Sprung
By Keith Boykin, in pop culture
Thursday, July 17 2003, 10:55AM
The best kept secret in New York may be that black gay men are meeting up outside of the thugged-out late night clubs. Sure, the all-night parties still draw hundreds and hundreds of people each week, but thanks to new social venues, that's not the only option anymore. And conversation is actually back in vogue.
They say everything must change, and in my life I've seen a lot of changes take place in our culture. That's why I can't wait for the popularity of the thug image to die down.
Don't get me wrong. I like the thug look. It worked for me (or should I say worked me) for years. My favorite was always the muscle thug with the hot body beneath the hip hop attire. But I'm also troubled by the legitimacy of masculinity we often attribute to thugs and thugwannabes simply because of what they wear.
We advertise our big dance parties with pictures of thug-looking men. We know the look very well. Many of us used to emulate that image as we walked around nightclubs with toothpicks hanging out of our mouths. As strange as it seems, that never bothered me.
What does bother me is the attitude that often comes with our thugged-out image. I have only been "out" in the scene for a dozen years, but I remember the days when black gay men actually talked to each other at our parties and in our nightclubs. I remember the days when people actually danced at dance clubs, and they didn't worry what they looked like while they did.
These days it seems we spend a lot of time standing around a bar, standing in the aisles, or standing around the walls profiling. It seems we spend more time trying to look cool than we do trying to have a good time. And everyone, even the people who you think shouldn't, have lots of attitude.
I hadn't thought about these issues in awhile until yesterday afternoon when I received an email from Frank Roberts, a young friend from New York who's spending the summer in Oakland, California. Frank, a college student at NYU, wrote an excellent article about the down low that was published yesterday in a Bay Area newspaper.
Frank compares the nightlife in the Big Apple with two of the popular black gay clubs in Oakland. "Unlike New York’s gender-and-type specific gay black scene, at Cabel’s and Rimshot, things don’t seem to be demarcated according to who’s a queen, lesbian, or d.l. brother- folks just tend to come together as a community, getting their groove on under the D.J.’s various hip hop and R&B beats," Frank writes.
"Another difference between Oakland’s scene and New York’s is that people actually dance in Oakland as opposed to just standing around staring at each other, waiting for the next available piece," according to Frank. "There’s something special," he says, "about the way that black bodies, rhythms and sounds fill these West Coast spaces that says something powerful about people whose identities are under-siege can come together to catch the spirit of the club."
I've seen this same phenomenon in other cities I've visited. In small town North Carolina and big city Denver, I've seen all types of black gay men and lesbians party together because there are fewer options available than in New York or Atlanta or Washington, where men and women can easily segregate themselves.
To be honest, I don't have a problem with segregated social spaces. If women or men want to party by themselves, they should have the right to do so without fear of being ticketed by the PC police. The same holds true for black and white spaces, I think. I don't really want to socialize anywhere I'm not wanted.
The issue for me is one of options. Part of the great virtue of living in a city like New York is the availability of so many social options. I have danced the night away among the mostly white gay male crowd at the Roxy nightclub and have partied till the wee hours among the black gay men at the Octagon.
I'm not one of those people who claims he's "over the club scene" and then shows up at the nightclub a few months later. I admit it. I like going out. I like dancing. I like meeting new people. But I don't like waiting till 1 in the morning to leave my house to party. I know some people take "disco naps," but if I get in bed at 10 o'clock, I'm not getting up until the next morning.
So I wonder, where do black gay men go to socialize before midnight? Turns out, there are a few social options available. Almost any sociable gay man who lived in Washington during the nineties would remember the famous Circle Bar. (Yes, bars can be famous, especially after they've disappeared.) On Sunday nights from 6 until midnight, the Circle Bar became the popular hangout spot for black gay men. I loved it because it was conveniently located and not too late at night. But the Circle Bar closed down several years ago.
When I moved to New York, Day-O's was the popular hangout space for thirtysomething men or for men who wanted to party before midnight. Many of the customers at the bar on Friday would keep partying after they left, but at least we all had the opportunity to socialize in the early evening.
What about the other nights of the week?
"Like clockwork, arriving to fill the void is Sprung, the new Thursday afterwork party for 'upscale black gay men.'" Those were the words published by Brothas On The Town website.
I know this party very well. I've been to it almost every Thursday since May. Here's how Brothas On The Town described it. "Sprung’s venue is the long-standing gay bar Bar D’O at Bedford and Downing, an out-of-the-way spot with an understated sleekness and upholstered style. After a month Sprung has emerged as the hot spot of the moment and is causing an optimism among brothas who are upscale – or upscale wannebes...and who have never seen so positive and urbane a venue since the closing of The Comfort Zone. The crowd is definitely not your run-of-the-mill crowd seen everywhere else."
This is the line that really caught my attention. "Everyone miraculously talks with everyone. Cliques and claques are parenthetical and fluid, an opening of borders, an embracing of all. The business man in Armani talks candidly with the artist in jeans and baseball cap. The unemployed sales rep in linen who has redefined himself as a consultant has a bouncy chat with a suited director from GMAD. Business cards and Palm Pilots are favored props, but brothas still resort to doing it the old fashion way – a name and number scribbled on a slip of paper."
I like this party, and it's not just because I know the two promoters. I like the party because I like to talk, and this is a place where I can go and talk. That's something I miss.
If we want to build and nurture our community, we have to create new social options other than the late night clubs. The clubs are fine, but we also need restaurants and bars and stores that cater to us, that care about us, and that allow us to be ourselves, in our many different ways.
We have enough people in our community to create many new activities and institutions, both formal and informal. I like sports and recreational activities, so I've been bowling with friends for a couple of years and wrestling on a local wrestling team. Black gay men don't have to go to dark parks and dark night clubs as the only places to meet.
We don't have to be clones. We can be ourselves. We can express our individuality. As we create new social options, we can finally come out of the dark.