The Decline and Fall of the Gayborhood

It's noted in The New York Times which takes the cancellation of the Halloween parade in the Castro as its peg. Andrew "The End of Gay Culture" Sullivan, naturally, is psyched. And of course I, too, am glad to see gay and lesbian Americans taking their rightful place as equal citizens.

On the other hand, I do think it's worth wondering what the consequences of all this will be for our urban ecology. When I see Atrios going on about "the Village," my instinct is still to read that as my hometown, Greenwich Village, New York, NY (pictured above) which I suppose I didn't realize was a "gay" neighborhood when I was little anymore than I realized that there might be a gay angle to the annual Village Halloween Parade. These neighborhoods, scattered in major cities across the country, have a unique and congenial character and though their disappearance would obviously be a small price to pay for equality, I think it should be recognized as a price. I'm not quite sure I have the chops to right the straight person's appreciation of the vanishing gay neighborhood, but I think one should be written, so I'll nominate Garance Franke-Ruta who grew up in the same area.

Photo by Flickr user Tiseb used under a Creative Commons license

Comments

Would it be rude to point out that Andrew "End of Gay Culture" Sullivan's permanent residence is in Provincetown, MA?

Posted by Joe Klein's Murdered Conscience | October 30, 2007 3:09 PM

Matt,

When you were growing up in The Village, wasn't Chelsea already supplanting it as the main gay neighborhood in Manhattan? It's been a while since anyone I know has thought of Greenwich Village as predominantly gay. You're more likely to find straight NYU students and other twenty-somethings at most Village bars than gays.

Posted by Fred | October 30, 2007 3:09 PM

I'm only a little older than Matt, I think, and the Village was pretty gay when I was growing up. I like to tell people I went to the only elementary school in America that is next door to a gay book store (P.S. 3).

Posted by Elizabeth | October 30, 2007 3:16 PM

Your "righting" chops seem to be a little off today.

I no you're grammer, spilling and typpo missteaks arrgh party fo you're appeel. It's jsut rthat ewe seam 2b havgingn uh particdlurily bda day.

Posted by MikeS | October 30, 2007 3:18 PM

When you were growing up in The Village, wasn't Chelsea already supplanting it as the main gay neighborhood in Manhattan?

Yes. No self respecting gay person lives below 14th Street anymore.

Posted by Al | October 30, 2007 3:20 PM

BTW, apropos of the linked story, I'd add, as someone who lived in Chelsea for almost a decade, that it is becoming less of a gay neighborhood also. It was much more of a gay nighborhood when I moved there in 1997.

(Also, in case people can't figure it out, the 3:20 comment was a bit of Chelsea humor...)

Posted by Al | October 30, 2007 3:24 PM

Of course it's a loss to lose distinctive and interesting neighborhoods. They make for a more interesting and varried life and society. This is so of ethnic neighborhoods as well as "gay" neighborhoods. Sometimes certain cultural styles can only flurish if concentrated to some degree. This, of course, doesn't mean that this is good if such cultural styles are concentrated because they are oppressed otherwise. But, even though there is no social world without loss (something often over-looked, I think) that ought not make us not think such losses are real when they happen.

Posted by Matt (not the famous one) | October 30, 2007 3:57 PM

The Decline and Fall of the Gayborhood

Will there be a moment of silence before the high heel race on 17th street tonight?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?node=cityguide/profile&id=1046802

Posted by SoCalJustice | October 30, 2007 4:20 PM

As a college student in Columbus (going to the school of the number one ranked football team in the country, mind you), I feel a little bittersweet about the inevitablity of gay equality because it will eventually lead to sameness. Of course, I'm totally 100% in favor of equality, but the eventuality of sameness could potentially diminish the distinction of Columbus neighborhoods like the Short North and Victorian Village. Rather than go to the nearby gay-themed bookstore, An Open Book, for example, people simply make the trek up High Street to the campus-area Barnes & Nobles. Meanwhile, more and more stores geared toward OSU students are sprawling beyond the campus' traditional North High Street commercial areas and into the Short North. If Urban Outfitters is crowded, people can just take the bus a little south to American Apparell. There's less and less distinction.

Of course, I'm sure people from my hometown would still raise their eyebrows if they took a trip down to the Short North. Which is partially why they don't like they idea of gay equality. Maybe it's the homophobic conservatives who understand the consequences of "gay flight" more than anyone.

Posted by Matthew Struhar | October 30, 2007 4:28 PM

When I visit the gayborhood for the Halloween gayla, my gaydar doesn't work well because the place is saturated with gaydiation.

