Pride: Our Spaces

In this feature, we’re highlighting seven spaces around the world where LGBTQ+ history, music, culture and nightlife intersect. Whether it’s a neighbourhood like Sydney’s Oxford Street or legendary venue like the Stonewall Inn, these are the beating hearts of queer communities around the world. Read on to learn about each, and check out playlists that bring them to life through music. Pride parades—annual celebrations and remembrances of LGBTQ+ rights and history—started at one very specific place and time: New York City in June 1970. The Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day March commemorated the first anniversary of the 1969 uprising that followed a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a private club catering to the queer community. That wasn’t the start of the fight for LGBTQ+ civil rights, of course, but it was the turning point. Activist groups gathered strength around the world, marched in solidarity, protested against their oppression, and built new spaces to meet, dance, and build community. Today, Stonewall is a queer mecca of sorts, with thousands annually making a pilgrimage to pay respects to queer elders and pioneers. In Sydney, there’s even a Stonewall Hotel, named in its honour. It’s situated in Taylor Square, on Oxford Street, the home of Sydney’s annual Mardi Gras Parade. In 2023, the Parade returns to Oxford Street after two years, during which it moved to the Sydney Cricket Ground. This year, it also coincides with Sydney hosting WorldPride over three weeks. It marks the first time the world’s biggest Pride celebration has ever taken place in the Southern Hemisphere. What explains the almost sacred significance attached to this street? Why do spaces like Stonewall matter? For one thing, they keep us in communion with the past, acting as reminders of the sacrifices made. They’re also crucial, continual safe spaces for the LGBTQ+ community to call their own. It’s in these spaces—whether it’s a club, a street or an entire neighbourhood—where queer nightlife, music, culture and people come together and thrive. Here, discover seven queer spaces around the world—and the music that made them what they are today.

It took a visit to the Albury Hotel for Kylie Minogue to realize she’d become a gay icon. The pop star once described it as “the most iconic gay bar on Oxford Street, the most iconic gay street in the very gay town of Sydney, Australia.” The bar was famous for its wild, all-night parties and for being at the center of Sydney’s growing drag scene. It was only when, around 1990, Minogue herself snuck into “Kylie Night”—a regular event dedicated entirely to her—that she realized how important she’d become to the LGBTQ+ community in her home country. After the Albury opened in 1980, it quickly established itself as one of the loosest, loudest clubs on Sydney’s “Golden Mile”—the affectionate nickname for the stretch of gay venues that ran along Oxford Street from Darlinghurst to Hyde Park. The Mile had already been building up for more than a decade—Ivy’s Birdcage and Cappriccio’s, the street’s first queer venues, opened around 1969. Over the years, it became the space for gay bars, clubs, saunas, and shops and, later, for the broader LGBTQ+ scene. DJs brought trends from queer scenes around the world: disco, New Wave, Chicago house. Drag nights were all-diva affairs: Kylie, Shirley Bassey, Diana Ross, Donna Summer. And while the Imperial (the bar featured in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) was a few suburbs west, the impact of Oxford Street on Sydney’s drag scene cannot be overstated. When Sydney hosted the 2000 Olympic Games, drag queens sashayed up Oxford Street for the Olympic torch relay, dancing to Barry Manilow’s “Copacabana.” It took decades to reach that level of freedom, though. Homosexuality was only legalized in New South Wales in 1984, and just being seen on the street was, for years, a risk. But it was worth it for many. Oxford Street wasn’t just a party scene, it was liberation. On the dance floors of Patchs, Midnight Shift, Exchange, and the Albury, people celebrated, sang, found community and identity. For a long time, these were the only spaces they had. Sydney’s first Pride march—Mardi Gras—was on Oxford Street. June 24, 1978: the middle of winter, the ninth anniversary of the Stonewall riots. Coordinated in solidarity with international gay rights organizations, activists ventured out, shouting slogans: “Stop police attacks on gays, women, and Blacks!” “Out of the bars and into the streets!” That’s exactly what happened. Partygoers along the Golden Mile heard the commotion and spilled out of the venues. What started as a few hundred protesters grew to around 1,500 throughout the night. They were accompanied by a truck blasting two songs on repeat: Tom Robinson’s “Glad to Be Gay” and Meg Christian’s “Ode to a Gym Teacher.” It marked a literal coming together of Sydney’s LGBTQ+ party and political scenes. They marched, danced, and sang in solidarity, building community through resistance. The crowd was met with police beatings and widespread arrests, but it only added fuel to the fire. So they did it again. And again. And it got bigger each time. A couple years later, Mardi Gras moved to February, during summer. Add to that growing activism, bigger parties, hundreds of thousands of revelers and icons like Cher, George Michael, Chaka Khan, and Kylie and Dannii Minogue: One of the world’s biggest Pride celebrations took shape. Sure, Oxford Street isn’t what it once was, thanks to gentrification, lockouts, and lockdowns. But legislative changes and even a pandemic couldn’t silence queer nightlife for good. Today, from Stonewall to the Beresford, Universal to the Colombian, there’s no shortage of places keeping the Mile as queer as ever. Oxford Street is where LGBTQ+ music, culture, and politics came together and created a community. And nothing can take that away.

