When I say community space, where does your mind go? You probably think of a library, a park, or the patio at your apartment complex with ugly plastic chairs and a grill they never repair. Yet when I ponder a space where I’m confronted by my membership in a collective beyond myself, my thoughts turn to gay club restrooms. Yes: where low lighting meets be-stickered stalls, crowded urinals, and long, disorganized lines. To me, that is where I most realize I’m not the center of the LGBTQIA universe. I am as much a contributor to the gay water-closet vibe as I am its end user.
This made me curious about Austin’s various “community spaces” – aka our local LGBTQIA hot-spot lavatories – and their various eccentricities: the pleasures, the particulars, the lack or excess of pee smell. So I pitched this year’s Pride feature as an excuse to take a non-exhaustive tour of the Violet Crown’s queer commodes. Because I’m of masc experience – which is to say I’ve been suffering men’s restrooms since I went he/him mode in 2015 – I brought along my lady friends to give me their powder room perspective. Detailed here is a little over a month’s worth of drinks, dancing, and drag shows – among many other hijinks related to but not limited by our local gay restroom scene.
(Special mention to Highland Lounge, which I did visit for this story but ultimately didn’t address here as their restrooms have since gone under renovation. We’ll get ya the next time, HL!)
Oilcan Harry’s: The Grand Old Gay-dy
The Visit: High Tea watch party on a Tuesday
Guest Restroom Reporter: Alejandra, a film reviewer who agrees with me about Mickey 17 being a good time
The oldest currently open Austin gay club and first on my schedule was the grand old gay-dy (lady but gay) Oilcan Harry’s. Anyone familiar with James lore knows my initial interaction with Oilcan’s was Austin Pride 2018, when my friend Jocelyn and I popped in post-parade and danced to La Roux’s “Bulletproof” – a lifelong dream, fulfilled. Since then, I’ve judged a drag competition and seen Dennis Rodman smoke a cigar there (same night, Weird City Pageant in 2023), as well as caught former Friday happy-hour show Kingdom hosted by Alexander the Great.
Speaking of Alexander, he was the reason Alejandra and I were at Oilcan’s at 9pm on a Tuesday. As a history-making participant in the first-ever drag king competition show, he’d been hosting King of Drag watch parties every Saturday at Cheer Up Charlies with follow-up watch-alongs at Oilcan’s on Tuesdays. We dropped in for the third episode, which was school-themed and unfortunately the one right after Alexander was cut. He remained in high spirits, though, probably because the specials associated with this “High Tea” show were all THC-based tipples. I admit I partook of the dosed offerings, but it in no way impeded my journalistic acumen.
Oilcan’s indoor lavatory is a bit of an illusion: two side-by-side doors, both marked gender-neutral, lead into the same room. Since attempts to schedule an interview with the Oilcan’s owner yielded no calendar fruit, Alejandra’s and my speculations will have to satisfy. Our theory is that these were at one time separate spaces since one side contains only urinals and the other side only stalls. There were quite a few urinals and just two stalls, which Alejandra noted had “a lot of nice, ample space, which I appreciate.” The red-and-black color scheme gave a sultry vibe overall, but other than stickers smattered at the large horizontal sink mirror’s corners, there was little in the way of what I call customer-created decor. But even without the graffiti found in other venues, overall Oilcan’s cans were clean and pretty spacious even beyond the stalls.
I confessed to Alejandra on the drive home that I’d been pretty nervous throughout the night for our inevitable bathroom trip. “Because I know that I needed to be paying attention,” I said, “I feel like everyone knew that I was paying attention, and then maybe I was putting other people on edge.” It’s not a new feeling; as a trans man, my restroom trips often entail a level of both personal and perceptional scrutiny. Alejandra assured me that most people were enraptured by the reality TV show, which is probably closer to the truth, but also said putting in this much thought about a public restroom was “challenging me to think about a space that I often don’t really have to think about, like, as a cis woman.”
As the first stop of many, Oilcan’s was a perfect baseline: just dank enough to not register on the gay nightlife surprise scale and primarily designed to facilitate a quick piss before hopping back into the action. This was also where I first encountered a repeat item in my restroom travels: the one-person-only signs on every stall. Now what could’ve inspired that addition?