Posted by gaygay the alligaytor | October 30, 2007 4:45 PM

What, a post on the decline in gayness of Greenwich Village and no photo of the "Gay Street/Christopher St" sign?

Posted by James Gary | October 30, 2007 4:46 PM

Lamenting the dilution of gay culture is like bemoaning the passing of baseball's Negro Leagues.

And JK'sMC is right: Andy's summer retreat locus, P'town, MA, is--and will forever more be--a place where Barbie is an art medium, and not a plaything.

Posted by Jamey | October 30, 2007 5:45 PM

Gaygay, are you an openly gay-tor?

Posted by Jamey | October 30, 2007 5:46 PM

"It's noted in The New York Times which takes the cancellation of the Halloween parade in the Castro as its peg. "

The cancellation ain't really because of the decline of the Castro as a gay neighbourhood, it's because Halloween there became unmanageable, with violent incidents by people coming in from outside.

But, the Castro has gentrified and is less exclusively gay than before, and Noe Valley (a family neighbourhood nearby) has colonised it, just as it has Bernal Heights and Potero Hill (formerly quirky "transitional" neighbourhoods that are now full of young families.) You see *a lot* of kid strollers in the Castro now, which you didn't see years ago, and that's partly because the Castro has some pretty decent public schools nearby. But I'd say, as a breeder looking from outside, the fact is that gays can live in most of the SF Bay Area without being hassled. It's common to see a same-sex couple holding hands in public anywhere in SF, which wasn't the case 10 years ago. There's just no need for ghetto anymore.

Posted by Sock Puppet of the Great Satan | October 30, 2007 5:54 PM

Thing is . . . that article is something of a conflation of what I, as a gay San Francisco resident of ten years, see as two wholly separate changes.

The Halloween event in the Castro was cancelled because of the increasing violence that has plagued it over the last several years. The event has grown every year, and the "bridge and tunnel" crowd have begun to outnumber the locals (who know that the Saturday before Halloween is now the "night to go"). The gawkers who came to look at the freaks were fewer in number, but no longer, and the police have had a hard time keeping the streets safe enough for the size of the crowd that descends on the 'Stro.

In fairness, the article mentions this . . . and goes on to talk about the decline of the gayborhood. But the Halloween event wouldn't have this problem if it hadn't been the mad, wonderful, costumed cavalcade it was. And it was that way because of the Castro's success as a place where gay folks could go and feel safe and get their glittering freak on.

This isn't to say that the draw of "traditional" gay urban enclaves like SF or Key West isn't waning. It may or may not be, as far as I can tell. But what that article seemed to be saying is that the urge to collect and cleave is being permitted to concentrate in previously-unheard of locales, as public toleration and acceptance grows.

I hardly view that as an End of Gay Culture. I see it more as a story of an increase of safety in unsafe areas, and a decrease of safety in a previously-safe area. Some kind of Law of the Conservation of Gay Energy or something.

Perhaps that really was the point of the article, and I'm just being obtuse. However, I don't ever see such community accretions going away, not because I'm despairing of the persistance of vitriolic bigotry (since it was a desire to escape this that led to the formation of these communities in the first place), but more because people need to meet other people they can date, and you stand a better chance of finding some like-minded soul where the numbers are greater, and you're less likely to be hasseled while doing it.

P.S.: Sockpuppet said this much more succinctly than I.

Posted by AG | October 30, 2007 6:05 PM

I was at the Castro Halloween event last year and I can say that its cancellation this year has absolutely nothing to do with 'the decline of gay culture', but more to do with the fact that, as the biggest publicly-accessible Halloween-type party in the Bay Area, thousands and thousands of rowdy, bored, and drunk teenagers and 20-somethings from far corners of the metropolis converge and the predictable high school/gang dynamics play out. The smell of Olde English in the streets, 17 year old girls in 'sexy policewoman' costumes, their boyfriends pushing and yelling at everyone who looks them over, very obvious gang tension in the form of fights and trashtalking between multiple groups of guys each wearing matching colored t-shirts... the general atmosphere of a horrible high school party spread over a square mile. And in the midst of this, totally out of place, are mild-mannered gay men in elaborate, detailed costumes.

I'm sure it was better a few years ago.

Posted by QQ | October 30, 2007 7:24 PM

Neighborhoods evolve. Isn't ghetto a Yiddish word?

Also the white flight of the 50s is approaching stabilization, with gas prices and whatnot giving middle and upper-middle class folk a reason to desire urban living.

The increasing virtualizaiton of work and life online gives another benefit to high density living - human contact.

Gays enclaves used to be catalysts for gentrification. The Castro is experiencing the reverse ghetto effect.

