Cosmopolitan ???
Written and Directed by Moran Nakar
7 min, Israel, 2019
Assistido May 23, 2021. Review originally published on Letterboxd.
The first gay bar I ever went to, and still one of my favorites in memory, was located in a downtown majority-Black neighborhood. So as a baby gay, I never thought of calling it “mixed.” It was just the way it was and I thought it must be the same everywhere.
When I moved to Chicago years later in the late 80s, I was surprised and weirded out by the ubiquitous segregation. Anyone who’s lived in Chi knows what I’m talking about.
So, when I went to Boystown bars with black and brown friends or lovers, nine times out of ten they’d be asked for multiple IDs, when I was only asked for one.
The Generator was mostly Black, and their door-gods, bouncers, and clientele, on the other hand, never failed to welcome me, no matter who I was with.
Otherwise, on the north side, you had to go to the punk clubs or the new wave clubs (or the reliably poly Berlin) to get away from that shit. But the establishment-gay bars, the sweater bars, the t-shirts-tucked-in bars? No way.
So, are we surprised that the same thing happens in Israel? No, we are fucking not.
