[URBAN NOTE] "No, little chickens, the sky is not falling on Toronto's gay Village"

[rfmcdonald]

In Daily Xtra, Rob Salerno is critical of the iea that Church and Wellesley is dying as a distinctly gay neighbourhood. I am distinctly less than convinced. Even if Church and Wellesley persists as a distinct hub, the actual gay resident population is in freefall. The demographics of the Danforth, a famously Greek neighbourhood, have evolved to the point where Greek-Canadians make up a low single-digit percentage of the population, as Greek-Canadians suburbanize. The continued presence of new non-heterosexual people, as opposed to the near-end of immigration by ethnic Greeks, is an advantage for the Village, but is it enough of one?

When assembling a death of the gay Village story, the journalist should be sure to lament the growing acceptance of gays throughout the city and how we’re no longer forced to associate solely with each other. The journalist should take care to use the term “sky-high” to describe rent throughout the neighbourhood, and be sure to blame gentrification for bringing only wealthy gays to the neighbourhood . . . and blame the wealthy gays who move out. The journalist shouldn’t say this directly, but wealth, marriage and having children should be implied to be vices when related to gay people.

The journalist should note each closed or relocated business on Church Street as evidence that gay people don’t support the neighbourhood, whether that business catered to LGBT people or not, or if its business fundamentals made any sense in the first place. All new businesses should be ignored — unless they’re franchises, in which case they’re evidence of the malignant mainstreaming of gay.

[. . .]

Despite all evidence that the Village continues to function like just about any other neighbourhood in the city, the “Death of the Village” story persists as a semi-regular feature — and not just in Toronto — because it tends to reinforce ideas that certain straight audiences and editors already have about gays. “It’s ok to dislike gay people and their culture because they don’t even like each other,” and “the gay struggle is over so we can all go back to ignoring them.”

But all of that is bullshit.

The 519, Toronto’s LGBT community centre in the Village, remains the most important service provider for a diverse community of LGBT people from across the region. Last year alone, The 519 served more than 1,200 queer refugees who were finding their place in a new city, and its services for trans people are becoming a huge part of its programming. Buddies in Bad Times programs an incredibly diverse season of plays every year and still finds time and space for radical, queer, afterhours events. Queer sports and rec leagues are well over capacity. The clubs and bars on the strip are packed all the time — and during the day, so are the cafés. The baths aren’t hurting either.