Posted by AF | October 30, 2007 8:01 PM

"Lamenting the dilution of gay culture is like bemoaning the passing of baseball's Negro Leagues."

OUCH!

Haute stuufff comin' thrwew.

"Yes. No self respecting gay person lives below 14th Street anymore.",/i>

Al makes a funny!

"(Also, in case people can't figure it out, the 3:20 comment was a bit of Chelsea humor...)"

Then takes a dump on his own punch line...

Posted by Rihilism | October 30, 2007 9:38 PM

As a non-gay San Francisco resident, I can say that I have read that it definitely was not an issue about there being no gays in the Castro any more, but entirely a "public safety" issue caused by non-gays.

In other words, the City - which basically means the cops - decided they didn't want it, so they didn't allow it. Which basically had nothing to do with what gay people wanted. The fact that the gay people then "relocated" the event in time to the previous Saturday - in other words, they "stealthed" it - kind of demonstrates that.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 30, 2007 9:59 PM

Gayborhoods are ephemeral by nature. They begin when lots of gays move into what is a fairly downscale neighborhood with cheap housing. This tends however to rescue the neighborhood from its doldrums since crime forthwith diminishes, properties are spruced up, lots of vibrant small businesses appear and soon enough the gayborhood is a desirable place to live for straight folks too (at least for the yuppie types with no kids). Housing grows outrageously expensive, soon no one gay can live there except without a six figure income and the scene packs up and moves elsewhere. Hence the fate of the Castro, the Chelsea, North Halsted in Chicago, Dupont Circle, our own Wilton Manors here in Fort Lauderdale, and probably others as well.
As for the future, some gay features like bookstores will probably vanish, but gay bars, coffee houses and resturants will be around forever (in general, not any one specific bar of course) since they serve a need that not all the mainstreaming in the world can dampen. Likewise there will be gay pridefests, gay ski weekends, gay churches, and so forth.

Posted by Jonf | October 30, 2007 10:17 PM

It goes without saying that gay men and lesbians are more integrated in America than ever before.

But does that have much if anything to do with the cancellation of the Castro Halloween thing?

That didn't sound right to me.

I lived in San Francisco in the 1990s for a time and my recollection was that Halloween was becoming a drunken, violent thing you tried to avoid (that wasn't my experience in New York).

As it turns out I may be onto something.

Nine people were shot last year.

As I see it this marks an end to an era of unrestrained public revelery that began in the 1960s. I don't think that's such a good thing.

Posted by Linus | October 30, 2007 10:22 PM

Isn't ghetto a Yiddish word?

Actually, Italian. It originally designated the Jewish quarter of Venice.

Getting back to gay neighborhoods, I've heard that the town of Asbury Park, New Jersey has become quite a gay Mecca in just the last several years.

Posted by Peter | October 30, 2007 10:59 PM

Gay neighborhoods are constantly moving, especially in the US. Polk St preceded the Castro which is now becoming diffused around the city. Christopher Street moved to Chelsea.

Gay neighborhoods are not gay culture, which is hard to define, except perhaps as what the general culture will be in five or ten years. But they are places where you can get an idea of what might constitute gay culture in all its varieties.

Do we need gay neighborhoods and are they a good thing? I think the answer is yes. They are still the places where most of us learn what it is like to hold your same-sex husband or wife's hand in public. It is a place where we can learn a culture that we are not born into and must discover on our own. It provides a physical experience that no internet community can duplicate and that forces us to be out - there is no potential for anonymity as there is on the internet.

Not every place is open. I have experienced gay life in Denver, San Francisco, New York and Brussels. If it is common to see gay couples holding hands in San Francisco or New York, that is not the case in Denver and is generally restricted to the gay area of large European cities - whether Brussels, Barcelona, London, Madrid or Paris.

As we mature as gay people, we may want to leave the womb of a gay neighborhood, just as you get tired of the sheltered corridors of schools and colleges and want to move on. Most of us do leave for better homes, jobs, or just open space. But the gay world would be poorer without those places where we can learn to be gay without fear.

Posted by John Chavez | October 31, 2007 8:53 AM

I am incredibly surprised that all this "end of gay culture" talk is going on and no one has mentioned the Stepford moms of Greenwich Village trying to cancel the one-block long S&M parade this year. A consequence of the gentrification of gayborhoods by young upper-middle class families if I ever saw one. ;)

Posted by Rollie | October 31, 2007 9:28 AM

Then takes a dump on his own punch line...

You never know when people won't understand humor on the Internets.

Posted by Al | October 31, 2007 11:40 AM

"You never know when people won't understand humor on the Internets."

Or when they might assume that you are gay...

Posted by Rihilism | October 31, 2007 1:55 PM