I-10 Gay Bar

Well, our journey is almost over. We're weary, we're worn, we're winding down, but we wanted to put up a couple of quick thoughts about yesterday and last night in Southwest Louisiana.

Aside from being the home to Austin's own Rebecca Havemeyer, the city of Lake Charles compels us in weird ways. For Andy, it's I-10-proximate gay bar Crystal's. For Kate, it hits friendly, familiar triggers of her hometown, a small, industrial port town in Florida, in scale, in pace, in cheery strangeness.

We'd had such a great time at Sha Sha's on the way to New Orleans, we decided to break the trip home into two shorter days and stop in LC for the night. For many, LC is a pass-through town, filled with affordable, convenient mid-range highway motels. (The Comfort Inn exceeded expectations.) For others, Lake Charles is a destination. McNeese University is here, the town is brimming with lush and extravagant casinos, and the city hosts the state's second largest Mardi Gras.

It's an oil town, so it's a fairly conservative town, but one thing that we have experienced in Lake Charles is gay friendliness. Kate wrote about this in 2008, regarding the LC gay community's impact on the city's Mardi Gras celebrations.

(A long story short: Last time we both came out to New Orleans together we were determined to stop in Lake Charles on our drive back mostly for the purpose of going to Crystal's. Arriving at the entrance the place was locked. Closed. We were a bit devastated – especially Andy because he had never been, and Kate had detailed for him all manner of adventure about the place. Later, as we dejectedly got into the car the morning to head back down to Austin without ever having set foot in Crystal's, we heard that the bar was indeed open, but that we had just gone to the wrong entrance. Double-whammy. This trip, however, we were determined to do it right, to not miss the entrance, and to soak in what is special and great about Crystal's.)

Crystal's reminds us of Austin's late, lamented Charlie's – and no, it's not because they both begin with the letter C. As Lake Charles' only gay bar, there's a pressure for it to be everything to all people – all the LGBTQ spectrum, and race and class, too. This puts Crystal's in a category of its own making – with a black and white checked dance floor, TVs blaring video footage from Miami circuit parties, and small clusters of queers shooting pool, dancing, kiki-ing, and on and on and on. The feeling was one of tentative hedonism, with affable, attentive bartenders, with patrons perched on carpeted, roller-rink-like bleachers around the main dancefloor, some grinding, some acting the fool, some simply waiting for their jam to come on. We counted five Beyoncé songs in just under an hour and a half. (I mean, I know she just had her baby, but damn…) As Austin is to Central Texas, Lake Charles is the most, errr, somewhat urban area for miles. You get the sense that people come from all around the Southwest Louisiana and East Texas regions just to be at Crystal's on a Friday night. In other words, these are some dedicated queers.

Now we hittin' the road. Until next post: We're Fine & Dandy with Kate & Andy.