Metropolitan’s Williamsburg Backyard Keeps Brooklyn Queer Nightlife Close to Home

Near the corner of Lorimer Street and Metropolitan Avenue, Metropolitan has been part of Williamsburg’s LGBTQ+ nightlife since opening in 2002. The gay bar occupies a building with a layered history, but its present-day identity is defined by a mix of casual gathering space, performances and recurring community events.

The venue is designed less like a single-room club than a compact neighborhood hangout. Its features include multiple lounge levels, a pool table, a dance floor and a backyard patio. That combination gives patrons several ways to spend an evening, whether they are meeting friends, playing a game, listening to performers or moving toward the dance floor.

The backyard is especially central to Metropolitan’s seasonal calendar. From Memorial Day weekend through the end of September, the bar has hosted Sunday barbecues on the patio. The tradition offers an outdoor counterpart to the venue’s indoor nightlife and makes the space a recurring weekend destination during the warmer months.

Metropolitan’s regular programming also extends beyond conventional bar entertainment. Tuesday nights feature “Queeraoke,” while Wednesday nights are dedicated to trivia. The bar has also hosted Gender Xperts, a monthly gender-queer open mic, and a monthly comedy show. Together, those events place social activities, performance and LGBTQ+ expression alongside the bar’s more familiar nightlife offerings.

The property’s history reaches much further back than Metropolitan. The lot was once occupied by a colonial-era cemetery that was probably associated with the First Reformed Dutch Church of Williamsburgh. By sometime before the mid-19th century, the land had been described as forlorn, and it was eventually developed for real estate by the close of that century.

The building itself was home to Milo’s Restaurant from 1927 until 2000. Milo’s began as a Prohibition-era speakeasy and later operated as a bar. After that business closed, an Irish pub occupied the location before Metropolitan opened.

That sequence gives the Williamsburg venue a distinctive place in Brooklyn’s built and social history. A site once connected to a colonial-era burial ground became commercial property, then housed a long-running restaurant and bar, and ultimately became an LGBTQ+ venue with a program shaped around queer community life.

For visitors, Metropolitan’s appeal is not limited to a single kind of night. Its schedule includes music-oriented fun, games, comedy, open-mic performance and seasonal outdoor gatherings. The result is a venue that functions both as a neighborhood bar and as a recurring meeting place for queer Brooklynites in Williamsburg.

Source and reuse information This backgrounder adapts factual material from “Metropolitan (bar)” on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_(bar) The adapted text is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-SA 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. This story has not been independently reviewed or fact-checked.

Further links listed by the Wikipedia page (not independently checked): - https://hypebae.com/2019/3/manhattan-brooklyn-city-guide-bar-diner-costume-shop-aja-rupauls-drag-race-new-york - https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/nyregion/at-metropolitan-bar-in-williamsburg-barbecue-and-beer.html - https://bedfordandbowery.com/2019/02/from-graveyard-to-gay-bar-metropolitan-bar-is-filled-with-spirits/ - https://www.brooklynpaper.com/wburg-residents-we-love-gay-bar-but-hate-its-noise/ - https://gothamist.com/news/two-men-assaulted-after-leaving-williamsburg-gay-bar - https://www.grubstreet.com/bestofnewyork/gay-bar-brooklyn.html Image rights Photograph description: This weekend, we continued work to rehabilitate the Dyckman St station on the 1 Line. This photo shows a worker installing reinforcing bars on the duct bank at the Control House. Photo: Metropolitan Transportation Authority / Lee Shek. Creator: Metropolitan Transportation Authority of the State of New York. License: CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0). Original image page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AWeekend_work_2012-05-14_15_(7195970330).jpg. The image was resized for display; no other changes were made.