THE BEST Antwerp Gay Clubs & Bars (Updated 2023) - Tripadvisor

Contents:

• GAY ANTWERP ANTWERP CY GUI
• THE BEST ANTWERP GAY CLUBS & BARSSEE ALL THGS TO DOGAY CLUBS & BARS ANTWERP
• A GAY NEIGHBORHOOD OR MERELY A TEMPORARY CLTER OF “STRANGE” BARS? GAY BAR CULTURE ANTWERP
• GAY AREA ANTWERP
• GAY DISTRICT ANTWERP
• GAY VILLAGE ANTWERP
• ANTWERP: A GAY MT-VIS STATN BELGIUM!
• GAY ANTWERP · CY GUI
• A GAY UPLE RAN A RAL RTRANT PEACE. THEN NEW NEIGHBORS ARRIVED.

GAY ANTWERP ANTWERP CY GUI

1 IntroductnThis chapter propos to vtigate what historgraphers would ll the “long twentieth century” of lbian and gay neighborhoods the specific ntext of Antwerp, the largt cy Flanrs (the northern, Dutch-speakg part of Belgium).

Footnote 1 Although Antwerp has e to be reprented as the “gay pal” of Flanrs, we will show that never veloped a full-fledged gay neighborhood the Anglo-Amerin tradn of the ncept—that is, a neighborhood characterized by the historil clterg of a wi range of urban functns for sexual mori (social, cultural, rintial, sexual, mercial, wh service and hospaly dtri as well as entertament venu).

THE BEST ANTWERP GAY CLUBS & BARSSEE ALL THGS TO DOGAY CLUBS & BARS ANTWERP

As several other Wtern European natns (and many non-Wtern untri bis), the clterg of sexual mori Antwerp has been limed largely to the enomic, social, and cultural bs of (nightlife) entertament, wh lbian and gay meetg plac historilly ncentratg particular neighborhoods that, moreover, have shifted over time and dissipated aga. As the inty of morn-day “homosexuals” me to be shaped and solidified (roughly as of the send half of the neteenth century), people who intified creasgly as members of this mographic created private, semi-public, and public meetg spac for themselv, startg larger ci such as Berl and New York (Beachy 2014; Chncey 1995). Belgian urban neighborhoods tend to be more fely graed and mixed, more plex their stratifitns and ls homogeneo, and as a rult do not ve the same strong sense of dividualy and inty as do many of the inic neighborhoods the English-speakg world, which are unrwrten by a more outspoken logic of martn and differentiatn.

A self-chosen, not-enomilly enforced rintial clterg of one segment of the populatn one specific area—lbians and gays our historil shorthand scriptn—has th never seemed as necsary or enticg as much bigger ci this should be add a larger cultural ntext: Flanrs as a whole is a nsely populated regn which pecially the triangle Antwerp-Ghent-Bssels has sometim been scribed, parative ternatnal terms, as a sgle extend nurbatn (GUST 1999: 32–38; Albrechts and Lievois 2004). This cultural pattern is so eply graed that appli even to lbians and gays the days of massive anti-homosexual hostily ral Flanrs, when one would have expected a great many of them to engage the same kd of “reverse diaspora” (Sfield 1996: 281) to central ci that has been historilly characteristic of sexual and genr mori other untri.

Throughout the perd unr discsn, fact, a large number of Flemish lbians and gays ntued to live their immediate native areas and simply muted to a cy such as Antwerp for their nightlife entertament (Vcke et al.

A GAY NEIGHBORHOOD OR MERELY A TEMPORARY CLTER OF “STRANGE” BARS? GAY BAR CULTURE ANTWERP

They did not build most of their liv around a specific, regnizably gay neighborhood, but ma ocsnal e of the clters of bars that over time beme available we are able to embark on the followg narrative and analysis, is also necsary to reflect methodologilly on how our vtigatn is shaped (both enabled and rtricted) by s hristic ndns. Bee the larger ntext for our subject remas to be wrten, will be necsary, first, to unrtake a relatively substantial and panoramic survey of the emergence of gay nightlife Antwerp durg the early half of the twentieth century. This will provi the amework need for a more tailed analysis the send part, which will zoom on an area the immediate vicy of the Central Statn and will take as s emblematic foc one sufficiently long-term and inic gay bar, lled Café Strange.

