They'll tell you about the uncouth activities that could only happen decades ago (in public).Ī good gay bar is where a community center meets a bathhouse. They'll tell you about The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, an organization of drag nuns who disturb as much peace as they make. Every regular has a story about The Hole's debauched antics-they'll tell you about Blowjob Alley, a long hallway made famous for its namesake, or their first go at the Wet Underwear Contest, where Ophelia Later, San Diego's greatest drag queen, held court over all manner of shivering, vulnerable men. Sexual tensions wax and peak among the crowd, and things happen here that wouldn't fly most anywhere else. Among the crowd, holding a quarter-gallon $8 cocktail, with an ocean breeze and the California sun, you'll unclench. Where the world outside is way too real, this feels like gay Margaritaville.
To descend through its tree-shaded entrance into the morass of sloshed humanity below is to hallucinate a back-hair-fleeced mirage.
Sunday is the only day it turns a profit. Once known as The 19th Hole, it sits at the bottom of a century-old ditch in the ground, lending two excuses for the least subtly-named bar since The Cock. The Hole stands on a bleached, sprawling San Diego street, between faceless auto shops and the iridescent green of a neighboring golf course.
