I found this article interesting.

 

Should Gay Districts Be Preserved?

California | North America | History / Preservation | Social / Demographics

Posted by: Irvin Dawid

 

 

26 February 2007 - 10:00am

Long known internationally as America's "Gay Mecca", San Francisco's Castro District is seeing an influx of straight couples who find the district's amenities attractive. A movement is afoot to ensure the district retains its gay identity.

 

"The integration of gay and straight is increasingly evident not only in the Castro District but across North America, from Chicago to New York City to Toronto, where urban revitalization is bringing new residents at the same time some gays are settling in other parts of cities or the suburbs -- such as the East Bay.

 

But some gay and lesbian residents of the Castro are worried that the culture and history of their world-famous neighborhood could be lost in the process, and they have started a campaign to preserve its character. The city, meanwhile, is spending $100,000 on a plan aimed at keeping the area's gay identity intact.

 

Heterosexuals "are welcome as long as they understand this is our community," said Adam Light, a leader in the Castro Coalition, a group formed eight months ago to address the shifts in the neighborhood in recent years."

 

"The Castro's gay and lesbian residents need to be actively involved in neighborhood planning if they want to see the area maintain its identity, said Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, chair of the School of Public Affairs and Urban Planning at UCLA."

 

"I think the only gay neighborhood that is going to survive is the Castro," said Don Reuter, a New York writer who has spent the past seven months documenting the status of gay enclaves in 12 U.S. cities. "In every city this is going on. We're unraveling. Our gay neighborhoods are unraveling," he said.

 

"A district of gay nightclubs in southern Washington, D.C., is being demolished to make room for a new stadium. And in Toronto, high-rise condos are replacing parking lots in the Gay Village, and more heterosexuals are moving into the neighborhood."

 

"You can't tell people where to live, and people are making all sorts of decisions," said Kyle Raye, Toronto's first openly gay city councilman who has represented the Gay Village area since 1991. "The lines are blurred; even the police love working (during gay pride events). There are significant social changes that have occurred."

 

"San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau chief Joe D'Alessandro, who lives in the Castro with his gay partner and their six children, said he thinks gay enclaves marginalize the people who live there. He said the gay community in his previous home of Portland, Ore., a city without a historically gay neighborhood, is a model because gay and lesbian residents comfortably live in the mainstream."

 

"They do not live in a ghetto," D'Alessandro said, "and I think they're stronger because of it."

 

 

 

 

 

 

Very interesting. Didn't we have this issue a while back when blacks wanted to move into white neighborhoods?

It would be easy to take off on a long ramble on this topic, and I probably will. I'll try to restrain myself. You were warned.

 

I have mixed feelings about gay enclaves. In a way, they're part of recent urban evolutionary cycles; gay men are often among the pioneers who move into marginal neighborhoods where once-fine properties can be bought for a modest price and renovated/restored to some level of attractiveness or even grandeur. After they've brought back attractive housing, good restaurants, shops, clubs and a feeling of some degree of safety on the streets, it's only natural that progressive-thinking, mostly younger heterosexuals will find the area attractive and start to move in. Somewhere in there, the lesbians see decorating opportunities in the stuff the gay men put out by the curb, and start to rent apartments in the area.  :wink:

 

Neighborhoods become gay enclaves after all the gays who haven't had the balls to make their own space in society move in to take advantage of the pioneers' risk, hard work and investment.

 

In many cases, I haven't been impressed by visits to gay enclaves. In mainstream businesses, I've found that many gay employees rank high for proficiency, customer service and general demeanor. On the other hand, I've often encountered too much attitude when dealing with businesses in areas noted for their gay presence. Some of the poorest meals I've had, served with the most pretentiousness and priced most outrageously have been in gay-owned restaurants. People who live in the enclaves too often become insular and think that their microcosm is representative of the whole world, and they become clones of one another. They reinforce all the negative stereotypes.

 

Rather than cloistering ourselves with people exactly like ourselves, we should be staking our claim in mainstream society and welcoming others who appreciate the neighborhoods our risk and investment have created. We need to ditch the heterophobia.

 

Let 'er rip, guys and gals. I've got my flame-resistant suit on.

I tell you what, once one straight moves in, it's not long before they bring all their friends. Pretty soon, property values are in the shitter and there's blood in the streets.

I tell you what, once one straight moves in, it's not long before they bring all their friends. Pretty soon, property values are in the shitter and there's blood in the streets.

 

Worse still: children. Running. Playing. Laughing.

 

The horror. The horror.

The bottom line is economics...most younger people....gay or straight can no longer afford to live in that neighborhood (or in SF proper for that matter), and without new lifeblood, how do you sustain it as a gayborhood?

