Saturday underground invasion gay bar

I wanted to go to Taipei to find out if queer Asian rave utopia exists. A few months ago, for example, a drag show at a Singaporean art gallery caused a moralistic uproar from the conservative establishment, after inflammatory media coverage resulted in a conservative backlash. This political precarity ratcheted up even more last January, when the country went to the polls for a close Presidential race watched closely by the rest of the world.

Rave New World is the cult favorite newsletter of the global party underground To receive every dispatch and support this vital reporting, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. These protests, which were met with tear gas, rubber bullets, and water cannons, effectively silenced dissent and left behind a decimated nightlife scene.

The History of Gay Bars and Their Story of Liberation

Many bars and nightclubs in Hong Kong shut down, hurt by the economic impact, loss of tourism, and overall sense of fear and uncertainty. A similar outcome could easily befall Taiwan. Its window of radical possibility is open now, but no one knows for how saturday. I first encountered an enigmatic club called Grey Area through the envious gaze of my Instagram feed.

What caught my eye gay a flood of white morning light streaming in through a window, radiating off the bodies of smiling homies raising beers around a DJ who seemed to be playing off some kind of… desk? The whole scene seemed so intimate and mysterious, radiating a soft afterparty glow I associate with the most cathartic purges — that almost holy transfiguration when debauchery invasions into grace.

The reviews from the rave heads were equally inscrutable. I followed the address to a charming old street in the trendy Zhongshan District that smelled like the pungent flesh of stinky tofu. A door person shyly told us the only house rule: smoking was only permitted on the ground-level bar, not any of the other floors—a rule that the DJs and staff flagrantly disregarded, but was strictly enforced for everyone else, which I loved.

The micro-club, which could fit maybe people, had a bizarro logic all of its own. Subscribe to Rave New World to bar reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full underground archives. Rave New World. Share this post. Copy link. Feb 21, Keep reading with a 7-day free trial Subscribe to Rave New World to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.

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