OutInform: Houston Pride Guide 2015 Issue | Page 35

HOW TO PRESERVE SOME OF THE CULTURALLY IMPORTANT SPACES THAT
HAVE BEEN AT THE CENTER OF THE GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT?

CHICAGO

Spring Valley, Nev., according to a 2012 study by the University
of Washington's Amy Spring.

"It was like they were at a gay museum," joked James Davies, 61, who
has been a regular at Little Jim's for most of the 39 years it's been in
business. "They came to see if we fossilized."

Here in Chicago, Boystown and its adjacent neighborhood
account for about 12% of the city's self-identified samesex households, according to Census figures. It's the
highest concentration in Chicago, but Ghaziani says other
neighborhoods in the city and suburbs are catching up.

— At one of the oldest gay taverns in the
city's Boystown neighborhood, the regulars
were sharing a laugh over what they had seen the night before at their
watering hole: a gaggle of straight women.

Call it a sign of progress, or as University of British Columbia sociologist
Amin Ghaziani describes it, the "de-gaying" or "straightening" of
America's historically gay enclaves.
In the midst of 20 straight wins in federal courts for same-sex
marriage and polling that demonstrates Americans' growing
acceptance of LGBT people, scholars and demographers say
there are signs that the draw of the so-called gayborhood is
fading away.

Boystown still has a monument of rainbow pride pylons and
plaques honoring gay and lesbian pioneers along Halsted
Street, the main thoroughfare bisecting the neighborhood
that includes the nation's largest LGBT community center, a
bathhouse and plenty of gay bars and clubs.

Understanding the extent of the gay and lesbian migration
from gayborhoods with precision is difficult, since the
U.S. Census Bureau doesn't ask all individuals about their
sexuality. But the bureau does collect data on same-sex
couple households, providing the best, albeit incomplete,
account of the USA's LGBT population.
By that measure, the number of gay men who live in gay
enclaves nationwide has declined 8.1% while the number of
lesbians has dropped 13.6% over the last decade, Ghaziani
notes in his new book, There Goes the Gayborhood?
On its face, the changing demographics would suggest
progress, a sign that fewer gays and lesbians see the need
to envelop themselves in friendly enclaves. But the shift also
presents gay communities with a quandary: how to preserve
some of the culturally important spaces that have been at
the center of the gay rights movement over the last 50 years.
"We have to ask the question, 'What will happen to these safe
spaces in safer times?' " Ghaziani says.

MORE STROLLERS,
FEWER SEX SHOPS
The slow transformation that has caught the eyes of Ghaziani
and other sociologists and demographers is on full display
here in Boystown and in gay enclaves around the USA.
In Seattle, the historically gay-friendly Capitol Hill
neighborhood saw same-sex households dive by 23% from
2000 to 2012, while such households were on the rise
in nearly every other neighborhood in the city as well as
surrounding suburbs.
Some of the most rapid dispersal of gays and lesbians is
occurring in medium-size cities such as Tacoma, Wash., and

And Boystown, which proudly claims itself as the nation's first
municipally recognized gay neighborhood , soon will open one
of the USA's first affordable housing developments meant to
benefit the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
seniors.
But Halsted Street these days is filled with more strollers pushed
by straight couples who are drawn to the neighborhood's
proximity to the lakefront and an elementary school that is
regarded as one of the best in the city's public school system.
In a sign of changing tastes, Ghaziani notes that many of the
sex shops that dotted the neighborhood's landscape have
closed and been replaced by nail s