Tea for two

Last week I learned a new term. My gay and lesbian vocabulary is a-growing and soon I will be an expert, avoiding any embarrassments or mishaps when going out with gay friends. The word of the day (Sunday) is…tea dance. Or just tea. I feel like this is a more obscure term but urban dictionary defines it as happy hour for gays. Woo! Which in this case means all night. At Oilcan Harry’s and Rain on Sundays, tea time means $2 wells (drinks made with low-grade house liquor). Please please don’t get anything with rum, it’s disgusting, but everything else is tolerable, especially for the price. After the rum disaster, a Malibu and Coke ran me $5.25.

[A picture of the patio at OCH, About.com]

[Both Rain, pictured here and OCH have pool tables, for those not into the dancing scene. About.com]

If you’re into drag shows, Sunday is also the night to go to OCH, at least until 12:30. And if you’re just out for a low key night with friends, it’s far from crowded on Sunday night. Thursday is the fashionable day to go to any club in Austin, but Sunday proved to be a great time with cheap drinks, good conversation and the DJ actually playing our requests.

Creepin’ in the club

Though Austin doesn’t have near as many gay clubs and bars as people would expect, there are a couple I’ve found out about through friends and love. Oilcan Harry’s and Rain are probably the most well known and therefore my favorite. OCH is more for the twenty-something crowd, mostly college kids (namely guys) and it’s got two bars, an area complete with boxes to dance on and great music to dance to and finally a nice outside bar/area.

[A map from the OCH web site.]

Rain is more diverse and it’s smaller. There’s a bar, dancing floor and a dancing pole (big plus!) and an outdoor area as well.

Thursday night is the new Friday night for Austin clubbing and these places are no exception. Drinks are cheap and therefore it’s busy and fun.

I know that like myself a lot of straight girls come to these bars with gay guy friends or vice versa and until last weekend I felt like it was a safer environment because I could have a good time and not worry about getting hit on at the club. But I’ve been running into more and more straight guys at these clubs, usually ones humoring gay friends and sometimes alone but either way these guys are worse than guys at predominantly straight clubs. I mean, they came there with the plan that straight girls will just be happy to finally see a straight guy after a night of drinking and dancing and they’ll get lucky. So be careful who you’re dancing with and who you’re leaving with. Make sure it’s someone you want to leave with and don’t lose your friends unless you’re planning on it.