On June 12, 2016, a gunman walked into an Orlando, Florida, gay nightclub in the closing moments of its monthly Latin Night. As patrons raised their glasses in celebratory toasts and danced to the pulsating beats of reggaeton, the gunman opened fire, killing 49 and wounding 53 others in what officials considered at the time as the deadliest mass public shooting in American history (Ingraham 2016; Peralta 2016).
As the world mourned the senseless tragedy at Pulse Nightclub in the following days, LGBTQ+ people gathered in iconic gay neighborhoods to stand in solidarity with Orlando. In San Francisco, thousands of people “wav[ed] banners, brightly lit iPhones, and candles in plastic cups” at Harvey Milk Plaza in the Castro District, where under a giant rainbow flag, mourners chalked the victims’ names in bright colors on the sidewalk (Sernoffsky et al. 2016). Londoners filled Old Compton Street in Soho, bowing their heads in momentary silence before erupting in cheers as 49 balloons soared overhead. Chicago residents held vigils in Boystown and Andersonville, while Seattle’s LGBTQ+ communities mourned in Cal Anderson Park in Seattle’s Capitol Hill. Gay rights supporters in Rome returned to Gay Street hours following their Pride Parade. And in New York, thousands assembled outside the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, lighting candles and laying flowers outside the historic landmark. Across the street, people chalked the victims’ names along the brick walkways of Christopher Park.
These spontaneous expressions of grief do not reverse the well-established trends associated with the declining salience of iconic gay neighborhoods worldwide. The facts are undeniable. As LGBTQ+ people increasingly assimilate into mainstream culture, particularly in the United States, gay districts like the Castro have experienced a residential and institutional “de-gaying” (Brown-Saracino 2017; Ghaziani 2014; Hess and Bitterman 2021; Orne 2017). LGBTQ+ bars and other institutional anchors have disappeared in the wake of a digital queer culture embraced by new generations of LGBTQ+ communities, who reject the sexually exclusive communities of their forebears (Baldor 2019; Mattson 2020; Renninger 2018). Yet, the changing material and institutional cultures of gay neighborhoods have not diminished their importance as symbolic anchors of the LGBTQ+ community. Instead, many LGBTQ+ citizens continue to claim ownership over these areas as safe spaces that privilege the exploration of sexual and gender identities. Journalist Paul Brammer had only lived in New York City for one month when the Pulse tragedy occurred. Nevertheless, he, like so many LGBTQ+ New Yorkers that weekend, found himself seeking consolation outside the doors of Stonewall. “I didn’t realize until that June morning,” he reflected a year later, “when we blinked our eyes awake and were met with the aftermath of Pulse on our TV screens and news feeds, that queers had a built-in homing device. But we do, and mine kicked in” (Brammer 2017). As the community needed a place to mourn, LGBTQ+ communities reclaimed the places they associated with home and safety, reviving the traditions and practices aligned with their vision of authentic community. And, as quickly as these places materialized, mourners relinquished these spaces once they no longer needed them, allowing them to revert to their “post-gay” (Ghaziani 2011) or sexually assimilated state.
Drawing on the response from Washington, D.C.’s LGBTQ+ community after Pulse, this chapter explores how gay neighborhoods persist through a process known as place reactivation. Place reactivation refers to the act of temporarily reclaiming and reviving the dormant symbolic character of a place or locality. As gayborhoods “straighten,” their reputations as the center of LGBTQ+ life do not entirely disappear. Instead, cultural residues remain in existing institutions, available for various LGBTQ+ populations to activate their visions of authentic community when they need it. Highlighting place reactivation, this chapter argues that gay neighborhoods survive through everyday citizens who map gay culture, practices, and traditions onto these neighborhoods. Moreover, these practices reflect a long history of LGBTQ+ placemaking in cities, whereby gay urban inhabitants created and fostered community by activating and developing temporary places. Place reactivation also draws attention to LGBTQ+ populations of color, who draw on their localized placemaking strategies to claim recognition and challenge their exclusion from mainstream LGBTQ+ culture and politics (Greene 2014).
