Why Gayborhoods Matter: The Street Empirics of Urban Sexuali - PMC

Contents:

• 'GO THE F*** HOME!': WOMAN REPEATEDLY SCREAMS BLOODY MURR, DROPS F-BOMBS ON ANTI-ABORTN STREET PREACHER SEATTLE 'GAYBORHOOD'
• THERE GO THE GAYBORHOOD?
• THERE GO THE GAYBORHOOD
• MIDTOWN VILLAGE & THE GAYBORHOOD
• GAYBORHOOD
• GAYBORHOODS AREN'T AD. IN FACT, THERE ARE MORE OF THEM THAN YOU THK.
• I ATE AT THE GAYBORHOOD’S NEWT RTRANT, BUD AND MARILYN’S, LAST NIGHT
• WHY GAYBORHOODS MATTER: THE STREET EMPIRICS OF URBAN SEXUALI
• THE GAYBORHOOD ISN'T DEAD: WHERE GAYS AND LBIANS ARE MOVG NEXT
• THE GAYBORHOOD IS COMG CLEAN

'GO THE F*** HOME!': WOMAN REPEATEDLY SCREAMS BLOODY MURR, DROPS F-BOMBS ON ANTI-ABORTN STREET PREACHER SEATTLE 'GAYBORHOOD'

Of urse, “bookstore” is a slightly more rpectable term for what Circ of Books actually was; while did sell LGBTQ lerature, the bulk of s ventory volved sex, makg proprietors Karen and Barry Mason two of the biggt distributors of gay porn the while the Masons were at the center of LA’s queer muny, they were hardly out and proud about their work their private liv. Directed by the Masons’ dghter Rachel, Circ of Books, executive produced by Ryan Murphy, works bt as a love letter to her parents, two surprisgly passnate figur the gay muny who wouldn’t have been so nnected if they weren’t sellg porn and sex toys to their clientele. ) Wh bs boomg the gayborhood, the Masons expand their enterprise the ls ostentat Silver Lake neighborhood—jt up Sunset Boulevard om the Black Cat, where pre-Stonewall monstratns took place 1967 after the gay bar was raid by the rise of the Masons’ most empire cid wh both the burgeong AIDS crisis and the moral panic agast pornography led by Reagan Republins and the Christian right, which led to Barry Mason beg nvicted on obsceny charg (a flimsy se that amounted to him beg ma an example the middle of a culture war).

THERE GO THE GAYBORHOOD?

Her relig life as a member of the Los Angel Jewish muny was direct odds wh her profsnal experience—orrg bulk shipments of DVDs, dildos, and poppers to sell to her mostly gay male ctomers—wh the two sis kept as separate as evable element of the documentary is that the Masons’ Circ of Books ultimately failed—and you don’t have to live Los Angel to know why the shop shutters by the end of the documentary. “There go the neighborhood, ” I thought as the last illn I had of this part of the cy as an clive yet uniquely gay space dissolved before my the past few years, the “ath of the Gayborhood” — a phrase once uttered mock horror whenever a favore hangout changed hands or a well-known stutn screwed up — has taken on an air of evabily.

We saw this the polil arena 2018, when two openly gay black ndidat, Mallm Kenyatta and Alex Deerg, peted for a state Hoe seat the 181st District — a sectn of North Philalphia that’s both geographilly and enomilly distant om the Gayborhood. Cywi, LGBTQ visibily is siarly creasg the cultural realm: Large-sle LGBTQ-themed events have moved beyond the tradnal Pri weekend June and Outft October, and many former Gayborhood event producers and performers are bookg venu throughout the cy.

THERE GO THE GAYBORHOOD

To mastream attentn, members of Philly’s LGBTQ muny are reflectg — some wistfully, some crilly — on what the Gayborhood means today, and wonrg whether there’s really anythg left to be lost by venturg outsi the neighborhood’s now-fadg rabow-pated crosswalks. ”In the wake of extensive civil rights work by LGBTQ activists around the untry the 1970s and durg the AIDS epimic the 1980s, the openly gay character of the neighborhood was firmly entrenched by the time Cy Paper edor and lumnist David Warner scribed an Outft celebratn as “a betiful day the gayborhood” the early 1990s.

