Where To Queer, the llaborative webse for gay people to share and disver top gay spots om around the world | East Bloc | London

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• THE BT GAY BARS LONDON

THE BT GAY BARS LONDON

Great alternative gay club East London, superb DJs wh good sound system, inic place for gay clubbg London. Gay Club.

"Over the years, the scene has always been fluid and moved om area to area, " says club promoter Wayne Shir, a tan of London's gay scene sce the early 80s. Once the cy's most proment gay village, Earls Court's queer quarter—a btlg hive of pubs, f and snas—has all but vanished.

All may now be closed, but the area has experienced somethg of a rurgence; Dalston Superstore, The Glory, East Bloc, and Vogue Fabrics (now VFD) reprent a new slew of gay bars and pubs. "There were always gay thgs east London; the Gee and Dragon was one of the first plac and the Joers had been there for 20 years.

"What's tertg, when you start pickg apart London's gay scene, is that at any one pot there will be two or three different scen gog on, " says historian Matt Cook, thor of Queer Domtici: Homosexualy and Home Life Twentieth-Century London. So maybe 's also no surprise that there's ls appete for gay bars now that people are tendg to socialize mixed bars.

"As well as a more dramatic physil shift, London's gay scene has also wnsed somethg of a psychologil one.

At the height of the AIDs epimic the 80s and 90s, gay pubs provid sanctuary, a platform for lnchg the kd of activism that raised sential awarens and funds. "It felt very polilly important at that moment of rampant homophobia, acute anxiety and grief, and all that muny activism around Aids. In that sense we've got a gay scene east London, but I don't feel like 's ghettoized.

Gay bars are fely part of the wir muny now. "Before, may have been the se that stealth trans people didn't go out to trans nights or gay nights, and trans people that didn't pass only went to trans nights, " says Munroe Bergdof, DJ and trans activist.

"The trans girls who would go out wh their gay iends would get nstantly nfed wh drag queens. Now, 's pletely blend; trans girls n go out wh their gay iends and not have to worry about that bee everyone's a b more clued up about what trans people go through. "My black gay iends wouldn't go out Soho bee they felt they were looked down upon, no one would fd them attractive.

As well as the media attentn 's got, out on the scene nights like "Let's Talk about Gay Sex and Dgs" have been set up as an open fom for discsg the topic a non-judgemental are like ckroach – we'll be kicked out of somewhere and we'll filtrate somewhere else"I do thk there's much more social awarens, " says Miss Cairo, a drag artist. There's even a fear that a lack of patronage, and ultimately profabily, is the reason bars are shuttg—that people feel fortable enough straight venu and simply aren't g their lol gay spac anymore. The energy a gay bar, a queer venue, is different to the energy a straight venue.

I don't thk gay people should stop beg gay or flntg their gayns and a safe environment is where you n do that. As the pace of gentrifitn quickens, the bricks and mortar may be lost, but the muny, s people and s valu, will like this on VICE:London's LGBT Communy Protted Agast the Closure of the Black Cap – Camn's Inic Drag PubMappg the Terrible Lost Nightclubs of LondonIntroducg Bra's First UKIP-Endorsg Gay Pub. The two dance floors attract a mostly gay and mostly young die crowd, but everybody's wele.

The venue's lotn, the middle of aspiratnal Hackney Road, screams bpoke kchens and walnut wood roof 've seen a huge chunk of London's gay venu close sce 2008, when the recsn forced all to a downward spiral of low pay ris and creased sts of livg.