Another of my journal articles on San Francisco gay bars appears in the current edition of Urban Studies. My very simple point is not all gay neighborhoods are (or were) the same. The point was so simple it languished in 4 journals for 7 years, going through 9 revisions. But now it’s out – complete with maps thanks to Amy Roust!
Reductionist conceptions of gay nightlife and the neighbourhoods they anchor have obscured their diversity amid claims of gentrification or displacement. The divergent trajectories of San Francisco’s three gay bar districts present a natural experiment to specify the relationship between gay placemaking and urban processes. In 1999, each neighbourhood anchored distinct stylistic practices but by 2004, one had collapsed, another became stylistically mixed, while the youngest expanded and became homogenous. In that neighbourhood a particular gay style and mainstream cosmopolitanism converged, spatially institutionalising what queer theorists call ‘the new homonormativity’ comprising sexual discretion, mainstream political assimilation and boutique consumerism. Adherence to this particular gay style conferred spatial capital, allowing cosmopolitans, gay and straight, to literally ‘take place’ anywhere, while nonconformist gays lost their places. Contrary to popular and academic claims, not all gay places are associated with gentrification: homonormativity fostered gentrification from within, nonconformist gay nightlife fell victim to gentrification from without. This study thus contributes to a clearer relationship between gay men and urban revitalisation, nightlife economies, and the valuation of some forms of urban creativity and placemaking over others.
Greggor Mattson 
6 responses to “Article: Style and the Value of Gay Nightlife: Homonormative Placemaking in San Francisco”
[…] a much wider trend: bars for gay men are also closing at unprecedented rates, the product of a convergence between straight cosmopolitanism and (white) gay male tastes, increased social acceptance, geolocation-enabled smart phone apps and internet sites, and changing […]
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[…] in the world, lost its only full-time anchor for lesbian nightlife. Though gay bars have also seen a decline in numbers, there are still more than 30. In the past three years, Lesbian bars that were the last […]
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[…] is so special because of the rarity of gay bars for people of color, not to mention for women. In San Francisco I have discussed, for example, the only gay bar for African-Americans men closed in 2004. The only gay bar for Asian […]
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[…] gay and straight, I marked it as the end of a lesbian bar. As I’ve described in one of my academic articles, the only way to really know is by regularly going to a bar, and even then, a bar can […]
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[…] for a book about the changes in gay bars since 1997. It builds on my past work on shifts in the three gay neighborhoods of San Francisco between 1999 and 2014 that resulted in the decimation of Polk Street’s gay bars. I’ve […]
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[…] equally open, and many are not meant to be. Cities have never had as many queer female spaces as queer male spaces, and even in the heyday of lesbian bars in San Francisco there were only ever a handful to choose […]
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