Both Kenny at Cardinal Collective and Derek at Third Decade respond to my nostalgia for a gay ghetto with a healthy dose of skepticism. Derek writes, "Worrying about the existence of a gay ghetto strikes me as waxing nostalgic over a period of time and a place which really wasn’t a big deal to everyone." Fair enough, the gay neighborhood was never as universal a utopia as I made it out to be: it’s not accurate to say that lesbians, non-white men, and working class and sub-working class folks never participated in and liked the gay ghetto, but urban gay communities have had a way of being race- and class-bound social networks for men. The upward mobility of the South End in recent years has probably left a further bitter taste in a lot of people’s mouths.
Nonetheless I can’t help feeling, maybe on a gut level, that something is being lost in our dispersal. I’ve never lived in a gay ghetto, but even as Cambridge intellectual or JP whatever-the-hell-I-am, I’ve enjoyed having a focal point for gay life and a community that I can go to. Right now, dispersal may mean that acceptance and integration is spreading across the city, but it also means that the critical density to support things like bars, coffee shops and bookstores is often lacking. JP is case in point, where an increasing number of lesbians and gay men still haven’t translated into places to congregate or institutions of our own. It’s true we can gather in ice cream shops or food coops or whatever. But frankly, if that’s all Boston is going to have to offer, it’s not providing much more than a smaller city, like Portland or Providence. And we’re not big enough, like New York or San Francisco, to truly support a multi-nodal scene, where gay and lesbian critical density across wide stretches of the city means that no one area has to carry that burden.
Maybe one problem is the term gay "ghetto," which I use out of conventional vernacular, but which clearly has connotations less than positive.
But enough glum mutterings from me. Perhaps I can focus this energy on a simple policy proposal: the city of Boston desperately needs, if it doesn’t want to become a museum piece, to ease up on its zoning and liquor license restrictions. This needn’t apply to every area, but we need to stop equating entertainment, dining and nightlife with an undesirable element. Foot traffic and activity can be beneficial for neighborhoods, even residential ones. And wherever gays and lesbians choose to live, they will find their numbers are more likely to lead to congregating places if local boards aren’t shooting down any new restaurant, bar or establishment idea one can think of.
By the way, Derek also points out that Tom Reilly didn’t show up Saturday. Guess he’s written off the gay vote.
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