Hey Boomers, What’s Up With the Gay Ghetto?
Dear Hank:
Five years ago, I moved to West Hollywood, probably the gayest city on earth, from Dodge City in Kansas, where I grew up. I’m 32 and I finally feel like I’ve found my home. Guys here can hold hands walking on the sidewalks. There are lots of gay bars. Before the pandemic, the city celebrated Gay Pride with a huge parade and festival every summer. I don’t have a boyfriend, but in West Hollywood, I’ve got three or four gay bros my age who I hang with.
So I love WeHo, but one thing that troubles me and my bros is we feel like it’s sort of stuck in the past. One of my friends calls it “the Gay Ghetto.” The older gay guys we know are white men who hate lesbians. They bitch about bars welcoming women as well as men. They’re against the city changing that rainbow crosswalk to include colors representing trans people. And they call the gay bar area “Boystown”! Hell, those Boomers haven’t been “boys” for decades.
I know the gay Boomers are older than me and my bros. But my question is: “Are they ever going to grow up?” We gay guys like to call ourselves “progressive.” But how can you call yourself progressive if you’re stuck in the past and don’t move forward?
Dodge City Dude
Dude!
This Boomer is a few decades older than you, but he sees things the way you and your bros do.
I lived in West Hollywood for 10 years (now back in New York City.) Like you, I loved WeHo (and still do.) When I moved there, I totally bought the idea that it was a “progressive” city where everyone was welcome and treated equally. I spent nine of those years as a journalist, digging into the dirt and finding what was under it, and getting to know a wide range of West Hollywood people.
What I learned confirmed the wisdom of what one of my favorite newspaper editors told me: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out!”
West Hollywood isn’t so progressive. And if you’re gay and want to live there, it’s not that welcoming unless you’re a white man who can afford to pay at least $2,000 a month for rent. If you’re looking for a sugar daddy, you’ll need to have a six-pack — above your belt, not in your refrigerator.
The city is home to members of the Log Cabin Republicans, those white gay Trumpsters who every year hold a number of events at “Boystown” bars. But the ghetto issues cross all political boundaries. For example, over the years I’ve watched the Abbey, one of the country’s best-known gay bars, come under attack for welcoming women. I’ve seen gay boomers mourn the closing of old gay bars and gay stores (I mean, you can buy Nasty Pig jocks and poppers online these days!)
Many of the gay Boomers I got to know have only negative things to say about lesbians, if not women in general. One of West Hollywood’s new City Council members is a lesbian, and she’s been criticized by several gay Boomers who don’t like her stands on progressive issues like transgender rights and labor unions. Those gay Boomers also complained about the George Floyd protests in West Hollywood, and object to putting a Metro subway station in West Hollywood (because that will make it easier for Latino and Black people to come into the city.) Yet they denounce anyone who suggests there’s even a tinge of racism in WeHo. As “proof” that he isn’t racist, one of WeHo’s most prominent popper vendors told me that the woman he loved most in his life was Black. She was his nanny, he said. And they let her sleep in the basement!
Those Boomers will continue to age, but they aren’t going to change. However, West Hollywood is slowly evolving. In my last few years there I began to see a change in the culture evidenced by those Gen Xers and Millennials who publicly embraced and socialized with their female (and trans) friends. And this past November there was a major change in the City Council, with the two longest-serving gay male Council members voted out and replaced by a lesbian and a young gay male feminist.
Maybe you and your friends should get more involved in West Hollywood to steer the city you love in the right direction. Chicago, whose “Boystown” was the first gay neighborhood to carry that name, dropped it last year. So how about starting with a campaign to get West Hollywood to officially rename Boystown if not drop it?
Gramps Town? Dotard District? Boomer Block? They all have a nice ring.
Your Boomer Hank
Questions you can’t bring yourself to ask your gay friends and neighbors? Or maybe you’re just queer and befuddled. Send them to Hank@AskAGay.net. (Warning: The answers will be factually correct, but might not be politically correct)
