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Gayborhood: Difference between revisions
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Where [[Cast Full of Gay|everyone really is gay]]. It's the part of a major city that a good portion of its GLBT community calls home. Rainbow flags hang from the streetlights, and the streets are lined with [[Where Everybody Knows Your Flame|gay bars]], boutiques, trendy cafes, and housing you probably can't afford. You're likely to run into any of the [[Queer As Tropes]] archetypes and their [[Fag Hag|friends]], see two men hold hands without fear of retribution, and meet [[Butch Lesbian|butch lesbians]] and [[Manly Gay|manly gays]] who'll beat the ass of anyone who dares try.
The Gayborhood is often an upscale district, feeding the stereotype that all gay people have money out the yinyang. [[The Fundamentalist|Religious fundamentalists]] often preach about the evils of "''that'' part of town," seeing it as a modern-day [[The Bible|Sodom and Gomorrah]], where prostitution and drug abuse run rampant, [[Depraved Homosexual|depraved homosexuals]] have bare buttsecks out of seedy bathhouses, and where one can't so much as bend over to pick up change without having a [[Leather Man]] on top of him like white on rice (how they know all of this is [[You Are What You Hate|a different story]]).
The more touristy gayborhoods are often known as "gay meccas," as in, someplace every gay person (...who makes enough money to leisurely travel and has enough interest in the scene) should visit at least once. These areas might be separate from a big city, and quite affluent due to the tourism. Stories based here tend to feed stereotypes that gay people (particularly the men) do nothing but lounge around pools and have sex all day.
Stories with a predominantly-gay cast are often based in this setting. [[The Twink|Twinks]] in the midst of their [[Coming Out Story]] will visit the bars here on their first taste of the night life. Straight characters who come here for the first time are often in a state of wonder or paranoia towards the locals. The Gayborhood will often [[SoCalization|visually resemble San Francisco's world-famous Castro District]], even if no other part of the city has a streetcar (and the famous cable cars don't actually run [[Reality Is Unrealistic|anywhere near the Castro]]). However, [[wikipedia:Gay village|real-life gayborhoods]] are as diverse as the cities they're based in.
{{examples}}
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* Liberty Avenue in ''[[Queer as Folk]]'', though this is not [[Truth in Television]] for [[Pittsburgh]] in [[Real Life]].
** And Manchester's Canal Street ([[Truth in Television]] - more than a few wags have tried to scrape the C off) in the UK original version.
* [[
* Everyone in LA on ''[[The L Word]]'' seems to be gay, bisexual, or transgender - at least the people the cast intervene with. Nevermind the fact that the cafe they all hang out at is a gay cafe.
* Similar to the above example, the [[Los Angeles]] of the ''[[Noah's Arc]]'' universe is chock full of gay men. The vast majority of anyone the cast interacts with is gay.
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== [[Video Games]] ==
* ''[[Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas]]'' has the Queens district in San Fierro, based on the Castro and San Francisco, respectively. It was a pleasant surprise to see the area treated with no more derision than usual for GTA. That is, there's no "Rampage" mission and it's treated as another one of the three cities' cultural districts. Still, there's not much to actually ''do'' there besides play a [[Rhythm Game]] in [[Where Everybody Knows Your Flame|Gaydar Station]].
** On the other hand, ''Queens'' looks nothing like Castro Valley, a notable omission considering how many recognizable landmarks from San Francisco are included in San Fierro. Hashbury, for example, nails the look and feel of the Haight Ashbury to the T.
*** A bit of a stealth joke is the street layout. None of the streets in Queens is completely straight, it's all curves and turns.
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* [[Toronto]] has Church Street, so called because it has [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|a big church on it]]. St. Michael's Cathedral is probably the origin of the name, though there are also a couple other large ones in the area. Strangely enough, not Queen Street ([[Zero Punctuation|lame joke]]). While the two do intersect, the Gay Village peters out around that area and it gets kinda ghetto.
** Although a different part of Queen Street (Queen West) is starting to be called "Queer West".
* [[Montreal]]'s Gay Village is centered on the eastern part of the Rue Sainte-Catherine, which is the main artery through Downtown. Montreal is actually really weird in this respect, because not only is the gay village on the main drag near the heart of Downtown, but so are a shit-ton of (straight) strip clubs.
* Ottawa's "Old Ottawa South"<ref>The name refers to where the border used to be before Ottawa was merged with many of its suburbs.</ref>, most notably but not exclusively along the stretch of Bank Street that runs through the area.
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* As noted in the description, [[San Francisco]]'s Castro District. Famous enough that it often gets conflated with the entire city in popular culture; many people consider all of San Francisco to be America's gayborhood.
** As a bit of [[Truth in Television]] it really is rather upscale these days and you probably can't afford to live there. No matter who you fancy.
** Gentrification, combined with the success of the gay rights movement, have led to this trope dying out in the Bay Area. Since gay people aren't hiding any more, there's no need to live in a special part of town for protection or to find partners. Bay Area news reports are full of how gay-oriented businesses in the Castro are dying, and how high-class clubs are causing long time residents to be angry at the drunks hanging around Sunday at noon.
* Provincetown (for the boys) and Northampton (for the girls), Massachusetts. Boston also has the South End (which, incidentally, should never be confused with [[Southies|South Boston]] if you value your life).
** P-town, ironically, is where [[The Fundamentalist|the Pilgrims]] arrived in America.
* [[Los Angeles]]' West Hollywood (amusingly attempting to brand itself as "WeHo"). Silver Lake also contains elements of this.
** Palm Springs, out in the desert, is another example, serving as a retreat for gay Angelenos the same way Provincetown serves gay Bostonians.
* [[Cleveland Rocks|Cleveland]]'s Detroit Ave. and Clifton Blvd. (they run parallel), though the entire West Side where they're located is much more gay-friendly than the East.
** The suburbs Lakewood (in the west) and Cleveland Heights (in the east) are also known for their gay populaces, with Cleveland Heights being the first city in the US to adopt a voter-approved domestic partner registry.
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* San Diego has Hillcrest. In recent years, gentrification and shifting demographics have also expanded the gay-village boundaries into adjacent neighborhoods, North Park and University Heights in particular.
* Asbury Park, [[Joisey|New Jersey]] is this for the Jersey Shore. To think that [[Bruce Springsteen|the Boss]] is actually ''from'' there...
* A section of Buffalo, New York, is supportive of the LGBT community, and the gay community itself is rather sizable.
* Dallas, TX has Oaklawn as its main gay neighborhood, with the Bishop Arts district rapidly becoming a secondary one.
* Capitol Hill and Wallingford in [[Seattle]] have the largest concentrations, though gentrification on the former is causing spillover into the Central District.
* The Montrose district of Houston, Texas.
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=== Elsewhere ===
* Shinjuku Nichoume in [[Tokyo]].
* Tel-Aviv is, to some extent, trying to market itself as such, and it is indeed one of the most gay friendly parts of Israel, if not the most friendly (this, of course, exludes the poorer parts of Tel-Aviv, namely southern Tel-Aviv).
{{reflist}}
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