LGBTQ+ communities have always depended on reimagining and refashioning existing public spaces to render themselves visible. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, gay people transformed public parks, restrooms, and theaters into areas for easy sexual encounters, YMCAs into gay bathhouses, and cafeterias and family restaurants into nighttime gay venues. Starkly contrasting their daytime uses, the gay worlds emerging out of these spaces enabled a “highly sophisticated system of subcultural codes – codes of dress, speech and style – that enabled them to recognize one another and carry on intimate conversations whose coded meanings were unintelligible to potentially hostile people around them” (Chauncey 1994: 4). Such spaces were simultaneously fleeting and lasting. Existing in the shadows of the dominant culture, many gay worlds cultivated communities that existed within the moment, rising, and falling as the production of place also changed from “straight” to “gay.” Because of the risks associated with being openly gay in public, gay men and women often fostered relationships limited to the semi-private gay worlds that they occupied. Yet, the nightly reproduction of LGBTQ+ places facilitated continuity over time that supported and maintained vibrant gay subcultures. These gay worlds comprised complex spatial geographies. Gay men and women drew on gay worlds to navigate anti-gay hostility within the dominant culture and alleviate the social isolation often associated with the pre-Stonewall era (Ghaziani 2014). Subsequently, commercial establishments earned reputations that extended well outside the immediate communities they supported. In Washington, D.C., during the 1930s, for example, “daytime patrons” knew when to finish their meals before downtown restaurants transitioned into nightly gay gathering spots. Hotel guests knew which nights to avoid the hotel bars unless they wanted to face accusations of being homosexual (Beemyn 1994).
These days, the production of place within the gayborhoods and institutions that exists today may shift from one moment to the next, depending on the communities who occupy these spaces at a given time. The nightlife culture that now tends to dominate the cultural life of gay neighborhoods (see Ghaziani, Chapter 60 in this volume) can stand in stark contrast to the families who conduct their activities primarily in the daytime (e.g., grocery shopping, eating in local restaurants, taking children to school or the local parks). As a result, certain practices that once reflected the sexually charged culture of the gayborhood may no longer seem appropriate in the daytime. Businesses and shops must now tone down the sexually graphic window displays to accommodate the gaze of impressionable children (Kyles 2007). Equally, the “sexy communities” that rely on gayborhoods as sites of sexual exploration and experimentation might seem out of place during the daytime (Orne 2017). Similarly, as bars and other LGBTQ+ institutions continue to dwindle in cities worldwide, the remaining spaces accommodate a diversity of displaced LGBTQ+ populations. A gay bar may have one event for country-western enthusiasts one evening and another for the leather subculture the following evening (see Mattson, Chapter 63 in this volume). Each subculture distinguishes its use of the bar by imposing its cultural traditions and values onto the same space at different times. Pulse Nightclub reflects this form of placemaking. The tragedy took place on its monthly “Latin Night,” which attracted a different population of LGBTQ+ people from groups the nightclub attracted on other nights.
This chapter draws on ethnographic and interview data gathered from Washington, D.C.’s iconic gay neighborhood Dupont Circle and its surrounding gay areas in the days following the Pulse tragedy. I did not expect to cover the aftermath of one of the deadliest shootings in American history. I had returned to D.C. that summer to attend the Capital Pride Parade and Festival for an epilogue to a five-year study exploring the evolution of gay neighborhoods in our nation’s capital. In the days that followed, though many residents believed that Dupont Circle had lost its gay relevance, many quickly discovered how Dupont Circle mattered in the imagination of D.C.’s LGBTQ+ communities.
