Line Dancing Toward Euphoria
On the night of April 17, a crowd of 20- and 30-somethings, many of them queer, packed into Georgia Room, a Georgia O’Keeffe-inspired nightclub at the Freehand Hotel in Manhattan.
They were there to drink and dance, but they hadn’t paid $25 each to grind or freestyle. They came to line dance. More than 300 people — some in cowboy boots and 10-gallon hats and biceps-exposing denim vests — turned out for the sold-out event.
And this was on a Monday. The evening’s draw was Stud Country, a queer line-dancing and two-step class and party that usually takes place in Los Angeles.
There, the event draws regulars and curious newcomers every Monday and Thursday to Club Bahia, a Latin joint in Echo Park. Sean Monaghan, 35, and Bailey Salisbury, 38, friends of nearly two decades, founded Stud Country in 2021, after the pandemic forced the closure of Oil Can Harry’s, a gay honky-tonk bar where they had been line dancing since 2017.
