Montreal has a new Mayor-and for the first time in 375 years it is a woman

[TownsendPLocke]

Valérie Plante  seeems like a very nice progressive Québécoise and she comes in with a lot of promises to fix Montreal (including updating the Metro system- Yay!) there is another side to her as well. She wants to make Montreal more "Family friendly"  

Some regular posters here and at the "other site" bemoan the decline of St. Catherine street in the Village from the glory days of the 90's. While I do miss those times very much i fear we will never see them again. That era has passed and many Gay businesses, struggling to survive, have had to abandon marketing solely to Gay men or face going out of business.  

This of course includes Gay bars and (of special interest to the participants of this site) the Gay bars that have male strippers. You are not going to find strip clubs (male or female) in nice  shiny  clean gentrified neighborhoods. So while St. Cat's is not the lovely street many of us falsely remember (It always had VERY rough edges which that neighborhood is historically famous for  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_Village,_Montreal ) I will take that over a sterilized "nice" neighborhood any day! 

 

[MsAnn]

Thanks for the information. West Hollywood went through a similar transformation some 20 years ago. Many gay residences fought the changes, myself included, but in the end, your statement is very correct, many gay business can't survive off just a gay population. I'm am seeing the same thing happening in North Beach now in FTL. Many gay hotels that wanted to be exclusively for the gay community, found it increasing difficult to survive, part of that was that as a community we are changing. We are diversifying and melting into to population as a whole. Many of my friends don't always want to stay at a gay resort, go on gay cruises or dine in exclusively gay areas. 

Looking back at West Hollywood, in my opinion, the area is better for it. We still have our clubs, and restaurants and stores, but we are part of a larger community. I can only hope that St. Cat's accomplishes the same thing. 

Change is never easy. So fingers crossed that you will see a more vibrant, exciting and diverse neighborhood in Montreal, along with a few favs left in the mix...

[AdamSmith]

Manhattan of course went through its own version of this. As the Village gentrified -- and as the whole city became more or less wholly safe from crime, thanks first to Dinkins, then Guiliani and Bloomberg -- Hell's Kitchen where I lived 2010-2011 became the new 'gay' neighborhood. But it was a starched and sterile and 'in-group' place, much like the Boston I had just fled from. I still far preferred the West Village bars, and then later those up north in Washington/Inwood.