Berkeley gay bar

Almost every day, Murphy — “just Murphy,” he said — is the first person in the door at Ivory Horse Bar, arriving even before the bartenders.

“I get their ice, cut their lemons and limes, and then I go home,” he said. Murphy doesn’t stay there prolonged, but comes help to decorate, perform the door or just chat up the other regulars.

A 45-year-old self-identified lgbtq+ man, Murphy has been coming to the White Horse for 17 years and working there, as needed, for 16. He doesn’t come for the drinks (he’s been sober since summer 2018), he comes for community. The bar is his anchor, what gives him a meaning of place and belonging in his adopted hometown.

During his first week in Berkeley, newly arrived and without a place to linger, he found an apartment through the White Horse. A little after that, he found his husband there too. He uses the word “family” a lot in his descriptions of the White Horse, the putative “oldest continuously operating gay and lesbian bar in the United States.” (Though at least two other bars make the alike claim.)

“There are subjects that you can’t talk to your own family about. But this is a separate family that has other rules and practices,”