Two men kiss at the tenth Delhi Queer
Pride Parade in November 2017
‘These spaces were little pockets within the city where people really felt safe, but also where they were absolutely celebrated’
Take London, for example. In 2017, a pivotal audit by the Urban Laboratory at University College London revealed that since 2006, the number of venues for LGBTQ Londoners had fallen from 124 to 47, a loss of nearly 60 per cent. According to the report, rent hikes from landlords and construction for London housing and public transport projects were the main reasons for the fall. London Mayor Sadiq Khan was quick to react, saying that urgent action needed to be taken in light of the ‘shocking’ statistics. He pledged to do all he could to protect the capital’s LGBTQ nightlife, a policy that now comes under the remit of his ‘night czar’ Amy Lamé who, appropriately enough, has run the LGBTQ club night Duckie since the mid-1990s.
The situation can be seen across almost all of the cities once deemed LGBTQ hubs (although Berlin remains a notable outlier). In 1973, the number of gay bars in San Francisco peaked at 118; today, there are fewer than 30. Across the board, spaces for queer women have dwindled to almost nothing – there’s only one dedicated lesbian bar in London, for example. The result is a scene in which only the most profitable locations remain open, some of which then become unpleasantly commercialised. Spaces that were once for the most marginalised are taken over by everyone else and no longer fulfil the same purpose. Governments deliberately market them to tourists, making them less useful as a meeting place for locals or for those lacking funds.
Does any of this matter? In a world where legal rights for LGBTQ people are improving, are separate spaces still necessary? WHAT’S IN A NIGHT? One of the easiest ways to pinpoint the importance of LGBTQ spaces is to look to the past. The so-called gaybourhoods of the late 20th and early 21st centuries weren’t just important from a social perspective, they were political spaces where people rallied, planned and
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