Map: Most gay-friendly neighborhoods of Pittsburgh (construction, live, shop)

[Hopes]

Originally Posted by Uptown kid

How are there dots in the abondond St. Clair Village? Was this from the 2010 census?

The article says the dots aren't placed at specific addresses but randomly within a census block.

[FreightTrainRunning]

Originally Posted by Hopes

The article says the dots aren't placed at specific addresses but randomly within a census block.

Yeah, that was kind of a confusing decision on their part. It works well when you're zoomed all the way out but when you zoom in, it make it look like a dot is at a specific address.

[youngabe]

Originally Posted by jay5835

You both realize, don't you, that the only reason there's never been a gay "ghetto" here is because there was never a critical mass of gay people? Pittsburgh was a place gay people left, not one they moved to. It's not the mark of superiority you babygays position it as.

I'm not entirely sure how to reply to this. I personally prefer having establishments mixed into several neighborhoods, regardless of what made it come to be. Would you rather have one single street in the city with gay establishments and then nothing else in the entire city?

And "babygays" is a new one to me. I didn't know there was much of a hierarchy...

[Geeo]

It just seems that the segregated neighborhoods of yore in some cities are of a time gone past. The young people I know these days don't see being gay as something that separates them from friends and family, or as something that they have to go to another city for. Gay and straight people do a lot of things together, and it's amazing how parents and siblings are supporting their gay kids.

It's fun to go to Toronto and see Church Street, but who would really want to live in all that constantly? I'd feel cut off from the the larger world.

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by Geeo

and it's amazing how parents and siblings are supporting their gay kids.

Wish it was this way for all of us. Having grown up in the "Rural T" of PA really sucked.

[Geeo]

Wasn't that way for me, either, but it's normal for them now after all these years. I was thinking of the younger parents I know, those in their 20s and 30s and how they are raising their kids. A co-worker recently took her seven year-old to her brother's wedding and there were other kids and family there. I think people realize that every family has a gay brother, sister, aunt, or uncle, or whatever.

[ElijahAstin]

Originally Posted by Geeo

It just seems that the segregated neighborhoods of yore in some cities are of a time gone past. The young people I know these days don't see being gay as something that separates them from friends and family, or as something that they have to go to another city for. Gay and straight people do a lot of things together, and it's amazing how parents and siblings are supporting their gay kids.

It's fun to go to Toronto and see Church Street, but who would really want to live in all that constantly? I'd feel cut off from the the larger world.

I can completely understand why some LGBT people in Pittsburgh would like a "gayborhood."

There's a difference between wanting to live in a segregated neighborhood and wanting to live in a place where people of your shared background form a sufficient critical mass to make it culturally distinct. Squirrel Hill is a prime example, in that while it has longstanding been a distinctively Jewish neighborhood, the Jewish population (which has perpetually hovered around 40%) was never large enough to make it homogeneous or exclusive. Nor has it ever been concentrated to the point of excluding other neighborhoods having smaller, but still significant, populations (even though a surprising number of people are unaware of that fact).

[I_Like_Spam]

Originally Posted by SteelCityRising

This is correct to an extent. Troll around long enough reading CraigsList ads, and you'll notice a very high proportion of them are posted by "straight" guys looking to "experiment" with other "straight" guys.

Not terribly surprising from the little knowledge I picked up about the Pittsburgh gay community during my years of cab driving.

In Pittsburgh, the gay experience seems to be more about the sexual aspects of it instead of the socio-political parts of the GLBTQQIA movement.

[ferraris]

Originally Posted by I_Like_Spam

Not terribly surprising from the little knowledge I picked up about the Pittsburgh gay community during my years of cab driving.

In Pittsburgh, the gay experience seems to be more about the sexual aspects of it instead of the socio-political parts of the GLBTQQIA movement.

Wouldn't you have a biased sample through cab driving? It seems like it would mostly be people going to bars and clubs, so having the physical aspects on their mind during the cab ride seems like something you'd expect .

[Agbor]

In Pittsburgh, the bars and clubs gay crowd seemed separate from the gay socio-politico crowd, the socio-politico crowd
would often try to recruit from the bars with little success, they would set up a table with socio-political organizational information in the bars which would remain untouched during the evening..

I remember the bars in Pttsburgh in the 1980s NEVER had windows and were NON-discript...It seemed all the hot-good-looking
people were in the bars and the not so hot and built ones were in the socio-politico crowd..

When I went to D.C. and NYC, I noticed the gay bars had windows and were non nondescript..so I think Pittsburgh evolved
differently as far as gay things were concerned..

In Pittsburgh, I think you had the bar social circles and the organizational social circles and just various social circles of gay
people..and people who met people on an individual basis phone personals etc..