No more house parties
2007
“What you don’t have these days is parties at home. I have parties here all the time and dancing, and I have people here to dinner at least once a week. But in the old days when it was chucking out time, about ten thirty, we’d all go off to Moseley to a party or somebody was throwing a party and they’d buy some bottled beer – I don’t think we drank wine, it was a bit too effeminate – and we’d all chug off in various motorbikes, cars, buses, whatever to this particular house or flat and we would have a party till two o’clock in the morning, but people don’t throw parties (any more). Probably because the gay scene is more accessible now maybe and the friendships are a lot looser. I’m not decrying it in any way. I just feel that if there were more private ‘dos’ every now and again it makes your friendships more solid than shouting in somebody’s ear across a bar. That (fragmentation of the gay community) can be very detrimental in the future because nobody’s going to open a gay bar if nobody’s there, so you have to keep them going, you have to keep the money going in”.
Contributed by: Robin McGarry, 66