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What's a gay guy gotta do in this town for a night out without running into a bachelorette party?

Wicked Gay Blog expresses frustration with the trend of women celebrating impending nuptials to show up at bars that normally cater to gay men - even in Provincetown during Bear Week:

Jacques, which is a Boston drag institution and gay bar is now nothing more than a playground for bachelorette parties, often hosting 3 and 4 parties in a single evening. When I go to Jacques now to see one of my favorite Boston legends like Mizery, Destiny, or Kris Knievel I feel like a stranger in my own neighborhood. If I can get past the bachelorette girls screaming, stumbling, vomiting, belligerent behavior I still am unable to interact with my favorite queens because the girls make sure they are the center of all attention in that bar.

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Comments

dbar?

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Yes, Peggy O'Neil's. It is amazing how double standards of acceptance of people trying to enjoy themselves in a publicly licensed establishment work in this city.

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I'm 100% positive all the thug types that weren't let into Peggy O's would not have made it past the front door at dbar either. Problem is, everyone would have stood up for dbar, but no one gives a rat's as about a random neighborhood dive bar frequented by working class folks. Someone realized this was a great money grab opportunity.

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dbar would most likely have rules for entering the establishment, in writing where people can see them, and would enforce them regardless of race of the potential patron.

Sorry, but it is the truth. I was going to chime in on this last week. The truth is that there are ways to keep the "wrong" element out of a bar, but you can't make the wrong element people based on race or ethnicity in a public establishment. Just like, in this case, you can't keep annoying bachelorette parties out. You can't even make a gay bar a gay bar, just like you can't keep gay people out of other bars.

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What a heterophobic and bigoted thing to write about straight bachelorettes. May we hear from Governor Patrick, Attorney General Coakley and Mayor Walsh on Wicked Gay's hate?

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I heard Elizabeth Warren is 1/32nd gay. Just think about that for a while and forget to take your Zestril, okay?

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You know this ... how????

I'm sorry if your tiny brain can't accommodate it, but lesbians are quite a varied lot when it comes to gender expression.

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old, fat, ossified members of a privileged overclass is to conflate criticism of their undue self-entitlement as flung by a long-oppressed minority with the kind of life-damaging bigotry and hatred that said underclass has been forced to live with their whole lives. The hermetic obliviousness of it, the ridiculous solipsism, would be staggering if it weren't such a commonplace.

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since you got that out?

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you would realize that your comment doesn't make sense. Start by looking up "commonplace".

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for mayor, or at least Food Czar of Boston Public Schools. He'd bring quality, transparency, and would write hard-hitting reviews of the menu options.

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We don't know if these are groups of gay or straight women.

What we do know is that the blogger has an issue with women partying in his manspace - but, hey, misogyny is something you can get on to, right?

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more from the blog post:

"The atmosphere completely changes as these drunk, screaming, entitled young women come in with a "look at us" and "look how fabulous I am" attitude complete with penis hats, tiaras, sashes, boas, and you name it....a whole plethora of tackiness that I personally don't even try to understand."

yeah.......... these are straight women.

bet he'd be equally annoyed at straight guys crashing the party too.

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Women does.

I mean, their behavior sounds atrocious, so why not ask the management to boot them for that? Because it removes the "infestation of women ewww" vibe of the post, that's why.

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I have seen how some of these parties behave themselves at Jacques (and in other bars), even though I have only been a few times, they are, by an large exceptionally ill-behaved, and I live in Allston, so I have some idea of the usual gamut of drunken behavior. If a place I went to started to cater near exclusively to these parties, I'd flee, too.

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There are women in gay bars. They are called lesbians. They do not grab, grope or point at gay men. They do not make rude remarks or ask questions (giggle giggle) about what we do in bed. They do not expect gay men to dance with them and do not call them assholes for not engaging with them. They do not throw their purses in a pile in the middle of the dance floor and take up all the space.

When the DJ doesn't take your request, it is not appropriate to throw your drink at him. This happened.

When the bartender cuts you off, you do not respond by knocking register off the bar. This happened.

And interestingly, these "open minded" party girls avoid bars that cater primarily to lesbians. Wonder why.

I speak as someone who has tended bar in Provincetown for many years.

There are bars I will not visit anymore because of these rude hordes.

If a straight guy subjected these girls to what they do to gay men, the girls would object and the guy would be thrown out.

And by the way, these straight ladies are lousy tippers.

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If a straight guy subjected these girls to what they do to gay men, the girls would object and the guy would be thrown out.

If this is true, then they should be thrown out!

So why aren't they being thrown out?

It sounds to me like the problem isn't the parties per se, but that the misbehavior is being tolerated by greedy owners at the expense of the regular patrons.

Sounds like the regular patrons are being encouraged to take their business elsewhere.

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Yes, the owners are greedy. The girls pay the cover and drink, even if a few of them stash bottles in their purse and they all pre-game, A LOT. Owners should inspect bags.