Days before the shooting, the “Gay Issue” of the Washington City Paper featured an article questioning Dupont Circle’s relevance as D.C.’s iconic gayborhood. Andrew Giambrone’s retrospective, “D.C. No Longer Has a Central Gay Neighborhood. Does It Matter?” offers a grim prognosis for “Gay Dupont” as the residential and institutional “fabric of LGBT life” has scattered throughout the city. “Gay Dupont may not be dead,” concludes Giambrone, “but it’s slowed considerably, as those who have vivified it” (Giambrone 2016). Once affectionately called “The Fruit Loop,” Dupont was so synonymous with gay life in the city that living there spared no man from questions about his sexuality. These days, many of the gay urban pioneers whom Giambrone interviewed reflected on how the visible LGBTQ+ culture they worked so hard to create had slowly disappeared. As gentrification pushed younger LGBTQ+ residents east of Dupont Circle into nearby Logan Circle, Shaw/U Street, and the now fashionable NOMA District, fewer people identified Dupont Circle as “gay central” during historic walking tours of the gayborhood. Bars and cultural mainstays like the iconic bookstore Lambda Rising have closed. In their place, gay-friendly establishments mirror the residential diffusion of LGBTQ+ residents in the city. Advances in LGBTQ+ rights produced a new generation of LGBTQ+ citizens ambivalent about preserving the gayborhood’s gay reputation. “Young people gained more rights,” observes local historian Bonnie Morris, “more people were accepted into their own families, [and] they didn’t have to go a ‘gayborhood’ to get that feeling. I miss that sense of subculture” (Giambrone 2016).
Ten days later, the Disneyfied displays of diversity at the Annual Pride Parade in Dupont Circle only amplified Giambrone’s suspicions. Its theme, “Make Magic Happen,” particularly resonated; this marked the first Pride since the landmark Supreme Court decision granting same-sex marriage in the United States. Marching around the Circle and up New Hampshire Avenue, groups energized the enthusiastic parade crowds by wearing or carrying signs celebrating love. Baptist church contingents buoyed signs displaying “Love Is Never Wrong” and “Love Wins!” against rainbow-colored backgrounds. Embassies highlighted their own country’s victories in securing marriage equality. Great Britain carried signs displaying “Love Is Great (Britain).” The Netherlands Embassy proudly displayed banners boasting their country as the first in the world to legalize same-sex marriage. The “Live Cam” on the Hilton Hotel’s float displayed same-sex couples kissing and flashing their glistening wedding bands to thunderous applause from the crowds. The crowds reveled in that energy. Spectators shared the beads they caught from the floats with parade-watchers out of landing distance. Straight men wrapped in rainbow boas and wearing brightly colored wigs exchanged kisses with their wives and girlfriends. Children rushed past the barriers into the street to collect free rainbow flags, rainbow-colored beads, and candy from the parade marchers. Celebrations continued late into the evening. Crowds in Dupont and Logan Circles spilled out of the bars and into the streets, making out and dancing to the music of Britney Spears and Meghan Trainor blasting through smartphones.
News of the shooting cast a pall over Sunday’s Capital Pride Festival along Pennsylvania Avenue. Many questioned the appropriateness of celebrating after learning about the shooting. Others, concerned about the festival’s proximity to the US Capitol and the Capitol Mall, worried that they might be vulnerable. Throughout the day, those I encountered believed that staying away would dishonor the memory of those who had died. Event headliner Bob the Drag Queen, Season Eight winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race, congratulated the spectators for attending. Before lip-synching to Jennifer Hudson’s “I Got Love,” he reminded the community that the greatest “revenge” against the hatred expressed at Pulse was a refusal to hide in the face of tragedy. “We know you were all scared and shit,” headliner Bob the Drag Queen teased the audience. “But you are here today, and we are winning… . Don’t let anyone scare you, because if you don’t go out, they already won.” Various vendors, including the Human Rights Campaign and The Washington Blade, the city’s LGBTQ+ paper, decorated their booths with professional posters expressing sympathy and solidarity with Orlando. Organizers called for moments of silence in between performances. Queer youths with rainbow-tinted hair walked along the hot, humid streets, wearing signs that offered free hugs to anyone who needed them. Throughout the afternoon, I watched as these youths consoled sobbing patrons, many of whom expressed disbelief that such a thing could happen. As people walked through the various booths, many checked their phones for updates related to the shooting, sharing any information they could with strangers. By late afternoon, questions emerged as to whether people would be gathering in Dupont Circle that evening. “It seems like the right thing to do,” a gay white man explained to me, tears welling in his eyes. Within hours, word had spread of a sunset vigil in Dupont Circle that evening.
