To help our production fully make sense of what 1970s backroom bars were like, we also considered what some contemporary parallels might be. Two in particular stood out to me - gay hookup apps and circuit parties.

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As many gay men in the 1970s used backroom bars to quickly and directly satisfy their sexual desires, many gay men today use hookup apps such as Grindr, Jack'd or Scruff. Grindr is the most popular of these apps - with over 27 million users worldwide in 2017. Profiles are sorted by distance, and, unlike many dating apps, you do not have to match with someone before messaging them. You can simply message the 50 users who are closest to you and see if they respond. When filling out your profile, you are asked about a number of physical and sexual descriptors - height, weight, race, sexual position, whether you would like to receive NSFW pictures (which many often ignore). You can then filter users based on these characteristics (although some require a premium membership). It is common for a Grindr profile to not include a picture of the user's face - some don't have any pictures at all. While some of Grindr's appeal lies in its immediacy, much of it also lies in its potential for anonymity. This is where I see the strongest similarity to the backroom. This anonymity and emphasis on purely physical features also allows for - and even encourages - much of the same bigotry that occurred in association with the gay clone image. However, unlike the backrooms, Grindr is virtual, so much of the physicality of the backrooms is lost. To use Grindr, you don't have to go into a backroom, feel the floor sticky with bodily fluids, hear a multitude of men engaged in sex acts all around you, or smell these sweating men in that dirty space. 

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A contemporary parallel that brings in more of the physical nature of the backroom bars is the circuit party. Circuit parties are dance parties for gay men, usually part of a weekend-long series of events, that typically include drug use and public sexual activity. They started in the 1970s and coexisted with backroom bars for a while, but have maintained a level of notoriety backroom bars have not. Circuit parties, today, are known for drawing many of the same men backroom bars once glorified - namely, young, white, muscular, and masculine. Since these parties happen all over the country, these men also usually have a level of disposable income to travel. Critics claim circuit parties promote "body fascism" through their exclusivity. While circuit parties seem to replicate the physicality and some of the troubling social dynamics of backroom bars, they are not as immediate, as regularly available, and likely less anonymous. 

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Perhaps backroom bars are a relic of a time when gay men had to keep their sexuality fully behind closed doors, but many of the cultural elements that pervaded it - from the desire for immediate sexual fulfillment to the bigotry within those spaces - still find some expression today.