"When I first came out, you went to a gay bar to meet gay people. "It all changed with smartphones," LaFary said, referring to the widely held theory that mobile dating apps like Grindr, by facilitating meetups online, helped render bars unnecessary. Gay bars are up against two major cultural shifts. In London the Queen's Head, a gay bar since the 1920s, closed in September, going the way of other prominent gay bars in that European capital. The 501's closing "comes just weeks after the Barracks closed in Louisville," reported the gay news website Great Lakes Den, lamenting that "most of Indiana will no longer have easy access to a leather bar." San Francisco was down to just a few dozen gay bars compared with more than 100 in the 1970s, according to a 2011 report in Slate, and Manhattan had but 44, half as many as it did at its gay-bar peak in 1978. Scotten is not going to squeeze out gays, he said, but it's hard to make a living these days catering solely to gays, and so he would like to broaden his clientele. "You going to turn this into a sports bar?" one snarled at one of the new owners, Danny Scotten. Only one is open, English Ivy's, and earlier this year it sold to a partnership of straight people, causing some regulars to worry about the place's future. In a 17-year bartending career, LaFary has worked at six Indianapolis gay bars.
"Guys my age stopped going out to bars all the time," said LaFary, 48, "and the new generation never did catch on."
Jack LaFary poured the last of the drinks at the 501 in October but had seen the end coming well before then. In the past six months Talbott Street, long-known for its drag shows, closed, as did the 501 Eagle, a bar favored by leather enthusiasts since 1986. Among the casualties: the venerable Varsity, the city's oldest gay bar, dating back to the 1940s. Since 2015 at least five have closed their doors in Indianapolis, about half the city's total.
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - Gay bars are going out of business fast.