I been everywhere, man

Friends, I've been all over the world and, if I may paraphrase Gerty, a gay bar is a gay bar is a gay bar. Milan or Milwaukee, San Francisco or St. Louis, Toronto or Tallahasse, there's a template from which these establishments are cut and any distinction is really just a variation on the general theme.

In St. Louis, for example, I'm pretty sure there is a zoning regulation stating that all barrooms and nightclubs patronized by homosexual men and women must have walls and ceilings painted black, incorporate corrugated metal and exposed ductwork in their decor and -- this is key -- feature inadequate cooling and ventilation systems.

I was espousing my observation of the fundamental sameness to be found in the gay watering holes of the world to a friend last weekend. He vigorously insisted that the bars of his city were different and suggested that it was the patrons themselves who made them so.

The patrons, I insisted with equal vigor, tend to be even less distinctive place to place than the environs. Once you run through the list of types (they're stereotypes, I guess, but only if two of them are standing side by side at the rail) -- club kid, daddy, tweaker, twirler, mature perv, etc. -- there's nothing new under the dim, diffuse lighting.

All of which is by way of saying that the bars in Los Angeles (by which I mean West Hollywood) are no different than the bars of Louisville. Close your eyes and you could be anywhere.

Until some guy comes up to you and asks, with absolutely no trace of irony or sarcasm, "What's your sign?" Happened to me three times. Keep those lids closed, if only so he won't see your eyes rolling back in your head. You're in California. No doubt about it.

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