Double Entendre Real Specific would be The Stud, in San Francisco, or The End Up, also there, or My Sister’s Room. The second was Double Entendre But Vague, like The Underground, in Portland, Maine, where I grew up, or The Abbey, in Los Angeles. The first category was Address Only, like the 520 in Iowa City.
In the 1990s, as I first started going to find community in what we called gay bars then, I developed a theory of their names. The Kevin Aviance story could be Season 3 of Pose. And how that is exactly what happened next. “Hello, I’m Kevin Aviance, House of Aviance, and I’ve moved to New York to take over.” I nodded as if agreeing. One of my favorite memories of working at Tunnel Bar in New York City in 1991 is when a striking Black queen walked in off the street and shook my hand as if I owned the place.
