Washington DC’s gays are migrating away from increasingly gentrified gay ghetto Dupont Circle, which leaves the neighborhood wondering “We’re here, we’re what?” [Washington Business Journal]
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Similar migration happened from the Village to SoHo to Chelsea in NYC
or in Minneapolis from Loring Park to Uptown.
We’re a fickle population,and some of us moving doesn’t kill our original settlements, we just branch out farther and farther. Besides we already re-decorated the original ghettos 500 times, we needed new horizons.
Qjersey
it’s economics, NOT being fickle.
The queers and other bohemes move in and lo and behold a few years later the next generation can’t afford the neighborhood, so they go somewhere else. In NYC you can literally trace it…the West Village spread to the east and south and to the north into Chelsea, now Chelsea is ridiculous, so new people are moving in a bit farther up on Hell’s Kitchen. But we are running out of neighborhoods. Even downtown Jersey City has become too expensive and the queers that live there are getting priced out.
SuperCat
Hehehe, I had to look up Gentrification to understand what that article ment.
l
Could it also be the ghetto has outlived its usefulness. You can find out gay people just about anywhere now.
John
I’m a DC native but live in the Midwest now. I was recently in DC on business and spent Saturday evening in Dupont. I was shocked, frankly. It was fairly dead. One legendary club was closed. Having also spent several years in SF, I’d move back there before considering the DC area.
mike hawk
In New York, Hells Kitchen is starting to get pricey now and the *gays* are moving even further north to places like Morningside Heights, Manhattanville, West Harlem, Hamilton Heights.
In San Francisco the *gays* are even moving out of the Castro and to places like Glen Park.
Rob
i’ve lived in DC since 1985 and at one time, Dupont Circle was the “gay” area in the city. But after several years, the strollers started appearing, “Ann Taylor” stores started popping up, and the popular bars in the area shutdown. The gays started moving towards Logan Circle and now that the area has been transformed from a riot-ravaged neighborhood to pricy condos, homes, and gay bars, the strollers are invading this area now too and the gay bars are becoming straighter and straighter. Movement is now further east into Shaw and along 7th-9th Streets … it’s not that we can no longer afford the area … it’s that we’re now felt like the outsiders when the breeders start moving in.
emb
It’s a pretty typical circle: artists, bohemians, and homos move into an undesirable area and make it cool and appealing; straight yuppies move there because it’s where the interesting shops and restaurants are, and they like being where the cool, hip, edgy folk live. Home values go up and rents rise beyond the means of the niche shops (like gay-oriented ones), and they start failing or moving out, being replaced by businesses that can afford the new rent–Ann Taylor and chain restaurants. Then the straight yuppies start spawning, and get all huffy about how their precious offspring are being exposed to pictures of naked men in the remaining gay shop windows, and how the gay bars are keeping little poopsie awake at night. Because the straights now outnumber the gays, the local governments respond with unpleasant zoning requirements, and that’s the end of the gayborhood.
I was in Dupont Circle about 8 years ago, and there were flyers posted in storefronts and on lampposts decrying the noisy gay bars, from “Families to Save Our Neighborhood” or something.
It’s happening to Boystown in Chicago, too.
Which all raises the interesting question of whether or not gay ghettos are desirable at all. I tend to think they are, as nice little incubators for homos to enjoy before they get all assimilated and domesticized, but economics often trumps everything.
GoodBuddy
I live in Washington and go to the Dupont Circle several times a week for various meetings. They just did a major renovation on P Street (which intersects Dupont Circle), and the owners there have gotten enormous increases in their property tax bills which is causing the smaller, more interesting businesses out, to be replaced by chain stores. Plus a lot of straight women have moved to the area, bringing their boyfriends with them. Fifteen years ago if you saw a cute guy on the street he was almost surely gay – now he is more likely to be straight. Fortunately they are not narrow.
Mr C
Actually this is happening all over. SF, Chicago, NY,Philly, and now DC. There was an article in the NY Times when it was happening in SF. The fact is Gays want to fit in regular society so they are now branching into “regualar” society neighborhoods. I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing.
Gay neighbornoods have become too entirely expensive to live in.