Gay Village - History of The Gay Village

History of The Gay Village

The first gay village was established in Berlin in the 1920s and in Amsterdam in the 1950s. Prior to the 1960s and '70s, specialized gay communities did not exist as such outside Berlin and Amsterdam; bars were usually where gay social networks developed, and they were located in certain urban areas where police zoning would implicitly allow so-called "deviant entertainment" under close surveillance. In New York, for example, the congregation of gay men had not been illegal since 1965; however, no openly gay bar had been granted a license to serve alcohol. The police raid of a private gay club called the Stonewall Inn on June 27, 1969, led to a series of minor disturbances in the neighborhood of the bar over the course of the subsequent three days involving more than 1,000 people. Stonewall managed to change not only the profile of the gay community but the dynamic within the community itself. This, along with several other similar incidents, precipitated the appearance of gay ghettos throughout North America, as spatial organization shifted from bars and street-cruising to specific neighbourhoods. This transition "from the bars to the streets, from nightlife to daytime, from 'sexual deviance' to an alternative lifestyle" was the critical moment in the development of the gay community.

In the early years of the 2000s, a few community members of the Toronto Gay Village created an online community called Gay-Villager.com. This resource connects gay villagers from all over, to provide information for arts, travel, business, gay counseling, legal services, etc., which provides a safe and gay friendly environment for members of the gay community.