GEORGE KOTSIOPOULOS

Co-owner, Or Bar, West Hollywood’s chicest new gay bar.

You may recognize his face from everyone’s favorite red-carpet recap, Fashion Police, which he famously co-hosted on E! with the late, great Joan Rivers from 2010 to 2014. However, George Kotsiopoulos never sought out a career on TV. As a West Coast associate fashion editor at T: The New York Times Magazine for eight years, he was immersed in all things sartorial, which eventually led him to becoming a celebrity stylist. “I never had a clear path from going to A to B, but I just kept saying yes to things, and that eventually led to me sitting next to Joan and being a part of the No. 1 nonscripted show on the network,” he says. “Even after Fashion Police ended, I was still developing TV shows and doing styling, but during COVID I started to reevaluate things.”

By chance, a bar across the street from his friend Rob Novinger’s business, Circus of Books, became available, and Kotsiopoulos, Novinger, and their friend/business partner Stevie (Stephanie) Schestag jumped at the chance to turn it into West Hollywood’s first upscale gay bar, Or Bar (theorbar.com), which opened last December.

Here, Kotsiopoulos shares how it’s still possible to carve out a niche in a seemingly saturated market and why gay bars are still an important space in society.

—SAMANTHA BROOKS

Of all of the things to do, what made you want to open a bar?

› It was a COVID purchase. We half joke about that, but honestly it just happened. Rob, Stevie, and I looked at it, then we had a structural engineer come in, then an architect and a contractor. We just kept going, and before we knew it, we had signed a lease in April 2021.

I had also tended bar when I younger, trying to figure things out in between jobs. I worked at a place called 360 on the corner of Sunset and Vine that was in the penthouse. The money was so good that I kept working there one day a week, even a year and a half into working at The New York Times. So, I knew the bar world, and I come from a family that had owned restaurants.

How did the site’s history play a role?

› It had been a gay space for 45 years [previously a dive bar called Gold Coast], and it was important to us that it remain a LGBTQ business, especially since so many had closed during the pandemic. No one wanted to see anything corporate come in, and during construction we had a sign on the door that read, “the gay is here to stay.”

How did you come up with the concept?

› Gays have this stereotype of being fancy and chic, like we all have these perfect houses and whatever, but ironically, there aren’t any nice gay bars. They’re all dives or just caught in an aesthetic from 25 years ago, even if they’re brand new. We wanted to create a chic, sophisticated place for people above the age of 28. We’re all around 50, and the thought of going to a bar or club is just scary now. We wanted to create a space where we could go and not feel aged out, where people could actually sit and meet people that wasn’t kitschy or branded with free merchandize from beer vendors.

Everything here is hand-picked. It’s more of a Sunset Tower or Soho House vibe. There are no TV screens, no go-go boys. Whatever you’d find in most cliche gay bars isn’t here.

Are straight people welcome?

› Yes, of course. It’s a gay bar, but we want everyone here. Everyone who is cool with everyone. I think a lot of the bars in the “gay” area near Robertson and Santa Monica have changed in recent years. They’ve become “gay friendly” instead of being a “gay bar.” A lot of them have even had to ban bachelorette parties because the scene was getting out of hand.

What’s the distinction?

› I think what happened is that a bunch of women would come in with penis headbands and