Dispatches from Left Field: Dispatches from Left Field
New TNG contributor, Matt’, who is a gay man living in Petworth, DC and is a graduate student in Urban Planning at the University of Maryland, discusses the genesis and growth of gayborhoods.
I have a hard time thinking about the gay community in any other setting than an urban one. Since I came out, the gayborhood has been a part of my social construct. When I came out of the closet, I was living a short walk from Atlanta’s gay district, Midtown. It certainly helped me on my journey to have a place where I could just be myself. Having visited gayborhoods from Seattle to Chicago and New York to San Francisco, I’ve found that they play a vital role in the “gay lifestyle,” whatever form that may take.
Gayborhoods date from the early 1970s and seem to have sprung up for a variety of reasons, not the least being the desire to create a part of the public sphere where gays could be out and proud. After a while, economies of scale started to take hold and gay bars became the catalyst for strips of homo-serving retail surrounded by housing stock dominated by the community. Suddenly, on streets like 17th, Castro, Piedmont, and North Halstead, rainbow flags started appearing in shop windows and the gay community found that it had eked out its own territory in the city.
Partially born out of disinvestment in the city and partially born out of the pioneer spirit of disco-era gays, a critical mass of policy decisions dating back to the Great Depression left neighborhoods depopulated, but ready for new residents. With more disposable income and fewer negative urban preconceptions, gays became the “frontier” dwellers in places like Dupont Circle and laid the foundation for future gentrification. A stimulating paper titled “Why Gay Men Live in San Francisco” by Dan Black et al discusses the locational choices of the gay community as mere economic decision making. Because gay households typically don’t have children they have more disposable income to spend on housing and other amenities which the central location of cities has to offer. Additionally, because many gay households are childless, there are lessened concerns about the quality of urban schools—one primary reason that families still prefer the ‘burbs. And because households without children typically need less space, the GLBT community fits into the smaller housing stock of yesteryear.
And while the gayborhood has been constantly changing since the concept first arose four decades ago, it has indelibly shaped gay culture for more than a generation. Gay Villages have long offered a place where an alternative lifestyle wasn’t scorned. They’ve given us places to shop, places to dine and places to recreate. Most importantly, they’ve given us a place to be ourselves—what ever that means to us. The gay community is as varied as the stripes of our banner—and the gayborhood is just as diverse. And despite signs that gayborhoods aren’t as strong as they once were, gayborhoods are going to continue to exist as a vital part of our lives.
In many cities, including here in Washington, DC, gentrification and greater acceptance of homosexuals in all sectors of society is leading to a lessened emphasis on historically gay Dupont Circle. Gays have been moving east toward Logan Circle and even Shaw, but 17th Street will probably remain the signature gay commercial strip. Similarly in Atlanta, where gays have taken up residence miles away in East Point and Candler Park, the gay community still comes to Midtown seeking the attributes of the gayborhood that their new mini-villages haven’t yet emulated. Gays leaving the old neighborhood for other areas is just a small part of the larger trend toward regionalism that American cities have been experiencing since the end of the Second World War. And even though our cities have shrunk, the downtown cores still remain the center of a larger region. The same can be said for the gayborhood.
I intend to discuss the future of the gayborhood in another column, and I hope that I’ve written something that will stimulate discussion. Do my observations of the gayborhood track with yours? What do you see as the role of the Gay Village?
First time here? See what we're all about... Get involved... Send us a tip!...
It would be nice if the area around 9th & U had more gay bars than just Nellies & Town – though BeBar is not too far away. I see this area as the new "gayborhood" and has great potential in being a more interesting area of gay businesses and different kind of bars. Cobalt is on its last legs it seems, so it will be interesting to see what that evolves into. But it's interesting when you walk down 17th how cruisy it still is, and how gay the street still is, after all these years . . .
Sounds about right to me.
I don’t know if we’ll ever need gayborhoods the exact same way we needed them in the past and therefore don’t know if a new SF-density level gayborhood could ever emerge anew in a different US city. Reference: what happened to little Italy and what is happening to Chinatown in NY–the next generations are leaving the nest and new generations are forming different communities.
Take the U street corridor (and Columbia Heights). Even in the past, it was never gays only in a gayborhood, but we no longer flock together in such compact forces as we used to, and other groups (hipster crowd in this example) are desirous of pioneering back into the urban.
What I think is also interesting, the larger question of gentrification and the Plan. A question that is so large, I don’t even know where the edges lie, or the relationships that exist between the players, and even once the question is understood, where to go from there. Matt, your thoughts here (any all other comers) are welcomed for insight and enlightenment.
This is such an interesting topic. As a student of politics, I am drawn to the question of whether there is a relationship between geographic concentration of a population and its political power/consciousness. We have certainly seen a correlation between the fraying of the gayborhood and the fraying of grassroots political activism in the gay community over time. Somehow, I wonder if we could figure out how patterns of gay residence, political activism, and social acceptance of LGBTs all relate to each other. Maybe as we are more accepted, we feel safer venturing out of our gay ghettos AND we feel that it is less necessary to be pissed off about being second class citizens in many respects. So, social acceptance drives both, and then one (spreading out geographically) affects the other (collective action).
If we were all still living in such dense gay enclaves, would we be easier to mobilize into collective action? Does Facebook (and things like TNG) negate the need for physical proximity and the sense of community that it inspires?
Matt, I’m looking forward to your next post on this. And I’m glad to see another Terp posting here. I’m over in Tydings Hall. =D
When I first moved to DC in the early '80's, the gay strip was on P Street, roughly between 20th & 23rd. It's still somewhat queer, but as noted, the center has moved to 17th St (which at that time was kinda ghetto and no one went there).
Leave your response!
Recent Coments
Most Commented
Most Viewed - 30 Days