Marking the end of the city’s Pride festivities, the Capital Pride Festival traditionally epitomized the kind of LGBTQ+ acceptance that extended beyond Dupont Circle. Yet as much as the Capital Pride Festival epitomized the freedom LGBTQ+ Washingtonians feel to celebrate their “pride” anywhere in the city, the return to Dupont Circle offered a powerful reminder that the “heart” of the city’s LGBTQ+ community perseveres despite the material changes that threaten its existence. “As much as we believe that ‘D.C. is our Dupont now,’ ” Gregory (35, Black, gay) explains, “I guess that at the end of the day, Dupont still belongs to us. It will always be our home.”
When I arrived at Dupont Circle around 7:30 p.m. with my friend Vincent, a small crowd gathered along the west side of the Dupont Circle Fountain. Flames illuminated tearful faces as people stood in silence, consoling one another with hugs and whispers of encouragement. We grabbed our candles from a brown cardboard box sitting at the Fountain’s base and stood among the crowd. As the vigil continued, new people arrived, gathered a candle from the box, and removed an article of their Pride swag to add to the makeshift memorial erected at the Fountain. Flowers, rainbow flags, votive candles, and rainbow-colored beads collected from Saturday’s Pride parade lined the western staircase leading up to the Fountain. Cardboard signs encircled its basin, displaying messages like “LOVE IS LOVE,” “PRAYERS FOR ORLANDO,” and “D.C. LOVES ORLANDO.” After a few minutes of comforting my inconsolable friend, I walked up to the Fountain, removed the plastic rainbow lei that I received at the festival that afternoon, and laid it alongside the other offerings.
About 20 minutes in, a young white man walked up to the crowd and broke the silence. Introducing himself as the event’s organizer, he invited us to join him in a prayer for the shooting victims. We bowed our heads in silent prayer, and after we said “Amen,” he thanked us and returned to the group. As dusk turns into night, people circulated through the solemn crowd. Strangers lit candles for one another and hugged tearfully; people exchanged words in hushed tones throughout the evening. Those leaving would return their candles to the box or pass them along to a newcomer of the group, who would add to the memorial and stand alongside the other mourners in silence.
Over the next several days, people gathered at the Dupont Circle fountain at sunset for candlelight vigils organized by various local groups. Monday’s vigil attracted over 600 people; by Wednesday’s vigil, more than 2,000 people participated. Both vigils included performances of the protest song “We Shall Overcome,” which prompted people to join hands and sing along. On Monday, organizers invited speakers from the audience to share their feelings about the tragedy. Those who lined up at the Open Mic reminded the audience that we could not take our “safe spaces” for granted. “We are still in danger,” one speaker, a Latinx woman, shouted through a malfunctioning microphone. “My generation created these spaces to lift each other up,” a middle-aged white man told the crowd.
[My generation] is tired, but we are still fighting. We cannot take these spaces for granted. We need to protect the spaces that keep our community strong … and we need them now more than ever. We are still endangered by things that are out of our control.
By Wednesday night, many of the scheduled speakers represented the religious community, who preached passionately about the resiliency of our community.
Throughout the week, the makeshift monument continued to grow around the Circle fountain. On Sunday, flowers, rainbow flags, votive candles, and rainbow-colored beads collected from Saturday’s Pride parade lined a strip of the Fountain. By Wednesday, mementos covered every inch of the Fountain’s base, extending along the walkways of Dupont Circle. One section of the base included the names of the dead written on 49 sheets of white paper. During the day, people passing through the Circle signed a rainbow flag and a large banner with the message “WASHINGTON, D.C. IS ON YOUR SIDE. OUR HEARTS, THOUGHTS, AND PRAYERS ARE WITH ORLANDO.” Following Wednesday’s vigil, hundreds of candles organized in hearts, spelling out “LGBT” and “LOVE IS LOVE” illuminated the Fountain base from below. People lingered in the Circle, marveling at the memorial while hugging and chatting with people who contributed to the growing monument. Some stopped by the journalists and cameras encircling the Fountain to give their thoughts about the tragedy and its impact on the local community. Others took photos. For many, the monument represented an opportunity for the community to interact and connect in the face of tragedy.
