The 14 Bt Gay Datg S: LGBTQ+ Datg Apps to Fd Love | Observer

Contents:

• GAY DATG HOTON
• GAY PARKS NEAR ME
• GUI TO GAY BARS HOTON
• THE 5 BEST HOTON GAY CLUBS & BARSGAY CLUBS & BARS HOTON
• ROOMS & SHAR "GAY" HOTON, TX
• THE TOP LGBTQ+ DATG S AND APPS: 14 BT GAY DATG S

GAY DATG HOTON

Mart Leve ed spot maps of bars and cisg grounds to substantiate a "gay ghetto"; Jen Jack Giekg analyzed dividuals' "mental maps" of queer space; Am Ghaziani criqued the enclave theory of "gayborhoods" favor of what he terms "cultural archipelagos. "2Mart Leve, "Gay Ghetto, " Gay Men: The Soclogy of Male Homosexualy, ed. Yvette Taylor and Michelle Addison (London: Palgrave Maclan, 2013), 178–200; Am Ghaziani, There Go the Gayborhood?

GAY PARKS NEAR ME

As Hoton's Montrose neighborhood me to be intified as a "gayborhood" between 1960 and 1980, archival evince shows that cisg narrativ played a powerful role that intifitn. Rather, ntemporary popular culture, high art, lerature, pornography, and vernacular speech ntue to reproduce face-to-face cisg public as part of a globally available gay sexual vobulary and social practice. Through documentg the disparate works of people who me to meet on Hoton's cisg grounds—tentnal sex-seekers, crimals explog stigmas attached to gay sex, ambivalent law enforcement officials, area nizens, and perhaps ially naïve passersby—I argue that the social distributn of knowledge about cisg illtrat that queer terrori functned part bee some who do not intify as "queer" also imaged those terrori as nnected to queer liv.

Leve borrows four creria om the soclogists Robert Park and Louis Wirth to asss the stat of a "gay ghetto": stutnal ncentratn, culture area, social isolatn, and rintial ncentratn. His "exploratory fieldwork" nsisted of walkg around neighborhoods observg gay life and talkg wh gay people, activi que parallel to cisg self. " That multiplicy of spac grounds his proposal "that we redirect the study of sexualy and space away om our preexistg assumptns of spatial sgulary—evced by a steady stream of publitns about dividual gay districts—toward a cultural archipelagos mol of spatial pluraly.

GUI TO GAY BARS HOTON

Durg the twenty-year span centered on the 1969 Stonewall rts New York, cisg narrativ Hoton exhib a multiplicy of opns about a multiplicy of spac, even as public awarens of the Montrose neighborhood as "gay" solidified both lolly and natnally. To unrstand better how Montrose shifted om that ele suburb to a "gayborhood, " I began a project 2014 spired by Leve's spot maps.

THE 5 BEST HOTON GAY CLUBS & BARSGAY CLUBS & BARS HOTON

Historil queer advertisg ually picts that clientele as gay men and lbians, often but not always as separate populatns rather than a sgle market. Here, "tertg" served as for "gay"; the words "gay" and "homosexual" never appear the League's program, even though the drag event raised money to help those arrted raids on gay bars. While such a 1950s bar uld be any of those Carl Wtman laments his "Gay Manifto, " the 1980's bar I mentn here is que specific.

Also, attendg only to bars and bs n skew our perceptn of queer space along class-flected l; profsnal middle-class and upper-class lbians and gays chewed the bar scene as dangero for some time, even as recently as the 1990s. In Hoton, that pattern stctured the Dianas, an almost exclively whe, upper-middle-class social anizatn of mostly gay men that origated 1953 as an Amy Awards watch party a private home.

ROOMS & SHAR "GAY" HOTON, TX

See also John Howard's eded volume Carry' On the Lbian and Gay South (New York: NYU Prs, 1997). Mappg bar lotns sourced a mostly whe-oriented gay prs also elis Black, Indigeno, and other People of Color, along wh their specific works and practic. Patrick Johnson, Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South, (Durham: Universy of North Carola Prs, 2011) and Black.

THE TOP LGBTQ+ DATG S AND APPS: 14 BT GAY DATG S

Leve specifi cisg as a form of "stutnal ncentratn" his mol of the gay ghetto, and even symboliz cisg areas on his maps. Leve also discs cisg chapter 4 of Gay Macho (New York: NYU Prs, 1998).

"The 'gay circu'—they didn't know the word 'gay'—was downtown Hoton, between Frankl and McKney and Ma Street east to San Jacto. You uld not tell a queer or a fag (the words they ed then) om the straight, which was the way the gays wanted , beg fearful for their liv and jobs.

"26Richard Van Allen, "Hoton's Gay Thirti, " Montrose Voice, no. See also William Michael Smh, "Lookg Back at Some of the Hurdl Hoton's Gay Communy Had to Overe (Part 1), " June 20, 2014, ; "Hoton's Earlit Gay scen (Part 2), " Hoton Prs, June 23, 2014, ; "'The Homosexual Playground of the South' (Part 3), " June 24, 2014,.

Asi om a few bars that, while not tentnally or exclively gay, served as gatherg spac to those the know—the Rathskeller, the Old Vienna, the Capol Bar, Rex's27Sadly, Hoton cy directori om the 1930s and 1940s did not nfirm the addrs and lotns for the bars documented this article, so they are not clud on the map.

We lled 'wdow shoppg' and jt like now, you know who was gay and who wasn't whout askg. Much as Ghaziani scrib "the closet era" of "sttered gay plac"28Ghaziani, Gayborhood, 12–13.

Prr to World War II, Dan's rellectn of imaged gay space is opportunistic rather than exclive. Gay works circulated parallel wh other works, but at least Van Allen's acunt, cisers would often move across the cy landspe to more private spac after meetg more public on.