For some time now I’ve been wondering about how a gay or lesbian bar can work economically. Not that there aren’t enough people out there to go to them and keep them open, but rather at what point is a gay bar able to go from being just a general bar that caters to the homosexual community to one that holds a niche on the market. Now this niche could be anything from being solely a lesbian bar, a leather fetish club, or a bear/cub den.
The consensus, for the most part, is that the homosexual community makes up about 10% of the population, with some people arguing that the number really stretches to about 1/3 of the population. Others of course take issue with this and will deride any such statement – regardless of that debate there are homosexuals out there and they entitled to be just as much as anyone else. But my interest still remains in the operation of bars and their ability to find a niche market.
Now it seems that for the most part bars/clubs/etc fall into only a few categories. Those concerned with food, dancing, drinking or sports – sexual orientation has nothing to do with it. But at the same time there are differences between the them when it comes to sexual orientation and even race or gender; namely who feels comfortable, what’s allowed to happen and who’s allowed in. It is these differences that I think allow for gay bars to specialize to a greater degree than those catering to the heterosexual crowd.
It is my perception that the gay community, and I’m sure people will back me up on this, even if I can’t find the anthropological data to show it for this argument, is more in tune and forward about their preferences when it comes to sex. Whatever the reasoning for this – be it the initial difficulty in finding a partner and thus needing to make it abundantly clear what your likes are, or the idea that through dismissing the norms of a heterosexual lifestyle one might as well dismiss the trappings too, or some other idea.
It is this directness that I believe leads to the rise in bars and clubs that attend to the needs of those portions of the gay community that are so inclined. But, that doesn’t mean every one of them can run on such a business model. There must be a point at which the population size reaches capacity and from there on in a bar can seek a niche rather than generalizing. Yet, what is that point? Is it 5,000 people means that a place can start specializing? Or does 5,000 support a number of bars but they’re all going to generalize?
I don’t know. I just think it’s interesting because I feel, that the specialization that occurs with gay bars may in fact be greater than that of straight bars. Of course, I could be wrong, but I do think that the gay community is right in their directness of seeking what they want from another person. As a whole, the previous statement sounds naive, and I do recognize that individuals are going to vary and that there will most certainly be games played, but that’s human nature for you.
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