By 1999, the term Warner had ed was appearg on maps, and veloper tert soon stoked a rapid revalizatn that would turn the area om a llectn of bars and niche bs to a hot spot filled wh high-end rtrants and stutns played their own large rol the Gayborhood’s growth. The Gayborhood stopped beg a neighborhood which the most margalized uld fd and be themselv and started to feel more like a tourist attractn for cultural this time, two natnal movements — Black Liv Matter, spearhead by queer black women, and the fight for marriage equaly, upheld by the Supreme Court 2015 — awakened my social nscns.

By then, I was a young journalist verg the muny, and I began to notice ownership and learship dispari at Gayborhood spac, which were led predomantly by cisgenr whe men spe the notable role that people of lor across the genr spectm played shapg the area’s had, of urse, seen this before I did.

MIDTOWN VILLAGE & THE GAYBORHOOD

The offensive vio and the unverg of several cints of racial profilg and discrimatn at Gayborhood bars and nonprofs prompted LGBTQ activist groups to boytt and prott the stutns, which turn prompted addnal bs and learship the past year, I’ve felt that fdg thentic and tentnal LGBTQ experienc outsi of the Gayborhood was a necsy, but one that’s been easier than I expected. ”“We have to face the fact that queers create great and impactful culture and muni, and that non-queers then want to participate and even steal that culture, ” says Chris Bartlett, executive director of the William Way LGBT Communy Center and a longtime Gayborhood rint. Dpe s semi-sensatnalist subtle—“Philalphia’s homosexuals lead a strange twilight life outsi the law and outsi of society”— the story steered away om the lurid and foced stead on the problems of gay people Philalphia and the burgeong gay polil scene.

GAYBORHOOD

Ghaziani f as gayborhood as havg four fg featur: It's a geographil center of LGBTQ people (cludg queer tourists), has a high nsy of LGBTQ rints, 's a mercial center of bs terg to the queer and trans muny, and 's a cultural ncentratn of power. The were radil muni, home to tergeneratnal bath ho, butch femme bars, and s of the early 2000s, crics began to lament the supposed loss of the neighborhoods, cg "late-stage gentrifitn, the global circulatn of pal, chang the flow of migratn, liberalizg attus toward homosexualy, social acceptance and assiatn, and the normalizatn of geo-d mobile apps (which have altered how plac facilate social and sexual nnectns), " Ghaziani crics weren't entirely wrong.

GAYBORHOODS AREN'T AD. IN FACT, THERE ARE MORE OF THEM THAN YOU THK.

Ghaziani attribut this unique clterg to multiple factors: Lbians may feel more accepted ral areas, where female masculy isn't as tightly policed as male femy; lbians have ls pal than gay men (women, cludg queer women, ntue to make ls than men) and therefore may not be able to afford urban neighborhoods; lbians are statistilly more likely to have children (and therefore different hog requirements). Unlike historil gayborhoods, which tend to be whe, digal gayborhoods are often more open to diversy, givg room for trans and POC queers to ers are nnectg a neighborhood whout tradnal gay tablishments, they n nohels create a "gayborhood" onle or create "pop-up" physil gayborhoods.

Usg Facebook's events planner, they n plan a trans-centered party at a lol straight bar or hold a LGBTQ health fair at a nearby field, thereby temporarily transformg the spac to "gayborhood" 's how Ghaziani scrib :"You n queer any given space by loggg on to see see any queers near you. Posned right smack the middle of the Gayborhood, right at the tersectn of the rabow crosswalks, the rtrant is, by far, much more sual, much more fun, than some of the other Valerie and Marcie tablishments (Barbuzzo, Ltle Nonna’s), yet still packed a total punch.

I ATE AT THE GAYBORHOOD’S NEWT RTRANT, BUD AND MARILYN’S, LAST NIGHT

Gut Edor (s): Alex Bterman17 and Daniel Baldw Hs1817Department of Archecture and Dign, Aled State Universy of New York, New York, USA 18Department of Urban and Regnal Planng, Universy at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY USA AbstractUrbanists have veloped an extensive set of proposns about why gay neighborhoods form, how they change, shifts their signifince, and their spatial exprsns.

