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

It's closing time for an alarming number of gay bars in cities around the globe — but it's definitely not the last dance

In this exhilarating journey into underground parties, pulsating with life and limitless possibility, acclaimed author Amin Ghaziani unveils the unexpected revolution revitalizing urban nightlife.

Far from the gay bar with its largely white, gay male clientele, here is a dazzling scene of secret parties — club nights — wherein culture creatives, many of whom are queer, trans, and racial minorities, reclaim the night in the name of those too long left out. Episodic, nomadic, and radically inclusive, club nights are refashioning queer nightlife in boundlessly imaginative and powerfully defiant ways.

Drawing on Ghaziani's immersive encounters at underground parties in London and more than one hundred riveting interviews with everyone from bar owners to party producers, revelers to rabble-rousers, Long Live Queer Nightlife showcases a spectacular, if seldom-seen, vision of a queer world shimmering with self-empowerment, inventiveness, and joy.

"An accessible, absorbing look into an evolving form of queer culture, written by a brilliant sociologist." Library Journal (Starred Review)

"Thoughtful and well researched….A wonderfully lively and open-minded intellectual inquiry." Kirkus

"Ghaziani provides an immersive view of [club nights], profiling partygoers and event planners and participating in the club nights himself. It's an invigorating and upbeat view of queer life." Publishers Weekly

"Ghaziani shines as an academic." New York Times Book Review

"Beneath the surface of statistics bemoaning the closure of gay bars, Amin Ghaziani discovers the underground queer scene of London club nights. From pop up clubs to warehouse parties, these episodic events are ephemeral, but as Ghaziani finds, the search for queer joy is durable. This book is a celebration of radical inclusivity and the remaking of community, and a rediscovery of the joy of a night out." Ashley Mears, author of Very Important People: Status and Beauty in the Global Party Circuit

"With fluency and care, Amin Ghaziani brings us the voices and spaces of queer nightlife in the city. This is a book that listens closely, sees clearly, and dances freely. Against a sociology of loss, Ghaziani offers a counsel of joy." Fran Tonkiss, London School of Economics and Political Science

Amin Ghaziani is professor of sociology and Canada Research Chair in Urban Sexualities at the University of British Columbia. He is the award-winning author of The Dividends of Dissent, Sex Cultures, and There Goes the Gayborhood? (Princeton). His work has been featured widely in international media outlets, including the New Yorker, the Financial Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, USA Today, and British Vogue.