Neher the French penal of 1810 that was adopted Belgium after the untry’s pennce 1830 nor the Belgian penal of 1867 prohibed homosexual acts between nsentg adults private, although public displays of homosexual tert and sire uld be prosecuted for “asslts on honor and public cency” (Vanhaelewyn 2008: 248).

This impli that for much of the neteenth and twentieth centuri, Belgian homosexuals were not as strongly persecuted as many other European untri, though the fact that they were not actively opprsed by the State may also have slowed down lbian and gay inty formatn and social activism, pecially the largely Dutch-speakg and voutly Catholic Flanrs, where a nservative social value system persisted well to the send half of the twentieth century (Dupont et al. Partly as a rult, gay life remaed very much unrground and has bee hard to retrace om official sourc equently ed by historgraphers other untri, such as police fil (Dupont 2015), the most important source of rmatn that we have about everyday lbian and gay life the early to mid-twentieth century nsists of a number of tobgraphi and oral history terviews wh lbians and gays. ”Although visibily and silence th reigned supreme mastream Flemish society, om the early twentieth century onwards some form of gay subculture did start to emerge tentatively out-of-the-way pockets, and was Antwerp, particular, that began to velop somethg that might qualify as a gay nightlife (Hellck 2002: 6).

GAY AREA ANTWERP

For those who uld fd their way to them, the semi-public spac of a handful of bars me to offer a haven where patrons uld be more at ease, meet other lbians and gays, explore non-normative genr exprsns, make iends, and fd lovers. Loopmans and Van Den Broeck (2011) have fact traced the roots for such typil harbor prostutn much further back history, llg the area one of the olst red-light districts Europe, whose origs lie the fifteenth is here, near the river and the harbor, that Antwerp’s gay nightlife most probably first took shape.

Yet, while we may be certa that same-sex sexual practic took place there, is not so clear whether the area already wnsed a mimally anized form of homosexual subculture durg the late neteenth century, and if so, whether this was then tegrated the tablished bs of heterosexual prostutn.

GAY DISTRICT ANTWERP

1(Source Imag by Bart Eeckhout, April 2020)The visible gay history of the Skippers Quarter: where for most of the twentieth century Danny’s Bar ed to be (until the mid-1990s), today a stretch of new-built rintial ho and a brasserie are to be found (left), and the historilly narrow alley where the Crystal Palace ed to be (until the buildg llapsed the 1960s), bland archecture now reigns supreme (right)Full size imageThe gay clientele of the Skippers Quarter steadily grew; on the eve of the Send World War, the neighborhood had apparently acquired a distctly gay nnotatn to those the know. Whereas Shakpeare had a female bartenr, Jackie, and attracted a mostly female crowd, the bars near the tra statn had male bartenrs and clientele: “Dikke Piet” (Fat Pete) was the gay bartenr of Fortunia, “Miss Banaan” (Miss Banana) served at Week-End, and the drag queen “Eddy”/“Edh” at La Ron (Wters 2011: 56–58; Kegels 2008: 37–38, 64, 89–90) of the 1950s, the nam of such new bars more often ntaed d referenc to homosexual culture.

Olr bars’ nam the Skippers Quarter that had already been operatn before they attracted a gay clientele would sometim refer to the harbor lotn (De Lichttoren [The Lighthoe]), to a regn (Café Normandie), the bar’s owner (Danny’s Bar), or the venue’s terr sign (Crystal Palace).

When one of the gay bars the vicy of the statn, Week-End, changed owners the late 1950s, was renamed as La Vie en Rose (Pk Life), thereby alludg not only to the eponymo song by Edh Piaf, the French sger who was then beg a cult diva among homosexuals, but also to the growg symbolism of the lor pk, which, unr the fluence of Amerin cloth manufacturers, had e to be rerved almost exclively for young girls and th rried a strong feme nnotatn (Paoletti 2012). As before, such slight geographic displacements were relevant only to the lotn of bars and clubs, bee the lol lbian and gay populatn as a le had not sought to move to any of the neighborhoods and had not set up a muny life, service sector, or cultural dtry them (Fig.

GAY VILLAGE ANTWERP

Sce 1993 has also been hog a gay(-iendly) fé/club terg to a younger crowdFull size image3 The Paradigmatic Case History of Café Strange the Central Statn AreaSo far, we have limed ourselv largely to a bird’s-eye view of the permutatns of twentieth-century gay nightlife Antwerp as origated the Skippers Quarter and, the send half of the century, moved to addnal neighborhoods.

