The Demise of the Gay Neighborhood

Matt Katz writes about the decline of gayborhoods, and his local one in particular, Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C.

"Today, some of the gayborhood's uniqueness and liveability remains, but the gayborhood-ness is harder to find. There are now zero gay book stores in Dupont. The day before the original, Lambda Rising, closed in January, I walked through the crowded store and found a 1976 book titled, simply, The Homosexuals, in which some of the subjects used pseudonyms. I was standing in a spot where 36 years ago, nothing less than liberation happened. Now, the revolution was over."