Staten Island Gets A Gay Bar

A gay nightclub/restaurant has opened on Staten Island, the borough's first gay club in over a decade.

Q-SINY's owners Jim McKernan, 44, and his partner of 16 years, Ray Carr, 48, say they opened their venue in response to the LGBT community's gaping need for a regular place to rock out. "They've been screaming for it," says McKernan. The Castleton Corners couple picked up the call, after bumping into old friends at recent dance parties hosted by a gay-friendly travel agency in West Brighton and a new LGBT wellness center in Tompkinsville. "Our community really needs something like this to support ourselves," says Carr. McKernan, who has never owned a bar, but managed and worked in several throughout Florida, remembers a gay bar that operated in South Beach under the names "Brazil," "Abracadabra" and "Sand Castle." But that establishment closed about 15 years ago.

It's always been a truism of gay Gotham nightlife that even though Brooklyn and Queens combined have three times the population of Manhattan, each borough only ever had a handful of gay nightspots. The Bronx has 1.4M residents and has (I think) two small bars. Half a million people live in Staten Island, a population that anywhere else in the country would surely support at least a small network of gay bars and clubs, so hopefully Q-SINY has a shot. Here's their site, I doubt I'll ever get out there, from the UES it would take me about an hour and a half.