Bee of the venue’s longevy, moreover ( still surviv), prents a sufficiently extend se study that allows to ponr the twenty-first-century cle of gay bar life Antwerp as 1955, a gay-iendly bar the Dambggtraat, a street loted near the popular neighborhood Seefhoek, was reopened by the gay uple Bno and Julien (Kegels 2008: 112–113). At the time, the epicenter of gay life was probably still the Skippers Quarter, yet by then the Dambggtraat also happened to host the gay bar Fortunia, and the street was nveniently wh walkg distance om the statn, wh s daily crowd of natnal muters and ternatnal travelers, as well as one of the largt and most notor public toilets ( ont of the statn), where men were known to hook up and/or have sex wh other men (Kegels 2008: 75–79) Shakpeare, Café Strange was one of the lol pneers when me to alludg to the kd of patrons targeted, and the nature of the bar, through s very name. Acrdg to the current proprietor, Armand, the first gay owners, Bno and Julien, ma a great effort to change the place when they bought , and is likely they replaced the ma entrance to adapt the bar to the sir of patrons.

ANTWERP: A GAY MT-VIS STATN BELGIUM!

Instead of stickg to the tradnal jebox, they acquired a profsnal DJ set wh turntable, hired DJs to ensure that a ntuo flow of mic was beg played durg parti, bought new rerdgs on a regular basis, and advertised both natnal and ternatnal LGBT media—for stance, the much-read Dutch Gay Krant and ternatnal guis such as Spartac. Bis theme parti, there were more regular and ordary events, such as “tea danc” (thé dansants) on Sundays, when, acrdg to a 1985 ad the Flemish gay newspaper De Homokrant, a DJ would play “goln hs, film mic, and poprn oldi” (ed.

The majory of visors to Café Strange appear to have been gay, lbian, or bisexual, although natnal and ternatnal gay guis show that the mographic shifted over the years, om a relatively wir range age and genr durg the 1980s to a crowd of mostly gay men durg the 1990s, and then morphg to a mix of gay and gay-iendly patrons a bar stayed fancially que profable until the 1990s, when the number of patrons began to dwdle.

GAY ANTWERP · CY GUI

4 The Decle of Gay Bar Life AntwerpThere are many different reasons why mercial gay bar life the area to the north of Antwerp’s Central Statn started to cle toward the end of the twentieth century until has by now—two s to the twenty-first century—all but disappeared.

A handful of gay-iendly mega clubs, mercial party formats, and mastream mixed bars, such as Hsenhuis and Red & Blue (both loted the reveloped part of town to the north of the Skippers Quarter), ma sure to expand their bs by seekg to seize a big part of the pie of LGBT leisure culture. Several of the buildgs on the left ed to hoe the gay bars that gave the street s nickname of Vasele Street and that have sce gone out of bsFull size imageWh enomic petn th g om two sis—one activist, one mercial—and the reputatn of the area and s gay venu beg ever more dub, the bars the statn area me to seem old-fashned, uneventful, sleazy, and unsafe, wh dire nsequenc for their mercial viabily. Although Antwerp went through a procs of mornist urban planng the perd after the Send World War, which also affected the Skippers Quarter (Loopmans and Van Den Broeck 2011), the streets harborg the gay bars near the tra statn remaed largely untouched by (Loopmans 2008).

A GAY UPLE RAN A RAL RTRANT PEACE. THEN NEW NEIGHBORS ARRIVED.

Yet even then, the actual material effects of such cy-planned upgradg seem to postdate, by and large, the mise of the lol world of gay bars, which was more driven by the logic scribed the prev paragraphs than by any form of cy planng or gentrifitn phg the bars out of of the micro-chang on the ground wh the cy of Antwerp should obvly be amed aga a larger cultural ntext—that of the relatively quick shift attus toward sexual and genr mori wh Wtern European societi overall, a shift that has arguably been even faster Belgium (and pecially Flanrs) than most of s neighborg untri. In the quickly transformg circumstanc, the relatively exclive, niche-specific, semi-public spac of lbian and gay bars that promised a safe haven a largely hostile environment lost their raison d’être faster than anyone would have expected a few s ago.

In recent years, even center-right polil alns that have seized power Antwerp have embraced their LGBTIQ populatn and gone out of their way to market the entire cy, rather than any particular part of , as a gay-iendly tourist statn.