Dividing the winners into two categories - one for the United States and one for Global winners - the website's editors have selected 20 gay and gay-friendly bars from around the world to be on the 2006 winner's list. 24-7PressRelease/ - TORONTO, CANADA, today released its first annual list of winners for World's Best Gay Bars. Jean-Baptiste Bellamy is a London, the Internet's number one resource for news, reviews and information on gay bars worldwide has chosen the winners for its first annual World's Best Gay Bars. Call me “vintage youth.” I’ve been around long enough to party through the good times and the bad, but now I’m sitting here asking myself: Where is everyone? I feel like we need to catch a few real-life gay guys and make them wear those electronic devices used for tracking wildlife so we can see where it is they go and live. The mystery of where everyone went is just like the question baffling cosmologists who can’t figure out where the missing 96 per cent of the mass of the universe is. I could dredge up a name or two of some old relics of the past, but they’re long forgotten historical figures of a different era and generation. I can’t name a single gay activist in London, let alone a prominent one. Nothing but players and liars.Įxcept for Pride every year, which seems to be increasingly “friends” of the gay community coming out to show their support, there is no evidence that a gay community exists at all. Ask anyone who uses the internet locally to meet guys and they will tell you the same thing - it’s a total bust. The same men are on all the different sites and seldom does a new profile appear and he’ll probably have the same experience that everyone else does, which is to say you’re wasting your time. Go on the gay sites at any given moment and you will find the same small group of men time and time again. If you ask anyone what happened, they will reflexively say the internet has taken over the gay sex business and that’s where you’ll find everyone. But in these place, too, no one is around. Books have been written about the history of gay men cruising public spaces where no one expects them to be. Other places where men have historically gone to meet men are parks and washrooms.
It, too, is mostly older guys who are aging out of the game and not being replaced by a new generation. The local bathhouse, which has discreetly existed here for more than 40 years, is dying a slow death. It was the same faces every weekend, and there were barely enough of them to fill half the room. It was dead every night except Friday and Saturday, and upon walking in you could easily mistake the place for a seniors’ recreation centre. The last gay bar that just closed was the total opposite. You’ll be hard pressed to find older people, and they certainly don’t fit in. One thing you’ll notice very fast is that the place is primarily populated by young people, however they identify themselves. There are some gay guys, straight and lesbian women, and smattering of opportunistic straight men taking advantage of less competition and prowling after the straight women. Open only three nights a week, it has a little bit of everything. The one place you might be able to argue that there’s a half-gay bar is the “alternative” dance bar downtown. It was not unusual for there to be as many as three gay bars operating at one time. The million dollar question is: where have all the gay men gone?įor as long as I can remember, despite our rocky and often controversial history, we have always had a vibrant gay community, even if it was largely out of sight. What could I possibly be talking about, you ask? What I’m talking about is a mystery to me as well. The herd has been thinning for years and is probably now past that critical number where it is not possible to recover. The gay man in London has been an endangered species for some time. London’s last gay bar recently closed, bringing the gay community here one step closer to extinction. Manage Print Subscription / Tax Receipt.