Although much of the community’s mourning coalesced in Dupont Circle, the LGBTQ+ community reactivated other spaces with special meaning in the hours following the tragedy. Although the silent vigil took place in Dupont Circle, a second sunset vigil occurred outside the White House in Lafayette Square. Once famously known as the “garden of pansies,” Lafayette Square was once the epicenter of gay life in Washington, representing one of the few racially integrated spaces for gay men to gather. Although that history has largely been forgotten, Lafayette became an important monument for LGBTQ+ people the year prior. Following the 2015 Obergefell Supreme Court decision, which established same-sex marriage as a right, thousands gathered in Lafayette Square to admire the north portico of the White House illuminated in rainbow colors. However, hundreds of people gathered again in the hours following the shooting, holding candles, raising rainbow flags in solidarity, and consoling one another. Although lacking the staying power of Dupont Circle, the tribute in Lafayette Square reflected the sense of belonging and ownership the LGBTQ+ community felt in the wake of their celebrations the year before.
Within hours of the shooting, various groups attempted to control the discourse around the tragedy. Seizing on the shooter’s Muslim background, conservative groups called the shooting an act of “radical Islamic terrorism” (Frizell 2016). LGBTQ+ organizations worldwide shifted between rumors about the shooter’s internalized homophobia to proclamations about the importance of protecting LGBTQ+ institutions like gay bars. Older generations of gay white men emphasized the impact of the shooting taking place during Pride month. Several who took the podium during vigils challenged younger LGBTQ+ people to protect the spaces that helped anchor the LGBTQ community. “We built these spaces because we knew the importance of protecting each other,” a middle-aged gay white man shouted at one of the Pulse Vigils in Dupont Circle. “We’ve done our part. Now it’s your turn. Take care of each other. Protect what [our generation] built.”
As the community’s response to the Pulse tragedy crystallized around protecting LGBTQ+ spaces, Latinx and Muslim LGBTQ+ citizens expressed frustration over mainstream gay organizations hogging the spotlight on the tragedy. “Too many people are dismissing that the shooting took place during Pride month at a Latin night event,” explained journalist Alan Pelaez Lopez.
Even friends on social media have said that this shooting has nothing to do with race because, after all, white gay people go clubbing, too. But Sunday’s shooting was an attack against a primarily young crowd of Latinx and Black individuals celebrating their existence in a world that has continually tried to silence them.
Meanwhile, LGBTQ+ Muslims found their shared outrage and sadness completely silenced as mourners attributed the attack to radical Islamic terrorism. “We are mourning,” Aabirah (26, Irani, Muslim, queer) told me. “This shooting impacts queer Muslims around the world … just as it does anyone else. And yet, we are being attacked by members of our own [LGBTQ+] community. They don’t care that we are also mourning.”
To challenge the brewing anti-Muslim sentiment within the local LGBTQ+ community, both the LGBTQ+ Latinx and Muslim communities planned community-wide events to write themselves into the conversation. Monday night’s vigil, organized by the Muslim American Women’s Policy Forum, offered the first opportunity for the local Muslim community to express their heartbreak over the tragedy. “We stand with you in solidarity over the lives lost in this senseless tragedy,” one of the organizers said to the crowd. “We organized this event to show the community – to show the world that we do not condone the violence that took place in the name of our religion.” Organizers set the tone for the other events that followed that week, from their inclusion of prayers from spiritual leaders to the singing of “We Shall Overcome” by the Gay Men’s Chorus. Hoping to center the local Latinx LGBTQ+ community, the vigil also featured statements from the Latino History Project. Speakers took the opportunity to challenge the narratives produced by mainstream groups who rendered LGBTQ+ people of color invisible. “We are no longer going to sit quietly in the background while you appropriate our tragedy,” the president of the Latino History Project shouted through the megaphone. “You do not get to call us brothers and sister as it conveniences you, only to erase our pain. This is not your tragedy.” Toward the end of the vigil, a member of the Latino LGBT History Project read the 49 victims’ names. The audience responded to each name with “Presente!” symbolizing the presence of the dead in spirit. Throughout the week, “Presente!” became a rallying cry for the LGBTQ+ Latinx community; every ceremony taking place that week included this moment of call-and-response.
