Commando Cosmos: Homo ambush strikes Faneuil Hall

It's Friday night at the Bell in Hand Tavern and something is amiss. At first glance all appears normal: guys wearing button-ups or T-shirts and ladies decked out in jeans and tight tops, everyone drinking, flirting, and casually nodding to the top-40 music. But by nine o'clock it's clear that something is a bit off. As more people pour through the front door there's a disturbance in The Force: an overabundance of men and a growing shortage of women. And many of these men seem to be exhibiting abnormal behavior, standing in circles chatting up each other and not stealing so much as a glance at the behinds or chests of the ladies. Could this be some subversive Marxist plot to sabotage a scene that's normally one of Quincy Market's top hetero meat markets? Possibly. A suspicious number of the guys congregating in the man-circles are wearing small white buttons that at first glance seem to be emblazoned with the iconic silhouette of Che Guevara. But on closer inspection the face underneath the beret isn't Che; it's Cher.

Welcome to Boston Guerrilla Queer Bar, a monthly event night conceived by Daniel Heller, 24, and Josh Gerber, 28, as an alternative to the staid Boston gay bar scene. Heller and Gerber modeled the event after guerrilla queer bar events hosted in a handful of other cities, a scene Heller first discovered in the Washington, D.C. area. The concept is to stage a massive queer invasion of an unsuspecting straight bar and to watch what happens.

"When I moved here I was shocked Boston didn't have a guerilla queer bar, especially because there are so few gay bars. ... I didn't find myself being swept up in a whole smorgasbord of gay life," said Heller. "And guerilla queer bar is something that always struck me as fun and hysterical and a good thing for everyone involved."

The two launched the event last October to an underwhelming response. They hit all of Boston's gay bars-passing out business cards, promoting the event, and inviting people to join a Google group that would notify them the night before the event of the time and location of that month's bar raid. But the first two Boston Guerrilla Queer Bars (GQBs), at People's Republik in Cambridge and Match in Back Bay, turned out less than a hundred people each. Heller said the event seemed to be foundering until, on a whim, he and Gerber created a Facebook page. At the next GQB at Harvard Square's Hong Kong Heller said hundreds of homos turned out. Heller said Boston GQB now has more than 700 Facebook friends.

The event has continued to grow since then. Heller said the last few times the GQB crowd has packed bars to capacity. He said the bar staff seem happy to have a crowd willing to order plenty of pricey drinks. Though there are usually a few regulars unhappy to have their home turf invaded by the gays, Heller said most of them leave. Those hetero patrons who stick around end up mixing with the bar's strange gay visitors.

On the night of the most recent GQB the shift in the Bell in Hand's vibe was palpable. By nine o'clock the bar was about an even mix of straights and queers (assuming this reporter's gaydar was functioning at full strength). Within an hour the men vastly outnumbered the women, the T-shirts were a little tighter, the haircuts were a little gayer, and the crowd was saturated with people sporting Cher Guevara buttons. The straights had largely ceded the upstairs dance floor to the gay invaders. Since the DJ was spinning a mix including Britney, Justin, Mylie Cyrus and other dance pop, the gays seemed to feel right at home.

Meanwhile, the first floor became the fallback position of the straight crowd. But they were losing ground fast, clustering in little groups throughout the bar as gays began arriving in waves. A decent number of straight women stuck around, but visibly straight men soon became an endangered species. In what felt like a desperate bid to reaffirm the Bell in Hand's heterosexuality, a rock band set up camp onstage in the downstairs bar and started playing up-tempo power ballads. But for the most part they were playing to a crowd sporting the telltale white pins. Walking upstairs, wailing guitars gave way to the sound of a dance floor brimming with gays and assorted others singing along to Madonna's "Like a Prayer." It was like witnessing the Village People plant a rainbow flag at Iwo Jima.

Clint Kile, who lives in the Fenway, was attending his second GQB; like many attendees he found out about it on Facebook. He said the gay invasions are a welcome alternative to Boston's gay club scene.

"It's just more laid back. ... Usually when it's all gays people feel pressured to look their best, but when we all have a common goal to crash the bar it's a little more laid back," said Kile. He added that the crowd at the GQB events seemed much more social and less cliquish than at a typical gay night.

Katja Weiss of Cambridge, one of a handful of women sporting a white button, said that while she normally avoids Boston's club scene this is the third time she's gone to a GQB. She said one of the advantages is that it's a mixed crowd, so her friends can go out without having to split into groups of lesbians, gay men, and straight people and head to separate bars.

"This is more my scene. ... This and Toast are two things I like going to," said Weiss.

There's also the fun of seeing how the other 90 percent lives. Adam LaFrance of Somerville said that when he and his friends went to check their coats they were shocked to discover it was free.

"Everyone's commenting on the free coat check," said LaFrance.

"All the gay bars are like two or three dollars."

For the first hour or so of the event Heller, who was manning the event solo (Gerber was out of town), wandered the downstairs bar handing out Cher Guevara pins, although he said in some cases it was hard to tell who was with GQB and who was a Bell in Hand regular. He said the day before the event he called the bar, as has become his standard practice, to warn them that they would have a larger than average crowd that evening. He said he made no mention that the extra influx of patrons would be of the queer persuasion, but as the event has grown in size it appears that some of Boston's straight bars have gotten word of GQB. Early in the evening as the first crowds of gay people began trickling through the door one of the bouncers said to another, "And so it begins." By 10 p.m. the bar was at capacity and a line stretched out the door.

But once bar staff got wind of the invasion they seemed to take it in stride. Heller handed a bartender a "Gay Bar" chocolate bar and explained that he had helped stage an impromptu gay night at the straight bar. The bartender then posed with Heller for a photo. And late in the evening, when the crowd on the dance floor looked almost entirely gay, the DJ was clearly playing to the crowd - unless he spins Cher's "Believe" and RuPaul's "Supermodel" back to back every Friday night.

Heller said that reaction is typical.

"By and large it's a positive reaction. Gay people don't actually show up with war paint and glitter guns. They're there to drink and have a good time," said Heller.

The straight (mostly female) patrons who stuck around also seemed largely unfazed by the GQB.

"I think it's a fun idea, and I think it's a great turnout for something organized by e-mail," said Gabriella Priest of Boston, who was there with friends.

Priest said she's been to the Bell in Hand on several occasions in the past. GQB, she said, brought in a much larger crowd than usual.

"There was a bigger crowd outside than normally at this hour. There's not usually a crowd at nine o'clock," she said.

By midnight, Bell in Hand didn't look much like what it actually is: a straight bar situated in that straightest of nightlife scenes, Quincy Market. The mostly male crowd packed the dance floor, and men danced together to the sounds of Whitney, Fergie, and even Dr. Dre with no trouble from the straight folks.

For Ralph Watson of Jamaica Plain, part of the appeal of GQB is the subversive fun of crashing a straight party. "It's not a regular gay night. It has an edge to it and a little bit of transgression," said Watson. "Any place can have a gay night, but to do it unexpectedly is fun."

Boston Guerrilla Queer Bar takes place the first Friday of each month. For more information visit groups.google.com/group/bostonguerrilla.