Confessions on the Dance Floor

Reveries From The Gay Bar

June 5, 2019

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprisings, Artforum asked artists including Department of Art Professor Catherine Opie and Department of Art alum Paul Mpagi Sepuya to share memories of their experiences at gay bars.

"June marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprisings. To celebrate the occasion, Artforum invited some of our favorite artists and writers to share an early or particularly vivid memory of a gay bar. Our only proviso: Keep it quick and dirty.

CATHERINE OPIE

In the summer of 1983 in San Francisco, at a bar on Valencia Street called Amelia’s, I came into my community of sapphic sisterhood. Thursday night was the ritual dancing to Joan Armatrading and Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family” with more disco thrown in. We waved our hands in the air, pressed our bodies gleaming with sweat against others, and talked about who was hot in all leather. We could be our true selves: Softball-playing lesbians mixed with the leather-clad crew—all were permitted. Good music in a safe space was formative to my identity, to getting brave and coming out. I was there to watch first—and then to cruise.

PAUL MPAGI SEPUYA

I came out in 1995. I was thirteen. I don’t recall my first gay bar, but I remember my first gay coffee shop, Third Rock, in San Bernardino, California. We were in high school and wearing handmade rainbow-bead necklaces. I remember people of all ages, a pool table, sofas. Then there was that party . . . was it TigerHeat? In West Hollywood? Also all ages. In New York, I remember going to Kurfew, “America’s Largest Young Gay Dance Party,” at the Tunnel nightclub just before it closed. Somewhere on Third Avenue above Fourteenth Street I remember seeing Amanda Lepore for the first time. The thing I had wanted to see most on my first visit to New York was David LaChapelle’s portrait of Lepore as Marilyn at Tony Shafrazi Gallery in SoHo. Third Avenue and Third Rock. "— Artforum Summer 2019 Issue

This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the Artforum website.

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