The monument also incorporated elements of Latinx and Muslim cultures. Youths chalked the surrounding sidewalk with supportive messages in English, Spanish, and Arabic, including “MUSLIMS LOVE QUEERS” and the rallying cry, “PRESENTE! PRESENTE! PRESENTE!” The display at the Fountain also included objects from the curbside memorials I remembered all too well growing up in Los Angeles. Rosaries encircled sanctuary candles with images of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Jesus, and St. Joseph overlooking color photos of the 49 victims.
The Arabic and Spanish messages side-by-side symbolized the spirit of their collaboration. While eliciting sympathy from the audience, LGBTQ Latinx organizers also hoped to tie their community’s collective suffering to the abuse that Muslim LGBTQ people experienced at the hands of white LGBTQ+ mourners. “We quickly realized that our mourning was not separate from the violence against LGBTQ+ Muslims or trans people,” Pablo (38, Latinx, gay) told me. “We were not going to repeat what the white gays did to us. We are going to show them how to do it right.” The following Wednesday, as the city organized its tribute to the victims of the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Dupont Circle, leaders from several Muslim and Latinx LGBTQ organizations, including the Latino History Project and Khush DC, held a concurrent community dialogue at a nearby church in Dupont Circle. Including moments for audience members to reflect on their personal feelings surrounding the tragedy, organizers clarified at the outset that the evening’s “dialogue” intended to draw light on the experiences of those most directly impacted by the tragedy. “We recognize that you all feel some personal connection to the tragedy,” an organizer explained when describing the meeting’s format. “But, this is also your time to listen to those who are most affected by what happened at Pulse.” Throughout the program, organizers emotionally expressed how the shooting and the subsequent erasure of Latinx and Muslim queer voices affected both communities. In one powerful moment, a Latinx transwoman choked back tears while berating the audience for appropriating this moment to protect gay white spaces at the expense of the few spaces available for LGBTQ+ communities of color. “You all sit there crying about no longer feeling safe in your bars,” she shouted through tears. “Pulse wasn’t even a queer Latinx nightclub. It was only Latinx once a month” (Greene 2021:156).
After the town hall, organizers invited the participants to join a candlelight procession to Dupont Circle to participate in the ongoing vigil. As participants stepped outside the church, organizers distributed long white tapers, which we lit while standing in line. Walking along P Street, the president of the Latino History Project called out the names of each victim through a megaphone, with the crowd responding, “Presente.” I observed that (Green 2021: 156):
Along the way, marchers demonstrated extraordinary acts of kindness to each other. Strangers walked arm-in-arm as the roll call began reducing marchers to tears. As one marcher attempted to hold a candle while balancing on crutches to support his broken leg, a car pulled up alongside the road to offer him a ride to the Circle. “Thanks,” he told the caravan. “But this is something I really need to do.” As the procession neared Dupont Circle, and the man began feeling pain from his leg, marchers came to his aid. One grabbed his crutches and candle while two men carried him the rest of the way.
The group arrived in Dupont Circle approximately twenty minutes into the vigil, as a Black minister roused the audience with a sermon about the power of forgiveness. Standing behind the large crowd, we stood behind our procession leader and continued our call-and-response of “Presente” until the last victim was named. Among the 2000-person crowd, neither our arrival nor our chant impacted the crowd. Some participants turned around to see what we were doing, and a couple of people, recognizing the tradition from previous vigils, joined in by responding, “Presente.” Others simply turned their attention back to the pastor on stage. Once our leader finished, the group quietly moved into the crowd to participate in the service. Although news reports on the vigil in Dupont Circle overshadowed the town hall and procession along P Street, several traditions emerged that would define how the community mourned for the victims of the Pulse Nightclub shooting. Every commemorative event includes a call-and-response reading of the names, led by a member of the Latino History Project. Ultimately, although the efforts of the Muslim and Latinx communities became absorbed in the various events occurring that week, the ability of the Latinx and Muslim LGBTQ communities to infuse Dupont Circle with subcultural practices aligned with their collective mourning nevertheless rendered the gayborhood as an accessible place for LGBTQ+ communities of color “to mourn, heal, and articulate their anger and grief on their terms” (Greene 2021: 157).