Gay guys tend to be nice. Too nice. There are very few fights in gay bars. I have 86'd only three people in Ptown over the years: a straight girl who was rude, grabbed fistfuls of fruit from my tray, and finally peed in an inappropriate place; a straight boy who appeared at a lesbian event and creeped out the girls with his remarks (he didn't touch, unlike the bachelorettes!) despite my repeated warnings; and three, a lesbian who snuck in a flask of vodka. The ones I *SHOULD* have had thrown out were all straight. But gay bars are just not equipped to deal with it, they do not have the muscle on staff and management prefers to ignore it.

When I worked in a straight bar in Kenmore Square back in the day, fights were routine, common on weekends. Thank God for police details.

Most states in the US do not even have workplace and housing protection for gays, never mind marriage. Many gay men and women vacation in Provincetown so they can be themselves, to enjoy a rare bit of inherent acceptance, unlike their daily lives.

Gay people need our space. Period. If you are not with your gay friends, or are not visiting a gay friend who works at the bar, don't go. I do not go to a gay bar to be groped and harassed. It ain't a zoo. Leave us in peace.

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Preach it Brother Bartender!

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Using the word "heterophobia" outside of a very narrow scope (which would include actual hate crimes or genuine bigotry toward straights, none of which is being displayed here) suggests you have a poor understanding of the world around you. As an overall parallel to "homophobia" it's a concept that is entirely fiction. Considering straight people are not fired for being straight, are not beaten or killed for being straight (just had the one year anniversary of Mark Carson's murder in NYC. Look him up.), and never have to worry, in any state of the union, that you'll die and your family will take everything you've built in your life with your spouse away from him/her legally and without recourse. In that light, your statement here is so asinine as to be pathetic.

It's not unacceptable for an oppressed group to feel like the majority group is encroaching on their safe-spaces in situations like this. Believe it or not, even in this day and age, straight people say all sorts of stupid nonsense even to the faces of queer people, and sometimes we like to have places where we don't have to deal with your bullshit. Because you already have the whole rest of the world.

In this case, I'm going to assume the writer would probably not care at all about bachelorette parties hosted at gay bars if they behaved sensibly, and here's the big thing he makes obvious make the whole thing about them. It's much less gross in Massachusetts, but how can you miss the obvious thoughtlessness of straight people in a gay bar drunkenly celebrating the nuptials they take for granted?

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Most women actually do understand the need for a "safe-space" and certainly they're not there to make it less safe or less welcoming. I'm sure that part of the motive is to be away from drunken straight men. But yes--obviously drunken packs of anyone invading your favorite watering hole is unsettling and I say that as someone who lives down the street from Doyle's but rarely goes anymore because of the backwards-baseball-cap-and-cargo-shorts-wearing tourist hordes coming there from Sam Adams. You can't blame the management for welcoming the cash infusion but it's annoying.

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Is a ptown local said something similar

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just like the South Boston Allied War Veterans did.

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Gay bars should be able to ban straight people, which means you also believe bars should be able to ban gays. Very forward thinking.

That was a horrible comparison.

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Because the blogger isn't actually excluding anybody from anything, he's just displaying his annoying jerkishness with a blog posting.

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A well-aimed one, too. I don't think this was advocating that course of action.

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.

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BIGOT!

Just kidding. I don't encourage the p.c. thought police but I can only imagine the outrage if the shoe was in the other foot.

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You don't have to "imagine" the outrage if the other way occurred (straight people complaining about gays), this happens every day with much more frequency and venom.

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Sounds about right, they're annoying in general if it's any consolation, they tend to drag down the atmosphere just about anywhere. No pun intended. Won't they make some guy real lucky though...

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hasn't jacques been the go-to bachelorette spot for at least the last decade? How often does this guy get to "his" neighborhood?

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Mrs. Wiffleball and I once considered buying a place across the street from Jacques in the '90s and decided that we didn't want to deal with the drunken hen parties reeling out of there every night.

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I really don't understand the concept. Seems like rathe rpoor preparation for an upcoming marriage.

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I and my best buds hired a driver. We went to the track; I won a hundred bucks (or was it two hundred?) on a perfecta. We had a luxury steakhouse dinner with some great wine, hit a few bars, including some naked-lady ones, smoked some good cigars, ended up staring up at the sky in the Public Garden at 3am during a meteor shower. (That actually happened, it wasn't something merely induced by intoxicants.)

We tied one on, had a lot of laughs. No pros were involved. Nobody hurled or got into a fight; we didn't bother anybody or get thrown out anywhere. (I did have my camera forcibly grabbed from me and erased by a giant, angry strip-club bouncer when I took a group photo of us in the parking lot outside on the way out: he thought I might have caught an image of some of the ladies inside through the open door, a no-no.) A hilarious, memorable night.

It's not about a "last night of bachelor freedom", just an excuse to hang out with guys you don't see often enough anymore. The parties I don't get are the ones scheduled the night before the wedding. Nobody should be hungover for their big day.

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Good lord almighty, if one more of my straight women friends titters "Tee hee! Let's go to Jacques!", I'm going to lose it.

