Philadelphia Magazine (DL won't allow link)
There Goes the Gayborhood
Rapid social change and Midtown Village development are encroaching on Philadelphia’s LGBTQ mecca. Should we mourn its loss or embrace its evolution?
It was around one o’clock in the morning, and I was standing in a long line of mostly straight Penn alumni waiting to enter Voyeur Nightclub. It was a drunk former classmate — at least, I hope he was drunk — who said it: “Isn’t this where the fags go?”
The occasion was the official after-party for my five-year college reunion, which was held at one of the most popular dance parties in the Gayborhood. The reunion committee’s idea had been innocent enough: Given that most other clubs in Philly shut down at 2 a.m., why not venture where we could let the good times roll until 3:30?
But once we were inside, all of us, gay and straight, saw things we weren’t expecting. It wasn’t long, for example, before visibly uncomfortable alumni were side-eyeing transgender women going to get drinks at the bar. For me, it was a sea of straight women cheering on a sash-wearing bride-to-be and refusing to share space on one of the dance floors on which I had spent so much time growing comfortable with my own identity. Worse, the racial segregation was unmistakable: Black and brown attendees were packed in a smaller upstairs lounge that was pumping out hip-hop hits, while the main floor was predominantly white, with a DJ spinning mostly dance/techno pop music.
“There goes the neighborhood,” I thought as the last illusion I had of this part of the city as an inclusive yet uniquely gay space dissolved before my eyes.
Over the past few years, the “death of the Gayborhood” — a phrase once uttered in mock horror whenever a favorite hangout changed hands or a well-known institution screwed up — has taken on an air of inevitability. The area’s legendary staples, 12th Street Gym and More Than Just Ice Cream, are no more. Two popular Gayborhood bars, Venture Inn and ICandy, have closed down, and Voyeur and Woody’s have tried to broaden their customer base by hosting bachelorette parties, exotic male revue shows for women, and even NFL watch parties. Mazzoni, the city’s leading LGBTQ health-care center, relocated and lost its executive director and senior management amid staff turmoil. Franny Price, the veteran producer of Philly Pride — one of the country’s largest annual gay celebrations — is stepping down after more than 25 years, with no successor in sight.
Coloring all of this loss are a host of gentrification and diversity issues with which the city’s LGBTQ community has only recently begun to grapple. Yet in the wider Philadelphia culture, LGBTQ representation and acceptance are at an all-time high. We saw this in the political arena in 2018, when two openly gay black candidates, Malcolm Kenyatta and Alex Deering, competed for a state House seat in the 181st District — a section of North Philadelphia that’s both geographically and economically distant from the Gayborhood. (Kenyatta would go on to win, joining Gayborhood-area Representative Brian Sims as the state’s only two openly gay legislators.) Then, in 2019, five openly LGBTQ candidates ran in the City Council primary.
Citywide, LGBTQ visibility is similarly increasing in the cultural realm: Large-scale LGBTQ-themed events have moved beyond the traditional Pride weekend in June and Outfest in October, and many former Gayborhood event producers and performers are booking venues throughout the city. For many Philadelphians, the Gayborhood is no longer the sole place for an LGBTQ experience, but just another option in a growing field of inclusive alternatives.
During this 50th anniversary year of the Stonewall riots in New York, which brought the gay rights movement in the U.S. to mainstream attention, members of Philly’s LGBTQ community are reflecting — some wistfully, some critically — on what the Gayborhood means today, and wondering whether there’s really anything left to be lost by venturing outside the neighborhood’s now-fading rainbow-painted crosswalks.