These neighborhoods are also often found in working-class parts of the city or in the neglected fringe of a downtown area – communities which may have been upscale historically but became economically depressed and socially disorganized.
Today, these neighborhoods can typically be found in the upper-class areas of a given city, like in Manhattan, chosen for aesthetic or historic value, no longer resulting from the sociopolitical ostracization and the constant threat of physical violence from homophobic individuals that originally motivated these communities to live together for their mutual safety. Much as other urbanized groups, some LGBT people have managed to utilize their spaces as a way to reflect their cultural value and serve the special needs of individuals in relation to society at large.
Such areas may represent a LGBT-friendly oasis in an otherwise hostile city or may simply have a high concentration of gay residents and businesses. Gay villages often contain a number of gay-oriented establishments, such as gay bars and pubs, nightclubs, bathhouses, restaurants, boutiques, and bookstores.Īmong the most famous gay villages are New York City's Greenwich Village, Hell's Kitchen, and Chelsea neighborhoods in Manhattan Fire Island and The Hamptons on Long Island Asbury Park, Lambertville, and Maplewood in New Jersey Boston's South End, Jamaica Plain, and Provincetown, Massachusetts Philadelphia's Gayborhood Washington D.C.'s Dupont Circle Midtown Atlanta Chicago's Boystown London's Soho, Birmingham's Gay Village, Brighton's Kemptown, and Manchester's Canal Street, all in England Los Angeles County's West Hollywood as well as Barcelona Province's Sitges, Toronto's Church and Wellesley neighborhood, the Castro of San Francisco Madrid's Chueca Sydney's Newtown and Darlinghurst Berlin's Schöneberg the Gay Street in Rome, Le Marais in Paris Green Point in Cape Town Melville in Johannesburg and Zona Rosa in Mexico City. The bars are part of LGBT history that might be forgotten all too soon.Metro station in Montreal's Gay Village districtĪ gay village (also known as a gay neighborhood, gay enclave, gayvenue, gay ghetto, gaytto, gay district, gaytown, or gayborhood) is a geographical area with generally recognized boundaries that is inhabited or frequented by many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer ( LGBT) people. Now it sad to see the scene of the closing night of Numbers one of the City’s gay clubs being packed and mourned by the same people who did not support it until the end. The importance and role of the bars was evolving and part of LGBT liberation was the arrival of the internet that would affect the community. This is a very emotional part of the documentary in which several AIDS survivors talk about the loss of life deeply affected the bar community and beyond. In the 80s the LGBT community was devastated by the AIDS pandemic and gay bars were the only places where it was possible to raise funds for the victims and their treatments. In the 1970’s gay bars were everywhere in the city but none of them were owned by gay men or women because they were unable to obtain liquor licenses having thought of as degenerates. For many people, the gay bars then were an entrance into the hidden LGBT community. Detwiler mixes archival footage with interviews of bar patrons and owners from that time who shared that everyone used a fake ‘bar’ name so they were not exposed, they all had a great deal of fun despite the legal restrictions. Homosexuality was illegal then and being ‘found out’ could literally ruin your lives, but between 1950’s and the 1960’s there were 25 gay bars in the City. The film begins after World War II when San Diego was a major naval and military base, and even though heterosexual serviceman couldn’t wait to rush back home to their families, gay men and women were enjoying the freedom they had begun to experience away from traditional family lives and they did not want to leave the area. It is a story that seems to be the same in other urban areas in the US in the recent past. Filmmaker Paul Detwiler looks at the history of the San Diego gay bars in his new documentary.