The LIST of GAY BARS and GOGO's in PATTAYA from 1980 till now

[Armando]

Some of those maps I recognize as being from OUT in Thailand (numbers in dots of different colors). I think OUT in Thailand always had publication year and month printed, but some of the other gay magazines had not and you have to do detective work to date them!

OUT in Thailand had inaccuracies in their maps. Some were pointed out by readers and hopefully corrected in further editions.

OUT in Thailand was one of the better free gay magazines IMHO. It was published by a guy in Chiang Mai and he was able to get some very good exclusive interviews, as with Sir Ian McKellan. It ceased publication when he left Thailand for reasons which I have never seen explained. Many of the old copies can be seen on this site -

https://issuu.com/out-in-thailand

As for maps, I remember there was quite a debate at the time Christianpfc mentions, especially about the difficulty of keeping maps up to date unless the publisher has a small army of volunteers obtaining and checking that information. That's impossible, in my view. Maps in freebie magazines can only be be regarded as giving approxmiate locations, the more so when the venues themselves frequently had very general locations on their websites. All the freebie mags had the same venue location issues. It would have been a different matter if such publications had to be purchased.

But the various freebie magazines catering to the English-Speaking market seem to have gone the way of the dodo.

[christianpfc]

As for maps, I remember there was quite a debate at the time Christianpfc mentions, especially about the difficulty of keeping maps up to date unless the publisher has a small army of volunteers obtaining and checking that information. That's impossible, in my view. Maps in freebie magazines can only be be regarded as giving approxmiate locations, the more so when the venues themselves frequently had very general locations on their websites. All the freebie mags had the same venue location issues. It would have been a different matter if such publications had to be purchased.

Yes there was, I think the most heated debate took place on then gaythailand (now gayguides). OUT in Thailand asked readers to update his maps, whereas the normal tourist would take the maps for guidance. Not so much locations, some maps in gay magazines list places that are long out of business.

A friend one brought a newly bought Spartacus, let's say the 2014 edition. The data was researched in 2013, and half of the places moved or changed name or went out of business when I read the Spartacus Thailand section in 2014.

Internet used to have more accurate information (because more recent) than books, but now in Covid times, things change even quicker than internet can follow and before I go somewhere, I call or ask a friend who is nearby to see if the place is open.