Initiated to a great extent by trans women of colour, the event that is often proclaimed to be the birth of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement centered around the now infamous queer venue of New York’s Stonewall Inn. While Pride events increasingly bend towards sponsorships from large corporations to pinkwash their credentials, it must not be forgotten that such events have their roots in a riot that responded directly to police brutality in the late 1960s. With a wave of new property developments happening in the area, there simply wasn’t enough space left to host Pride in the village, so the annual event became an inaccessibly pricey off-site festival. Although this attempted erasure was later put down to an ‘administrative error’ by the Council, they also announced that for the first time in its 30 year history Manchester Pride would happen outside of the gay village. For example, a controversial 2018 regeneration masterplan for Manchester’s “Gay Village” – an area once proudly marketed as a spectacle of the city’s post-industrial cosmopolitanism – sought to re-brand it under the more palatable name of “Portland Street Village”.
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As Sarah Schulman stated in The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination, gentrification “replaces most people’s experience with the perceptions of the privileged, and calls that a reality.”Īs a result, local authorities prioritise the concerns of newer, more affluent residents over those who may have originally formed a community in a given area.
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Gay people, so the cliché goes, have often been among the first to gentrify inner city neighbourhoods – it is therefore ironic that queer communities, among other minority groups, are very much the subjects of this process. The reality is, many venues can no longer afford to pay their rent. The reality is that while a young, white, cisgendered, gay man may have the privilege to drink anywhere, there are a number of more marginalised queer people for whom these spaces still provide a vital safe space and support network.Ĭultural and technological shifts may have changed the social habits of some LGBTQ+ people, but the overall role these have played in the closure of gay bars is negligible when compared to the unwavering hand of the property industry. But this fails to take into account the diversity of needs within the broader LGBTQ+ community. Those with more assimilationist leanings would argue that with legal equality brought about by the advent of gay marriage there is no longer a need for venues specifically catering towards LGBTQ+ clients. Shifting attitudes towards some members of the LGBTQ+ community in recent years have led to more assimilation and acceptance in many parts of the world, and therefore changed the habits of a number of queer people. While many critics have been quick to blame these closures on the rise of the aforementioned apps, there are a number of more complex factors at play. Even prior to the coronavirus lockdowns, it has been well documented that gay bars have been closing at an alarming rate across Europe and North America - London alone lost over half of its LGBTQ+ venues over the last decade, while San Francisco’s last remaining lesbian bar closed its doors in 2015. Such a digital addition to the culture comes at a time of huge threats to the existence of queer space. But after decades of queer visibility increasing in the public realm, it is important to question whether digital interactions can live up to the rich history that has been cultivated in the spaces between darkrooms and dancefloors. With 3.8 million daily active users, Grindr’s popularity is evident. These apps offer their users efficiently arranged hookups with the same convenience that one might order a taxi or take-away, allowing these encounters to happen away from public view. One of these developments is the availability of digital platforms such as Grindr, introduced across mobile devices in 2009.
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In the past decade however, a wave of transformations within LGBTQ+ culture have altered queer social space beyond recognition.
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Eventually becoming a ubiquitous part of the fabric of many cities, they have since been celebrated as a beacon of progressive values, and even marketed by municipalities as an attraction to outside visitors. Championing their status as a backbone of the LGBTQ+ community, gay bars began their journey hidden away in marginal areas of the city, providing a secret and safe space for people with same sex-orientations and gender-variant identities to socialise and openly express themselves. There’s a welcome familiarity to be found in the bright lights, sticky floors, and questionable decisions made in a gay bar.