In Havana, gay bars hold their own against the Internet

In Havana, gay bars hold their own against the Internet

Attraction drives the Malecón, which is a popular hangout for all
Habaneros, especially for those who are gay —including escorts. Another
habitué, Jorge Luis Ramos Medina, 30, a gay information engineer,
described its broad appeal as "Havana's sofa."
RICHARD MORGAN
The New York Times News Service

HAVANA
Just before midnight on a recent Thursday here along the Malecón, the
capital's 5-mile concrete sea wall boardwalk, Wilder Calderón Peña, 24,
a bartender and Airbnb agent, was doing his thunder dance.

"So that lightning hits me and my cigarette will be lit," he said. Sure
enough, a charitable stranger soon obliged. "Welcome to Planet Cuba,"
Calderón, who identifies as bisexual, said after his first puff. "This
is how the universe works here. You give good. You get good. It's karma.
It's the laws of attraction."

He then crossed the street to attend a drag show at mYXto, a
gay-friendly bar, where he would stay until about 5 a.m.

Attraction drives the Malecón, which is a popular hangout for all
Habaneros, especially for those who are gay —including escorts. Another
habitué, Jorge Luis Ramos Medina, 30, a gay information engineer,
described its broad appeal as "Havana's sofa."

It's what cities in the United States and Europe, pre-internet, once
called "cruising grounds" — areas that have for the most part become
quaint artifacts of the gay past, replaced by hookup apps like Grindr,
Jack'd and Scruff. Havana is gay night life before Grindr.

On an island of communists, gay Cubans were long Havana's have-nots, the
last among equals. That began to change in 2008, when, after a gay
rights speech by Mariela Castro Espín, the daughter of President Raúl
Castro, the capital staged its first gay pride parade, which has
continued annually, less as a shirtless spectacle and more as a protest.
Kingbar, which opened last year in the hip Vedado neighborhood, harks
back to a time when American gay bars still had a bit of a renegade quality.

"It's like freedom of expression," said Manuel Subarez, 27, a sandwich
maker at a cafe who is also a "full-time Lena Dunham superfan." "It's
like we can do anything we want today, because we are gay," he said at
this year's parade, tugging proudly on his Keith Haring tank top.
Homosexuality was legalized here in 1979, but a 1988 law prohibits a
"publicly manifested" presence.

"The revolution continues," Castro, 53, a sex educator, said at the
official post-parade festival as she held a rainbow placard of this
year's motto, "Yo Me Incluyo (I Include Myself)." "Until there is
equality and diversity for all Cubans in all aspects of our society."

A dedicated gay bar — as opposed to one with, say, a night devoted to
gay clientele — debuted here in 2013, the first ever in Havana. But its
closure in October was met with a collective roll-with-the-punches
shrug. More places catering to gays are coming, joining a dozen weekly
parties and Mi Cayito, a beach popular with gays. And the Malecón itself
is too vital a scene to be shut down. Gay clubs frequently swell with
the roaring titular anthem of a Jacob Forever pop song: "Until the
Malecón runs dry!"

Wi-Fi bandwidth is another matter. Cuba has up to 4,000 active daily
Grindr users, said Jennifer Foley Shields, a publicist for the app. But
a recent series of Grindr check-ins here by this reporter revealed, on
average, 11 online users in this city of 2 million (a population roughly
equivalent to Houston's).

Even in a five-star hotel along the Malecón with four-bar Wi-Fi
reception, one typical check-in, after several false starts, required 14
minutes to open the app.

The experience is even more uphill for locals, who pay 2 Cuban
convertible pesos per hour for internet use. (Cuban salaries average 20
Cuban convertible pesos per month.) Apple users additionally, once their
iPhone is unlocked, must pay middlemen to install apps, with several gay
Cubans saying they were either too poor or too embarrassed to request an
installation of Grindr or its ilk.

Joel Simkhai, 39, Grindr's founder and chief executive, has touted the
app's reach in nations struggling technologically. This year, after a
visit to the island, Simkhai told On Cuba magazine that gay Cubans
"still haven't got it 100 percent." During that trip, he hosted a party
sponsored by Grindr at a bar on its gay night.

In a phone interview, Simkhai said he would not share the minimum
bandwidth Grindr needed to function, adding: "Our numbers are OK. It's
not a huge market for us." Cuba is "a growth opportunity in a market
dying for Grindr," he added.

Last year, the Cuban government created public for-pay Wi-Fi zones.
Verizon began Cuba's first data-roaming deal with the United States in
September. In March, Google announced plans for a technology center
here, offering 70 megabytes per second (as opposed to the normal 1
megabyte per second speed that is standard here).

Calderon, who goes by the nickname Wild, has accounts with Grindr,
Hornet, PlanetRomeo Uncut and Scruff, and claims to be the only man in
Havana on Daddyhunt. He finds the apps unappealing.

"Gay life is about being open, being unlimited," he said. "I'm bisexual,
because I prefer the unlimited. Why would anyone – bisexual, gay,
whatever – want to be trapped as a photo, as an internet profile in an
app? That's a different kind of closet, a box. So boring."

His friend Juan Carlos Godoy Torres, 25, a saxophonist and flutist with
an 8-year-old son, agreed.

"I didn't fight through five years of slow development in the gay
community to end up spending two or three CUCs an hour maybe meeting a
virtual person," Godoy said. "I prefer the magic of the streets, someone
who can trap me with his eyes, who can dance with me, who can touch my
face. I want more than sex.

"I was married, and I want that moment of revelation of that day, when
you see someone for the first time, the surprise of it. That's not
possible if they are sending me messages that begin with photos of their
chest. That's not romance. That's shopping."

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