Pokemon Go lists gay bar as a ‘lifestyle choice club’
A gay bar is bizarrely listed in Pokemon Go as a “lifestyle choice club”.
The massively popular mobile game Pokemon Go sees players travel around the real world in search of Pokemon.
Though many of the locations in the game appear randomly generated, the locations of Pokemon Gyms and Pokestops are not – and are thought to be based on user submissions from a previous game, Ingress.
Ingress allowed players to tag local landmarks such as churches and artworks with descriptions, which developer Niantic has copied over to Pokemon Go.
However, one gay bar has found itself with a rather surprising monicker.
Basildon’s Colors Nightclub is listed as a Pokestop location in the app… but it’s described as a ‘lifestyle choices club’.
It is far from the only questionable Pokestop description – a dedicated Reddit community ‘Sh*ttyPokestops’ has collected some of the other plain weird places listed in the game.
There is currently no mechanism to request removal of a Pokestop unless its location poses an immediate danger.
Colors, for its part, seems to be fine with the status – inviting club-goers to “pop down and have a drink, and who knows… maybe catch some Pokemon!”
Around the world, many gay nightclubs, saunas and porn shops have been assigned Pokestop status thanks to the Ingress user submissions, some of which appear to be actively embracing it – placing down ‘lures’ to attract players to their locations.
Seattle’s gay bathhouse Club Z, San Francisco’s Nob Hill Adult Theater and the Dallas Eagle club are among the venues that have been listed as Pokestops.