Barbarella and Swan Dive: The Sisters
The Visit: Eighties Night (Barbs) and Elder Emo Night (Swan Dive) on a Friday
Guest Restroom Reporters: Jasmine, former Chronicle proofreader and current novelist, and Patti, who works at the slime factory
Oh, Barbs and Swan Dive: Never were there ever such sisters as these nightlife siblings connected by a massive back patio. My first-ever night out in Austin was Jimmy Eat Wednesdays back in 2017, where I got smashed while a DJ spun Yellowcard. Wisdom passed down to me by Austin elders advised using the Swan Dive bathrooms over Barbs’, but would that remain a truism on this Friday’s eve?
Patti, Jasmine, and I bounced between both Swan Dive and Barbs to get the best of both theme nights. All of us being millennials, the Aughts angst anthems blasting in Swan Dive’s Elder Emo Night made for perfect shout-sing harmonies. For the most part we snagged our drinks there, too, since Swan Dive’s got some of the best cocktails in town. Personal rec from this writer is the cherry vanilla cola, which tastes dangerously like cracking open a brand-name can of creamy carbonated caffeine.
Swan Dive has two gender-neutral restrooms in the traditional style, aka one with stalls and one with stalls and urinals. Both are located at the entrance hallway, at the foot of which is a massive vertical mirror. Jon-Erik Garcia, the sister clubs’ current co-owner, told me later that he believes mirrors ought to be outside the restroom. “There should be an entry room where you can look to the mirror and do your thing,” he explained, “because I don’t like clogging up the sink with people taking photos [while] people [try] to wash their hands.” The focus on efficiency doesn’t preclude fun, though: Both Swan Dive restrooms have plenty of customer-created decor, from silly stickers to more lewd white marker illustrations across stall doors. As I took my first piss of the night, I saw a promo sticker for my first Qmmunity column interview subject Aira Juliet’s short film, “Side Quests.” Great to see a friend!
Over at Barbs, Eighties nostalgia mixed with more recent pastiche as New Wave filled the dance floor and a scene from The Substance played on the bar TV screens. The other screens played landmark Eighties anime Akira, which I admit distracted me from the Depeche Mode. We still danced hard, as is the normal Barbs-goer’s fancy. I ended up sliding out for a brief moment of quiet and actually ran into Garcia, with whom I shared a cheers – me with an Athletic non-alcoholic beer and him with a bottle of water.
Barbs’ restrooms are separated on either side of the building with one being only stalls and the other being only urinals. I admit I didn’t check out the urinal room, mostly because I don’t have the equipment for it. (I’ll pack better next time.) What I did check out were the toilets and those have probably the most secluded stalls I’ve been to, with walls on either side that come all the way to the floor. Here, however, was little in the way of graffiti or stickers. The streamlined stall experience comes from Garcia’s restroom inspiration: Buc-ee’s, “where you’re kind of in your own literal water closet.”
The stalls also come highly recommended by Patti, who appreciated not only their privacy but also the conversational vibe in the line to get in one. “That was an extremely positive line in the bathroom,” she said on the drive home. “I didn’t even need to use the bathroom that much. I told [the other people in line], ‘I’m doing this for journalism, I’m doing this for print media, I’m doing this for the people.’ And immediately they were like, ‘We understand. We’re on board. We love print journalism.’”
I, too, love print journalism.
Coconut Club: The Lyrical Lavatory
The Visit: Coco Cxnts drag brunch on a Saturday
Guest Restroom Reporter: Amy, who brought her Big Into Energy Labubu to brunch because I asked
A morning club hang is a big ask for a certified sleep-in guy like me, but for my readership, I’ll make the sacrifice. Not that cruising over to Coconut Club, the Fourth and Colorado dance hub, is a difficult task to take on. Despite covering multiple nightlife events at the well-loved venue, I still hadn’t made it out for what a drunk Austin Pride partygoer once told me was “the most important drag brunch in Austin.” With reports of their demise seemingly exaggerated – the much-protested closure slated for 2023 by property owners Hanover Company has still yet to happen – I finally made it to the tropical-themed two-story for a little Coco Cxnt fun.
