Long Live Queer Nightlife

Spotlighting queer joy, this week’s review reveals that LGBTQ+ nightlife in London is thriving and becoming more inclusive despite the closing of numerous gay bars.

Posted on June 23, 2025 in Reviews of the Month

Long Live Queer Nightlife: How the Closing of Gay Bars Sparked a Revolution

Ghaziani, Amin. Princeton, 2024
288p bibl index, 9780691253855 $29.95, 9780691253862 $29.95

Ghaziani (Univ. of British Columbia, Canada), the author of There Goes the Gayborhood? (CH, Jan’15, 52-2840), delves into the transformation of London’s LGBTQ+ nightlife. Before the pandemic queer spaces were facing a sweeping “closure epidemic” (p. 2). Gay bars with a clientele consisting of predominately white men were affected, but spaces for lesbians and people of color were also hard-hit. Ghaziani argues that, in the wake of this ongoing “disruptive event,” episodic, ephemeral, and inclusive club nights are refashioning queer nightlife in imaginative and defiant ways (p. 14). His extensive fieldwork from 2018, 2019, and 2022 consists of 112 interviews and observations from 42 club nights in dialogue with bureaucratic planning documents and reports. Celebrating new forms of queer social spaces while acknowledging the loss of the old, this monograph offers a hopeful outlook. Chapters provide rich ethnographic material for women’s and gender studies, queer studies, humanistic social sciences, and modern history surveys. Ghaziani wears his theoretical accolades lightly in this personally engaging volume. Like the best pop-up parties, the book conveys the evanescent qualities of queer joy. In what could have been a dour litany of lament and loss, Ghaziani finds creativity, humor, and perseverance.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals.
Reviewer: E. Pappas, University of Virginia
Interdisciplinary Subjects: Women’s & Gender Studies, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual & Transgender Studies
Subject: Social & Behavioral Sciences – Sociology
Choice Issue: Nov 2024

Long Live Queer Nightlife

Spotlighting queer joy, this week’s review reveals that LGBTQ+ nightlife in London is thriving and becoming more inclusive despite the closing of numerous gay bars.