It’s hard to overstate the importance of New York’s Stonewall Inn to the LGBTQ+ civil rights movement. While the struggle for gay rights had existed for decades, the events at Stonewall in June 1969 provided the impetus for a new generation of more outspoken and militant activists; groups like the Gay Liberation Front began to adopt tactics of the Black Power and anti-war movements, which were also maturing in the era of the Vietnam War and the broader civil rights movement. For some, it can be challenging to relate to the gay men, lesbians, trans people, people of color, and other “outsiders” of that time—most of whom simply wanted a safe place to enjoy each other’s company. But there’s one small way we can begin to appreciate their hopes and fears, a document passed down through the decades since: a list of the songs playing on the jukebox at Stonewall the night of the uprising. At first glance, there’s little noteworthy about the music on tap at this New York bar in the summer of ’69: The soundtrack was heavy on Motown hits of the day, from The Supremes to The Temptations, Martha Reeves and The Isley Brothers. But these pop tunes likely carried more significance for the Stonewall crowd than seems obvious today. In a time before the “gay anthem”—still a decade away from the emergence of disco hits like “We Are Family,” “I Will Survive,” and “I’m Coming Out”—these songs served as a kind of coded language, with hidden messages shared among those in the know. A straightforward romantic song like Stevie Wonder’s “My Cherie Amour” could take on a transgressive, even subversive role at Stonewall, when two men or two women were dancing to it. The Temptations’ “Don’t Let the Joneses Get You Down”—a song with a powerful social and economic message—takes on new meaning when applied to the lives of closeted homosexuals. Even Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” has a very distinct subtext when belted out by a winking drag queen. These (sometimes thinly veiled) messages weren’t lost on Stonewall patrons. Few that night would have missed the significance of Harry Nilsson’s “Everybody’s Talkin’,” whose lonesome strains had soundtracked the groundbreaking film Midnight Cowboy, with its racy-for-the-time gay subplot. Barbra Streisand was already a gay icon, and belting along with her to the defiant show tune “Before the Parade Passes By” could serve as a form of almost radical self-empowerment. This Pride Month, as we reflect on the progress that’s been made since Stonewall, it’s worth taking some time to try and put ourselves in the shoes of the brave individuals who made those early efforts at resistance, protest, and civil disobedience. And maybe we can understand a little more about what motivated them by listening to their music, and letting it speak to us as it may have spoken to them.