To be transparent, this was the morning after my Barbs/Swan Dive excursion, so I wasn’t as sharp as I’d hoped to be. However, I was hardly the only person washing up onto the Coco rooftop still wobbly from the previous night’s partying. At least two of the massive bachelorette gangs housing shots at tables near Amy and me wore veils I’d definitely seen the night before bopping to Say Anything at Swan. Good company! We were all massively revived by the high energy of the Cxnts, with Arinna Dior Davenport, Bohemia, Brigitte Bandit, and Venus Rising delivering a level of showwomanship I previously thought impossible. Venus even got champagne in her eye and kept performing! They earned every one of the dollars thrown out by drunken brides-to-be.
There were two roof bathrooms: one with a gender-neutral sign and one without any sign at all. I admit the signless one scared me off at first because I thought it was a broom closet, but upon entering it just turned out to be the stalls-only room. Amy was very taken with these rooftop restrooms’ air conditioning, which she described as “crisp.” I have to agree: In the sweltering July morning heat, a little break in the bathroom AC was most appreciated.
But on to the reason I’m calling this lavatory “lyrical.” On the black walls in both restrooms were white song lyrics painted in bold sans-serif font. I recognized the stalls-only room’s song as “Fergalicious” – like I said, I’m a millennial – but the stalls-and-urinal room’s text was a tune I couldn’t place. Neither could Amy, and with my interview request to Coco’s owners gone unanswered, I suppose it’s a mystery our readers will have to answer. Send your thoughts to mail@austinchronicle.com, and let me know what those freakin’ lyrics are!
Rain on 4th: The Chill Pill
The Visit: Just vibing on a Wednesday
Guest Restroom Reporter: Alejandra, who has been kicked out of Rain twice
Rain on 4th’s restrooms loom large in my memory. On my first big gay nightlife adventure, my old friend Jay and their co-workers let me tag along on a Friday bar crawl through Downtown. We first hit Sixth, at the time still dirty, and consumed an amount of alcohol I’ll just call troubling. Right away, I had to pee. I don’t know if you know this, reader, but men’s restrooms at Sixth Street bars are not exactly hospitality highlights – especially when you’re a 24-year-old trans guy still not confidently passing. Each restroom was antithetical to a pleasant wee: one had no stalls, and the toilet and urinal that faced each other; another had one stall next to urinals a man was continuously vomiting into. Maybe I was being a princess, but one can’t help being assigned princess at birth. I held it in all the way from Sixth to Fourth, where upon entering Rain I zipped into the welcoming embrace of their men’s restroom.
Wednesday night at Rain in 2025 vibes much different than a pre-pandemic Friday, I’ll admit. At the door, the person checking our IDs warned us it was pretty quiet. We both got vodka tonics at the bar, and my drink review here is that if the bartender tells you to get the pear vodka, DON’T ignore his recommendation and get the peach rosemary vodka. He’s the expert!
Tonics in hand, we sat on the patio and talked books we hated while 2000s music videos played on vaulted TV screens. Quiet wasn’t a bad look for Rain, to be honest, and the evening humidity made the drinks hit harder. Although that also might’ve been the much-hailed “gay bar pour” making itself known. Alejandra admitted to me she’d been booted from the Fourth Street staple twice before, and she’s the rare person I totally believe when she says it was her companions’ faults, not hers.
With two now-gender-neutral offerings, Rain’s restrooms are on the chiller side. They both had that cobalt blue-ish steel color scheme that auto-tricks my brain into finding a space upscale, with a bit of millennial gray-esque tiling around the sink area. As I was washing my hands, another patron came in with a harried energy and splashed their hair with water. I foolishly attempted a moment of connection – which would have been great for this article – and told them they looked great. In response, they simply turned away. Whoops! Wednesday night at Rain in a mostly empty restroom: not the time to compliment strangers.
As we exited the bar, Rain’s midweek drag show Fierce Factor was just starting and host Arinna Dior Davenport was on the mic. She made a claim I don’t totally agree with but support the idea of: that Wednesday is the Gay Friday. Having these slower weekday nights with Alejandra gave me a much-needed reframing on a gay night out. Instead of crazy antics, the Fourth Street club became, as Alejandra put it, “kind of like your neighborhood bar where everybody’s having a chill time, blowing off some steam, coming together to appreciate this space in a way where I don’t have to be bouncing off the walls.” Is this the start of gay clubs being casual weekday hangouts? Don’t knock it ’til you try it.
