Gay Bars are Dissapearing

As found on The New Gay :

A friend of mine who lives in California was telling me about how gay bars are closing in his area. The conversation reminded me of this article about the same phenomenon, only it’s taking place in Boston—a city that has lost 9 of its 16 gay bars in the past 15 years. At first I figured this was a postitive sign, but now I’m not so sure.

(new) Gay people becoming less compelled to submit to the norms of mainstream gay culture, and are therefore free to define themselves in myriad ways and willing to socialize among an expanded set of venues, so it’s only natural that gay bars would become less important to the community as a whole. However, what seems to be happening is more complex than just a large chunk of gay people saying “peace out” and deciding that they want to party to different music or simply meet in a setting more amenable to their varied tastes.

In Boston, the loss is felt not only by gay bars but by small gay businesses and non-gay businesses that develop a sense of community, regardless of culture:

As these businesses disappear from Boston streets, they're usually replaced by more profitable land uses, such as office towers and high-end restaurants. The result is a variant of the "tragedy of the commons": Hotels, condo complexes, and other upscale businesses market themselves as part of a vibrant city, but they can also make it more difficult to maintain that vibrancy. (The ground floors of new office and housing buildings are often reserved for retail use, but CVS and other chain stores usually snap up the space.) These high-end businesses attract new residents and consumers to urban neighborhoods, but when they aren't balanced by other types of economic activity, the result can be a sterile streetscape rather than a diverse ecosystem.

While DC has lost a few historic and culturally prominant gay bars due to business development (SE clubs displaced by the baseball stadium), we've actually added a few bars to replace them in the last couple of years (BeBar/Nellie's/Town), so while there are still many who are upset by the sense of lost community that these venues provided, i'm not sure if DC is suffering from a lack of vibrancy in its gay community. However, I am concerned about losing more neighborhood spaces to sterile McStreetscapes that push out affordable housing and the kinds of venues that appeal to non mainstream gay crowds that don't want a few prominent gay bars to be their only option on a weekend. I'm nervously waiting for more quaint restaurants, performance spaces, and interesting bars to disappear under the wave of gentrification that continues to break across various parts of the city.

Another point made in the article is that the loss of the gay bars also seems to homogenize our outward display of identity:

You can see the change for the worse in the city's annual Gay Pride celebration. Years ago, the highlights of the parade were the outrageous parade floats, featuring drag queens and go-go boys, sponsored by gay bars. Now those delightfully pointless displays are outnumbered by contingents of waving employees from banks and utility companies in matching T-shirts. It's a positive development that so many people are out at work, to be sure, but the parade has become a lot less fun for gay and straight spectators alike.

This point seems to imply that without gay bars, gay people won't have an outlet or a generator for the sexual babylon, image first, sense of frivolous play that has come to define us. Instead, we will have parades that express gay people as something more than just a carnival act or a burlesque show–we'll be boring adults defined mainly by their jobs, just like straight people. Maybe Peter Pan is growing up and will become a bit more reflective and substantial as a human being, but maybe a little less magical as well. Is outgrowing "fabulousness" a byproduct of developing an identity that isn't rooted in bar culture, or is this trait inherent in our nature? If becoming boring is one of the byproducts, is it worth it? How can we maintain a balance of both?