It was 1972 and a history-making migration was taking place. Encouraged by the sexual liberation movement of the 1960s, gay men were coming out of the closet in droves, moving from oppressively dull small towns to the sparkling sanctuary of big cities—especially San Francisco, where the hippies had paved the way for a new, out-and-proud gay culture to thrive. Radical young homosexuals with long hair and tight jeans joined older, more buttoned-down gentlemen who had lived through decades of social stigma and persecution in creating a vibrant and growing scene. That scene centered on the Castro neighborhood, whose previous residents, Irish working-class folks, were retiring to the suburbs, leaving behind cheap rents and plenty of former shops to convert into gay dance bars and gathering spots where one could cruise for fleeting romances. Some icons of the old hood survived: Twin Peaks Tavern, perched at the entrance to the neighborhood and named for the iconic hills that crown the city, was opened in 1883 as a saloon and cigar shop. But in 1972, as the Castro changed, so did Twin Peaks. That was when two lesbians named Mary Ellen Cunha and Peggy Forster (known as “The Girls”), who had bought the bar the year before, threw open gay nightlife to the world. They installed floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows on Twin Peaks' street-facing facades, becoming the first gay bar in the country to allow patrons to be seen from the outside. It was a major advance from the times when gay men were driven by fear of discovery, ostracism, and possible persecution to huddle in darkened spaces, hiding their true identities from the world. Twin Peaks became one of the rapidly growing number of gay bars in the area, many of which were owned at some point by The Girls, who became early queer nightlife moguls. Its atmosphere fell under the “fern bar” category—plant-filled, cozy, and more about socializing than hook-ups. (The Girls gently discouraged any touching beyond hugs and handshakes: California laws against same-sex sexual activity weren't repealed until 1975, and they didn't want to get anyone busted.) Of course, windows look out as well as in, and patrons could grab a renowned Twin Peaks hot toddy in its burnished brass and oak interior and gaze at the wild scene developing on Castro Street. The early 1970s was when the newly visible gay culture developed a typical look—the macho “clone” in sprayed-on denim, heavy work boots, bushy mustache, and white tank top. It also reveled in a unique sound. Through the 1960s, dancing with other men was illegal in most of the country. But a legal push around the time of the gay rights Stonewall rebellion of 1969 toppled those restrictions. Jukeboxes full of pop crooners and Broadway standards were rapidly replaced in bars by DJs playing a new music, disco, which celebrated wanton gay freedom. The Castro was filled with the strains of wailing divas and pounding beats pouring out of the bars and discotheques. The city developed its own disco sound, one grounded in the dirty funk and wild rock spirits of hippie icons like Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, mixed with the electronic innovations of its avant-garde music scene. The icon of this San Francisco sound was genderfluid Black diva Sylvester, a flamboyant former gospel singer. When Sylvester met a young production wiz named Patrick Cowley, who had become obsessed with the European electronic sounds of Donna Summer's producer, Giorgio Moroder, creative sparks flew. Their anthems merging frenetic grooves with synthesized sounds—“Dance (Disco Heat),” “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real),” “Menergy,” “Do You Wanna Funk?”—became global hits, heard everywhere from steamy underground gay bathhouses to top-rated network TV shows. A hotbed of San Francisco disco labels like Moby Dick, Megatone, and Fusion sprang up, transforming the sound into a bona fide movement. While Twin Peaks never became a discotheque, the bar offered a community space and refuge, a fishbowl vantage point on giddy decades of progress and tragedy in the queer struggle for equality. Twin Peaks still stands today, as popular as ever, its crowd a mix of veterans of the fabulous 1970s and young hipsters new to the Castro. You can check them all out, visibly proud, through the windows.

Inspired by pioneering New York parties like The Loft during the mid-1970s, promoter Robert Williams hoped to recreate their wild, open-minded energy in Chicago. During the summer of 1976, he opened a three-story, 19-and-older juice bar first called US Studios—but better known as the Warehouse—in Chicago’s South Loop neighborhood. The club catered to a young, Black and queer clientele that was often rejected from Chicago’s larger gay disco clubs on the city’s north side. As a juice bar rather than a bar serving alcohol, the Warehouse was allowed to stay open until 8 am. And whether or not that juice was spiked, as rumors contend, young patrons relished the chance to dance until morning years before they could even get into bars. To stand out in Chicago’s burgeoning nightlife scene, Williams had hoped to convince his friend, the pioneering gay disco DJ Larry Levan, to be the club’s resident DJ. But when Levan was too busy opening the Paradise Garage, he selected another rising gay New Yorker, Frankie Knuckles. Knuckles’ sets at the Warehouse soon became the talk of the blossoming underground scene. He used reel-to-reel tape edits that looped particular musical or lyrical phrases to tease out the maximum dance floor potential of disco standards like The Dells' “Get on Down” and Teddy Pendergrass’ “The More I Get, the More I Want.” But alongside well-known records by era champions Grace Jones and Billy Ocean, Knuckles also introduced New Wave and experimental dance sounds into the mix, such as Brian Eno and David Byrne’s “The Jezebel Spirit” and Yoko Ono’s “Walking on Thin Ice.” These eccentric selections combined with Knuckles’ exclusive edits made the Warehouse a citywide dancing destination. What started as a largely Black and queer audience became far more diverse, with even straight white folks angling to jack their bodies on its hallowed dance floor. The popularity of the Warehouse sound created demand at local record stores for more music in that vein. Importes Etc., one of the most popular record stores for Chicago DJs, even labeled certain records as “heard at the Warehouse.” Eventually that label was shortened to just “house,” giving rise to the genre term we use today, years before any of the seminal Chicago house records were even recorded. The Warehouse’s success eventually became its undoing as rowdy crowds and gun violence made the space feel unsafe. Knuckles departed to found his own club, the Power Plant, in November 1982, and the Warehouse closed its doors for good. But the latest evolution of dance music born in this Black and queer after-hours spot spread like wildfire, setting the stage for a brand-new soundtrack for Chicago’s queer underground and, eventually, the world at large.

