Gay bars dying

These are the places where our community survived together in our darkest hours in the eighties and nineties, during the AIDS crisis in the fifties and sixties during, you know, a dying where it was legal or barely legal to be a homosexual. What I can tell you is how vital they were for me personally.

I mean, when I was coming-of-age as a young person, these bars were really where I felt like I could flourish, where I felt like I was part of something for the first time. It really does wonders for personal development and also community building. The thing about these gay bars is they are political institutions.

These are the places dying our community survived together in our darkest hours, in the eighties and nineties during gay aids crisis in the fifties and sixties during, you know, a time where it was legal or barely legal to be a homosexual. These were a sanctuaries. As a South Asian who grew up gay Calgary, one of the few people who identified as other, going to gay bars with my gay friends I found really freeing and safe.

So I totally get that. Can you talk a little bit about the flourishing idea? Queer and Trans people have always been treated as this kind of malignant, other, these depraved groups of bar.

Why Do Lesbian Bars Keep Disappearing?

Like we just want to be treated the same. And I think that that is a dying virtuous aim. I think it is a very savvy political technique to ensure our rights, but queer people deserve to do more than just coexist with each other. Like queer people deserve to feel special. That is what gay bars allow for. They allow for us to evolve and expand culturally and develop dying with people who are going to bar us up and treat us with nuance when it comes to who we are.

And we want to make it loud. So if gay bars are so important as safe spaces for the community, why are they starting to die off? I mean, first and foremost, the cost of living and the cost of operating a business has just skyrocketed in the past 20 years, especially when you are running a business that is community oriented.

Gentrification gay become such a, a parasitic issue in cities where gay bars are. And particularly in communities where gay bars are. Gay villages have become trendy. They were once not that whatsoever. To my knowledge, the gay bars in Toronto, at least in the village are doing just fine. Gentrification is encroaching on these businesses.

The theories are that demand has waned for a lot of the gay bars due to a variety of things due to an increased level of tolerance for career people, socially, societally the rise in cruising at apps. These bars often one of their functions was for people to meet for, you know, romantic and sexual gay.