WHY GAYBORHOODS MATTER: THE STREET EMPIRICS OF URBAN SEXUALI

Keywords: Urban sexuali, Technology, Gay neighborhoods, LGBTQ+ safe spacIntroductn: Gayborhood StudiThe associatn between sexualy and the cy is as tablished experientially as is affirmed the amy—om sexologil unts of sexual practic to thick ethnographic scriptns of the moral regns of urban sexual worlds (Ksey et al. Scholars ask why gayborhoods first formed (Castells and Murphy 1982; Knopp 1997; Lewis 2013), how they have changed over time (Kanai and Kenttamaa-Squir 2015; Rhbrook 2002; Stryker and Van Bkirk 1996), their cultural signifince for queer people (Doan and Higgs 2011; Greene 2014; Orne 2017), why they appeal to heterosexuals (Brodyn and Ghaziani 2018; Ghaziani 2019d), and their diverse spatial exprsns ( Brown-Saraco 2018; Ghaziani 2019a; Whtemore and Smart 2016). Some rearchers show that people e technology creatively to image new spac away om the gayborhood (Wu and Ward 2017), while others argue that apps reproduce equali (Conner 2018) than origs, anizatns, and technology, rearchers who work a fourth stream of gayborhood studi document mographic chang (Moral 2018; Sprg 2013) and nsir their effects on muny-buildg and placemakg efforts ( Brown-Saraco 2011; Casey 2004; Ghaziani and Stillwagon 2018; Rennger 2019).

Cens tracts, real tate ads, bs and non-prof listgs, llective memori, revenu, nighttime enomy, pop-ups, cultural archipelagosAlthough scholars have produced nsirable knowledge about gayborhoods, a key oversight remas: what do the gayborhood mean for the people who actually live ?

I draw on more than six hundred natnal media reports about the gayborhood across several s of verage, particularly stori which a journalist terviewed lol rints, to intify six major reasons why queer people say they live a gay district and what about appeals to them. ”8 Rints like the pend on the streets of gayborhoods, which are often shield om the heterosexual gaze, to nnect wh each four s later and across the untry, people still appreciate the streets of gayborhoods for their sexual workg opportuni. Co-sponsored 2019 by the Chigo Black Social Culture Map, the Morn Dance Mic Archivg Foundatn, and the Center on Halsted, the event clud muny archivg on se, oral histori, and panel discsns that celebrated nightlife’s queer roots, reflected on the signifince of public events like Black Pri, and explored the importance of inic spots and “anchor stutns” (Ghaziani 2014a: 383) the gayborhood.

THE GAYBORHOOD ISN'T DEAD: WHERE GAYS AND LBIANS ARE MOVG NEXT

” Rints found her msage pellg and voted by a marg of more than 2-to-1 a referendum to repeal a law that protected gay men and lbians om discrimatn employment, hog, and public acmodatn (Ghaziani 2008: 33) Florida fight unleashed protts across the untry, many of which were anized gay neighborhoods.

”26 The prott theme found s way to the first natnal March on Washgton for Lbian and Gay Rights another well-known example, the San Francis queer muny uned when Dan Whe assassated supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor Gee Masne on November 27, 1978. ”28 A wrer for the San Francis Chronicle add that mobilizatn gay districts helped to lower fectn rat: “When AIDS fally was intified, whe middle-class gays mobilized powerfully, and over time their efforts drove down fectn rat San Francis’s Castro district. Wrg for the Washgton Post, Pla Span remarked on group’s name, logo, and activi:They uld have lled themselv somethg more prosaic, neighborhood anti-crime patrols beg nothg new, after all…But gay activism, New York-style, requir a certa ironic panache…The Pk Panthers tle, wh s echo both of ‘60s policizatn and silver-screen mp, won swift approval.

THE GAYBORHOOD IS COMG CLEAN

Coupl, Inc., a Los Angel-based anizatn fightg for legal regnn of gay partners, anized The Weddg, a ceremony that celebrated queer relatnships and mand that their partnerships receive equal legal regnn as married heterosexuals (Ghaziani 2008).

Rega Quattrochi, the former director of the New York Cy AIDS Rource Center, argu that gayborhoods have always promoted the celebratn of queer cultur: “Even as recently as the early and mid-1980s, I thk the Village was symbolic of a sort of celebratn of gay culture.