 

 

I think that promoting exclusively gay neighborhoods is counterproductive in fighting for acceptance and respect from the mainstream. I think it would be hypocritical to be offended by terms like "alternative lifestyle" when you're literally trying to keep straight people out of your community. If heterosexuals are moving into a gay neighborhood its an obvious sign that heterosexuals are embracing the gay community more and I don't see that as a bad thing...

Heterosexuals "are welcome as long as they understand this is our community," said Adam Light, a leader in the Castro Coalition, a group formed eight months ago to address the shifts in the neighborhood in recent years."

 

Pretty frightening words from someone who has probably seen his share of discrimination.

David, I think you've misinterpreted here.

 

This isn't so much about making all gayborhoods exclusively gay, straight, or whatever, nor is it about promoting any area as such. A marginal few (like those quoted in the article) might hope for that, but that's not what's at stake.

 

What is being examined are areas such as the Castro in San Francisco and Chelsea in NYC, where the modern gay rights movement was born. These areas are historically important to the gay community - and there are certain aspects of those areas that I do think should be preserved (and to some extent, already have). Here's a link that explains the history of the Stonewall Riots and the area of the East Village/Chelsea in NYC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots

 

In many cases, these neighborhoods served as beacons to those who grew in more oppressive areas - places where they knew they could go and live their lives without people doing a double-take (for example, two guys/gals trying to rent an apartment together). Now, as metrocity explained - those areas have become too expensive to be sustainable. So if the new residents don't have any regard for the area's importance to the gay community... what happens to our history?

 

Plenty of heteros move into said areas, well aware of the history and everyone gets along, but not all - and that's the problem. If a hetero couple with children moves into an area because it's cleaned up, but is offended at the sight of a same-sex couple holding hands, that's the concern. I do worry when people like Adam Light (from the article) make blatantly provincial remarks - that doesn't help the cause one bit.

 

Oh, by the way - as it is currently written, Ohio housing law does not prevent discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Plenty of heteros move into said areas, well aware of the history and everyone gets along, but not all - and that's the problem.

 

Very true, I have witnessed firsthand newcomers that find aspects of North Halsted (Chicago) offensive and want to change things.  I have been approached on the street to sign petitions to close down bars.  A few years back, residents of a large new condo specifically targeted one such night club(that was mainly latino and gay) to shut it down.  The club had been there for many years before the condo, and the new condo building itself was built on a site where a large gay nightclub once stood.  You hope that most people are open minded and know where they are moving....and accept it.  The fact is that a lot of times they don't and want to change things.  It gets more infuriating when most of those new residents do not have a long term investment in the neighborhood....with small children, they will move to the suburbs as soon as the child is school age.

 

I don't live in that neighborhood, but I can understand the tension this causes.  It is kind of the same for any gentrifying neighborhood when new residents don't like what has been there for a long time and want it "cleaned up".  There is a thriving Vietnamese district in my ward facing those problems as well.  Vietnamese business owners built the district one small business at a time in the 70's, but many of the new condo owners don't think that the businesses are reputable or clean.

%#@* damn strollers all over chelsea and the village. grr, where'd all my 'mos go?

%#@* damn strollers all over chelsea and the village. grr, where'd all my 'mos go?

 

Harlem!  ughhhh

Heteros recently bought the house about two blocks from here, where I lost my virginity on a Thanksgiving night back when I was young and innocent. That pretty well kills my plan to install a bronze plaque designating it as a historic landmark. :-D

 

Although there's still a significant 'mo presence in Fort Wayne's Historic West Central Neighborhood, it's nothing like it was back in the day. Time has taken its toll; those of us who remain are mostly homeowners. Today's twenty- and thirty-somethings grew up in the 'burbs, and when they moved out on their own they moved into suburban apartment complexes and villaminiums. Still, it's comfortable here, most folks get along well, and there's a visible gay presence in the neighborhood association.

Heteros recently bought the house about two blocks from here, where I lost my virginity on a Thanksgiving night back when I was young and innocent. That pretty well kills my plan to install a bronze plaque designating it as a historic landmark. :-D

 

Although there's still a significant 'mo presence in Fort Wayne's Historic West Central Neighborhood, it's nothing like it was back in the day. Time has taken its toll; those of us who remain are mostly homeowners. Today's twenty- and thirty-somethings grew up in the 'burbs, and when they moved out on their own they moved into suburban apartment complexes and villaminiums. Still, it's comfortable here, most folks get along well, and there's a visible gay presence in the neighborhood association.

 

Oh Rob - thats too funny!  LMAO!!

 

Why is it that the majority gay people have an "important" or "significant" event on Thanksgiving or Christmas?  Almost everyone I know, self included, has a story about something that happend on one of those two days.  Most of the time its "coming out" to the whole family, right as the cranberry sauce is being passed.

Or the Easter Ham as the cas may be  :-D