Now another group of people I know want to go to Jacques this Saturday. They're a group mostly made up of heteroflexible/pansexual people and they can be a bit pretentious about how liberated and open minded they are because they're attracted to the person, not the gender. Translation: I'll (be with) anything that moves.

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"heteroflexible/pansexual, I'm attracted to the person not the gender"

English translation: gay, but not ready to admit it. In all my years in the gay world, anyone who describes themselves in such a manner always grows up to be gay.

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Screaming, stumbling, vomiting?

Sounds like these favorite bars of yours overserve, no? Ask them to stop or be busted.

Also, you could request that screaming, stumbling, vomiting persons be booted from the premises ... which is legally what they are supposed to be doing anyway, no?

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...many places that appeal at all to androsexual interests are usually gay-oriented, straight women may not have all that many other options. Perhaps it's time someone opened a Golden Banana Hammock or something for the bachelorettes?

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I don't want this nonsense in the places I drink either.

It's silly, dumb and crass behavior.

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Bachelorette/bachelor parties are a pain in the ass at any bar. As a straight guy, I really don't want some wasted bride-to-be coming up to me asking me if she can have my boxers, or if I'll bite some stupid candy off her neck while I'm watching a game at a bar.....unless she has hot friends.

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Vince Vaughn comedy: "Bachelorette Party Crashers".

The pitch: "It's like 'Wedding Crashers', only with more STDs."

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This actually happens? Please let us know where so we can all avoid said location(s). So glad I've never encountered this!

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Yeah. Jacques once was., in order of unscientifically calculated percentages:

a) A drag performance venue, with appreciators, fans & groupies of such
b) A gay bar
c) a post-work hangout for restaurant & bar workers, and sundry locals who fit no other categories

And it was THE place that sold Narragansett even before the Naragansett-for-hipsters relaunch. I mean, Narragansett is watery swill, but it was sentimental watery swill, and getting a bottle during a pool game at Jacques was special. If you wanted classier beer, you could go to the Napoleon Club instead.

Anyway. It is now yet another sad memory of dirty old Boston, polished for tourists and suburban dilettantes. I join the complainer in not wanting to wade through drunk-to-puking bachelor or bachelorette parties for a drink, but I can understand why Jacques went for that cash infusion when so many gay bars have shuttered.

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el hubbo recalled seeing some punk shows in the basement and in between sets venturing upstairs to go outside for a cigarette and then back in to catch a little of the drag shows.

I can't vouch as I've never been. I'd like to, but not if it's bachelorette night. :/

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It's true. Everyone got along great as I recall--at least partly because no one was there as a tourist. I hung out in the basement and upstairs and everyone had a good time.

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You just jogged my addled memory--I did go to hear a friend's friend's fairly crappy band there 10-15 years ago. I think I remember a lot of screaming vocals and someone wearing a gorilla head.

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A former bandmate of mine played there in another (punk) band back in the mid-90s.

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The punk rock kids were a good crowd for that place; we understood how to behave and had some empathy for the regulars and their outcast experience. I recall seeing Chelsea on Fire perform there. It took me a long, long time to recognize that band's singer then as the bartender Josey Packard, now working behind the bar at Drink in Fort Point, as she has since grown all her hair back. She's an awesome bartender, by the way.

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Anyone ever think that maybe girls go to gay bars for their bachelorette parties so they dont have to worry about dudes hitting on them all night and they can just enjoy their party?

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Just pretend to be straight and creepily hit on the bachelorettes until they leave. Bring an emergency fedora and a pair of jean shorts for extreme cases.

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I thought such things were confined to Dick's Last Resort...

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I think it's great when all sorts of people can go to a bar and have a good time together. What I don't like is when packs of women come to a gay bar to see the monkeys at the zoo. The gays aren't an amenity for you to enjoy. Straight people are guests at gay bars and should behave accordingly. I don't go to a venue that caters to a black clientele and make a spectacle of myself, insert myself in every situation, make stupid comments about how cool the blacks are and how great they dress and how unthreatening they are so isn't it just so awesome to have a place to go where I can flirt and behave badly without any fear of danger, etc. Also, sometimes a gay bar is a place where guys like to go and pick each other up. Lesbians get this and know how to act and they have their own version of this and we all get along. Packs of straight people don't and ruin the vibe. And anyway, isn't EVERY place made for straight people? Can't gay people have one goddamed place that is their own?

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Whit's comment is well put. At the risk of being politically incorrect, I miss the golden age of Boston gay bars in the 70s/early 80s when they were basically out of sight of the straight world, although hiding in plain sight would be a more accurate description. I am told now, however, that we gay (excuse me, I mean LGBTQ ) people have "assimilated" and there is no need for gay bars anymore.

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I'm usually not a nanny state kind of guy but extreme situations require extreme measures.
I don't want to see these drunk, brassy gals in my (mostly hetero, who really knows?) bar.

Ship em all to Dick's!!!

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Hmm, one of those events where a large group of people plans to show up at a bar where people like them don't usually go...

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