The Iron Bear: The Commode of Camaraderie
The Visit: Club Chub on a Saturday
Guest Restroom Reporter: Morgan, freaky film programmer extraordinaire for Hyperreal Film Club and Alamo Drafthouse’s Weird Wednesday
The Iron Bear is a space I’d never been to before, though I’ve always wanted to drop in for dinner sometime. As you’d expect from a place that caters to the hefty hirsute homosexual, the food’s supposed to be choice. Unfortunately, as Morgan and I arrived after the kitchen closed, I can only speak to how truly filling the friendly atmosphere was – which is to say, very!
On the corner of Sixth and Lavaca, the Bear greeted us with a crowded patio that previewed a pretty well-occupied venue. Yes, there were lots of burly gentlemen, but variety’s the spice of the space, as men of all shapes, sizes, and states of undress collected in bar lines, chat circles, and dance floor duets. We came for Club Chub, so there were plenty of thick boys around, and Morgan noted she was one of maybe three women there not employed by the bar. Indeed, the gender ratio tips very much in the masculine-presenting favor, but that didn’t leave her uncomfortable. “I feel like I was at a nature preserve, or like a petting zoo,” Morgan reported on our drive home. “I did enjoy that I had to push through many sweaty, shirtless men to get to the bathroom.”
Both the Bear’s restrooms are gender-neutral and feature at least two stalls, with one having a selection of urinals. The decor is red, black, and white, cementing red as the most popular gay commode color. Posters for weekly drag shows and underwear nights cover the walls, as do little furry-style doodles, trans pride graffiti, and chipped paint. When I dropped in for a quick piss, the largest stall had several occupants – a surprising first on my reporting journey – and it turned out the restroom Morgan used also had a crowded stall. She described hearing audible sniffs, which could be substance-related or could simply be men enjoying each other’s natural perfumes. Whatever the case, Morgan did let me know she was disappointed by the lack of glory holes.
While I cut our visit shorter than expected – ironically because of tummy troubles I refused to experience on a public toilet – I hope to convey what a welcoming experience the Bear provided. As two trans people out on the town, Morgan and I felt pretty at ease there. This was definitely helped by our bartender that evening, who was also the birthday boy Club Chub was tributing. To Chops, who was fast taking orders, generous with his pours, and who very nicely let us down about being able to order fried mushrooms after 11pm: You are a boffo bartender at a truly boffo bear bar.
The Austin Eagle: The Out-There Affair
The Visit: Bootback on a Saturday
Guest Restroom Reporter: Morgan, back on the stall-reporting saddle in her cowgirl boots
Located out near Windsor Park, the Austin Eagle’s a bit of a drive compared to Downtown’s condensed queer offerings. But the drive’s worth it if you’re looking to experience Cruising as any of the guys who aren’t Al Pacino. While the title of Eagle is one shared by bars across America, this is less a result of brand consistency than it is a shared leather-loving history. Catering to all those kinky queers has the Eagle pretty busy, but they’ve lately been expanding their event offerings to make it clear this space is for everyone.
Thus, Morgan, me, and the folks from Neon Rainbows and Country Fried Dance occupied the Eagle on a Saturday afternoon. Nico of CFD led line dances throughout our four-hour hang, although I only tapped in for one. The less said about my line dancing skills the better, so just trust me when I say I flopped. I’d tell you how Morgan did, but my eyes were glued to Nico’s feet in a desperate attempt to get even one move right, so I hardly noticed anyone else.
Much like the Iron Bear, the Eagle’s known for having a pretty prime food menu, which makes sense given it’s housed in a former Mexican restaurant. Go out on the patio and you’ll see a drive-through window still attached with directional paint on the pavement, like cave paintings from fast-food franchises past. Morgan and I ordered up: her, a burger, and me, the chicken tenders. Both made satisfying late lunches.
On to what’s important: the four restrooms. Yes, you read that right: The Eagle offers its attendees a quadrant of options for their business. All four are gender-neutral, and all are totally different from each other. They are as follows: a multiple stall restroom that features a color-changing light flashing reds, purples, and greens throughout the otherwise low-lit area; a one-toilet, single-occupant-style restroom in the traditional red-and-black color scheme with a massive mirror; a single-occupant restroom with a toilet and urinal that locks; and, best of all, a restroom featuring an undivided toilet and urinal facing a door with no locking mechanism. “I don’t want to say that there’s the perfect amount of space between the toilet and the urinal to chain someone to the wall in there,” Morgan said later, “but yeah, if you were so inclined, it would be quite easy.”
