held on the deck of the USS Carl Vinson, the Nimitz-class carrier that had the honor of dumping Osama Bin Laden's lifeless, bullet-ridden body to the sharks just six months earlier. President Obama is in attendance, wearing a slick leather bomber jacket, and the audience is loaded with Navy and Marines. At the bar, a server mock-humps an amused regular before carrying off a tray of empty beer bottles.

Mostly, Nellie's feels like your usual sports bar—only bigger and more tastefully decorated (there's no sponsored beer company paraphernalia, a point of pride for the owner). The crowd is a motley crew. At the table in front of me, a group of bald, bearded, and extremely ripped men in tight T-shirts are ordering their first round. To my left, a lanky male hipster has his arm around his girlfriend while they peruse the menu. Behind me, a pair of hefty, middle-aged guys with no necks wearing beaten-up jeans and stained shirts plow through a bucket of fries. As the President and his wife take center court to deliver a tribute to the nation's fighting men and women, the waiter behind me gasps. “She's so gorgeous!” he says.

Nellie's is the most prominent member of the burgeoning gay sports bar scene, but it wasn't the first.

The last decade has seen an explosion of gay sports bars in America's large cities: Crew in Chicago, Gym Bar and Boxers in New York, Woofs in Atlanta, Sidelines in Ft. Lauderdale, and more.

These bars are a coming out party for a long-standing subculture of out fans—and athletes—that have been trapped between competing stereotypes for decades. And on the business front, their success is undeniable.

Keep reading HERE.