By the end of the week, the energy that revitalized Gay Dupont had all but faded into memory. Following Wednesday’s vigil, thunderstorms had washed away the memorial. Despite efforts by residents and custodians to salvage the remnants, only a spattering of caked-on candle wax along the fountain’s basin and stairs remained. Dupont Circle returned to normal as people conducted their various daily and nightly routines. Workers sipped coffee while passing through the Circle on their way to work while homeless men, sleeping on the park benches around the Fountain, collected their bedding. Park tables along the outer perimeter of the circle filled with Black men playing chess in the afternoons, blasting Philadelphia Soul out of old boomboxes. Gray-haired men read newspapers, tourists reviewed maps and guidebooks, and Black and Brown women chatted while gently rocking white babies in strollers on benches near the fountain. Professionals ate their lunches along the fountain basin, their jackets neatly folded and laid next to them. Young couples curled up on picnic blankets under bowing elm trees. As the afternoon transitioned into the evening, joggers jogged through the circle, children played around the fountain, and dogs pulled their humans from one end of the traffic circle to another. Young white women gossiped on benches, sipping iced lattes next to neatly rolled-up yoga mats. Muscular men in short-shorts sat next to tiny dogs, flipping through photos on Grindr and Scruff on their cell phones.
Within a year, discussions re-emerged, questioning the relevance of Dupont Circle as the epicenter of LGBTQ+ life. Dan Reed’s “D.C.’s Gayborhoods are Disappearing. How Should We Feel About That?,” featured in the local magazine Washingtonian, parroted many of the common factors contributing to the demise of “Gay Dupont” that Giambrone noted. Rising rents have displaced LGBTQ+ residents from central gay neighborhoods, scattering them throughout the city. LGBTQ+ bars and other institutional anchors have disappeared in the wake of a digital gay culture embraced by new generations of LGBTQ+ folk. The growing sociopolitical acceptance for sexual minorities has eliminated any particular impetus for seeking Dupont Circle for “that sense of community.” Reed even interviewed some of the same LGBTQ+ pioneers featured in Giambrone’s article a year before, who take pride in the fruits of their struggles. “There’s less of a gay community in any particular neighborhood,” said Deacon Maccubbin, founder of Lambda Rising. “We are everywhere. People feel free to live and party just about anywhere now, which is great. We’ve come so far” (Reed 2017). Once again, Gay Dupont was portrayed as “doomed” as the gayborhood faced an uncertain future.
But I could not forget those flashes that revived Dupont Circle as the center of gay life. From the Pride parade and vigils to the chalking of Presente! around the fountain, these fleeting moments suggest that, even as experts rightly point to evidence that threatens their existence, iconic gay neighborhoods like Dupont Circle still retain their reputation as anchors of the LGBTQ+ community. Regardless of where they live in the city, LGBTQ+ citizens express a sense of ownership over Dupont Circle – ownership that they exercise to commemorate important events, mobilize the community to action, and celebrate important milestones. The community convenes in Dupont Circle every year to commemorate the anniversary of the Pulse tragedy. Despite discussions of moving the Pride Parade to reflect the residential shifts of the LGBTQ+ community, both the Pride Parade and Youth Pride Festival continue to pass through Dupont Circle. In October 2018, hundreds commemorated the life of Matthew Shepard at the Dupont Circle fountain the night before his ashes were interred at National Cathedral (Grinberg 2018). These fleeting, everyday moments may lack the sense of permanence commonly associated with iconic gay neighborhoods. Nevertheless, the temporary reactivation of gay places in Dupont Circle represents everyday strategies for protecting the area’s gay reputation, as well as the communities invested in its future.
Theodore Greene is an assistant professor of sociology at Bowdoin College, USA. His research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of sexuality, urbanism, and culture. His research broadly uses sexual communities to understand how urban redevelopment shapes and reconfigures how individuals conceptualize, identify, and participate in local communities. His current book project, Not in MY Gayborhood: Gay Neighborhoods and the Rise of the Vicarious Citizen (Columbia University Press, forthcoming), explores the persistence of iconic gay neighborhoods in Washington, D.C. through ephemeral acts of placemaking by nonresidential community actors (vicarious citizens).