She also called the Eagle “probably the only queer bar in Austin I’ve been to that does not just facilitate mischief in the bathrooms, but seems to actively encourage it.” This refers not only to the unlocked water-closet, but to two of the bathrooms having chalkboards up where customers can draw as many veiny penises as they please. In the largest and all-stall restroom, there’s also a counter where one can pick up a copy of The Leather Journal and catch up on past and upcoming kink events all over the country – including Austin’s own Kink Weekend. Our local leather scene continues to innovate and elevate their kinky craft, and I’m just glad there’s a place for them to gather that’s got chicken tenders on the menu.
Cheer Up Charlies: The Turquoise Toilet
The Visit: Many Directions on a Tuesday
Guest Restroom Reporter: None!
In my recollection, Cheer Up Charlies might have been the first “gender-neutral” bathrooms I encountered as an adult. Sure, the dilapidated, supposedly condemned building they shoved my college’s Women and Gender Studies program into had one single-occupant restroom for everyone, but CUC was the earliest place I remember seeing a stall and urinal room open for everyone. For this, co-owner Maggie Lea says I can thank former queer punks PWR BTTM.
Two years into CUC’s move to Red River, Brooklyn Vegan hosted a 2016 South by Southwest show featuring the hot band pre-controversy and breakup. “It was definitely one of our first interactions with a genderqueer band where they made it a requirement in their tour documents, all of their green room requirements, and their advances that the venue that they play at have gender-neutral bathrooms,” Lea told me. Up until that point, the CUC restrooms were split by binary genders, but a simple switch to signs that said “toilets” and “toilets and urinals” made ’em for pissers of all genders.
Though I’ve used both lavatories several times before, I dropped into CUC for a Tuesday night drag show to get all the finer details memorized. Guest reporters had been planned, but both were located North Austin-ways and understandably flinched when faced with a 10pm Downtown start time. No worries: Drag shows are the rare queer event where it’s pretty easy to go solo. Everyone’s eyes are on the stage, including yours, so there’s no need to feel self-conscious about not having a built-in conversation partner.
Tuesday’s entertainment was a boy band celebration, held as a fundraiser for local king Bobby Pudrido’s upcoming journey to New York’s Bushwig drag festival. All the performances rocked big time, from the triple-threat team of Alexander the Great, Travis Randy Travis, and Pudrido as the NSYNC-styled Many Directions to punk rockers Atlas Mars, Hot Lunch, Jack the Stripper, and Neura Toxin doing skits and playing Ghost’s “Rats” as Hotload and the Glamcocks – as well as gender-diverse troupe Boyz of Austin performing a medley of masc crooners that culminated in a powerful closing chant of “Fight for Your Right.” Flex Brojas even brought out an inflated penis with “Fuck Greg Abbott” scrawled over the vein-less sides. That’s why I go see live entertainment!
Both of CUC’s restrooms are painted the most insane turquoise tint, which remains their most defining feature in my mind. This in spite of the mirrored tile details embedded in the floors and walls, which I always forget about only to be enamored with upon arrival. As previously stated, these are gender-neutral heads, but folks don’t use the stall in the urinal-equipped room as much, so it’s usually empty. (A pro-tip from me to you, reader!) In our interview, Lea bemoaned the serious sticker problem the CUC mirrors face: Customer-created decor has overtaken the silver surface enough to impair its basic function of, you know, reflecting y’all’s faces. But I don’t mind the clutter. There’s a community comfort in the nearly fossilized stickers coating every inch of the venue’s surfaces: shows, performers, podcasts, and parties from Austin’s queer past, present, and future. I’m only one moment in this and every restroom I’ve visited’s history mingling among hundreds of thousands of other moments people have shared here.
There’s people in power who want anyone like me to feel alone – isolated in our identities and experiences. From Red River to Cross Park Drive, when I go into these queer club restrooms, I’m reminded how wrong that bigoted thinking is. Me and my community will continue to exist as we have for millions of years, and guess what? We’ll keep on pissing, too.
This article appears in August 22 • 2025.