There’s no area in London that feels quite like Soho. Its streets, like tributaries connecting the chaos of Oxford Street, Regent Street, Shaftesbury Avenue, and Charing Cross Road, are constantly alive with activity, from groups of sightseeing tourists taking in the area’s history to lively Londoners on their way out for dinner, drinks, or to see a West End show. It’s also the epicenter of the city’s queer scene, home to the largest concentration of LGBTQ+-specific venues in London. Since before the 20th century, Soho has provided sanctuary for LGBTQ+ people. In 1934, the infamous Caravan Club opened on Endell Street. Advertised as “London's Greatest Bohemian Rendezvous said to be the most unconventional spot in town,” for just the price of a shilling (if you were a member), queer patrons could enjoy “all-night gaiety” to the music of Charlie, the club’s accordion player. The Shim Sham Club on Wardour Street, dubbed “London’s miniature Harlem” because of its links with African American culture and focus on jazz, was similarly subversive. But it was towards the end of the 1970s and through the 1980s that Soho began to cement its legacy as the heartland of LGBTQ+ life in London. Leading the charge was the now iconic Heaven nightclub, located in the arches underneath the nearby Charing Cross Station. Opened in 1979, the DJ spinning Dan Hartman’s “Relight My Fire” as the first song on opening night, Heaven was a warren of disco debauchery and a favorite spot of Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, who could be found cruising in the leather bar. Artists like Culture Club, New Order, and the Eurythmics all played shows there in the ’80s and ’90s, while more recently Dua Lipa and Rina Sawayama have graced the stage. It also remains an LGBTQ+ venue and is the current home to G-A-Y, one of London’s most famous queer club nights, which has hosted gay icons such Kylie Minogue, Cher, Lady Gaga, and Madonna. Soho also acts as a reminder of the resilience of London’s LGBTQ+ population. On April 30, 1999, a nail bomb exploded at the Admiral Duncan pub on Old Compton Street, killing three people and injuring dozens more. A few days later, thousands gathered for a vigil to pay respects to the victims. Thankfully, the Admiral Duncan reopened, and following the mass shooting at Pulse in Orlando in 2016, a similar gathering took place outside its doors in solidarity, the London Gay Men’s Chorus singing Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” as 49 balloons, one for each of the deceased, were released into the air. Of course, London is in a constant state of evolution, and Soho has transformed alongside it. But it remains the nucleus of the city’s LGBTQ+ scene. Nothing compares to turning off Charing Cross Road or Wardour Street and finding yourself on Old Compton Street, among the waving Pride flags and throngs of LGBTQ+ people. It’s like a little queer sanctuary, hidden away from the bustle of London. It feels like home.

From 1997 to 2007, a spell was cast on Parisian nightlife: Its name was Le Pulp. Created by and for the local lesbian community (though men were permitted entry), the club laid the foundations for an entirely new scene—one that flourished in an area undergoing a new sense of affirmation, acceptance, and love for the LGBTQ+ community and queer rights. Located in Paris' iconic Grand Boulevards neighborhood, Le Pulp was conveniently situated right near two other titans of Paris’ nightlife scene: the Rex Club, known as the temple of techno, and Le Palace, the wildly popular queer-friendly disco venue funded by Fabrice Emaer, who aimed to bring the spirit (and debauchery) of New York's Studio 54 to 1980s Paris. Still, it was Le Pulp—a relatively small venue that could just squeeze in around 300 people—that quickly became known as one of the city’s first permanently safe spaces for the queer community. And it left a legacy still remembered today. Between the kitschy pleather couches, the battered wooden floors, and the noticeably low ceilings, Le Pulp lived and breathed the fierce essence of punk. It was home to a lesbian scene that was all rock ’n’ roll, tattoos, and piercings; it was subversive, it was sexual, it was proud. And at the center of it all was the club’s first resident artist: DJ Sextoy. DJ Sextoy passed away in 2002, but she’ll forever be remembered as an icon, a leader, a beacon of empowerment. She was the one who named the club itself, an homage to multiple meanings of this small, evocative word: of cheap ’50s superhero and sci-fi comics; of sweet, juicy fruits; and of Quentin Tarantino’s classic Pulp Fiction. Sextoy was essentially the embodiment of the club’s distinct sound: liberating and free from musical boundaries. Through her sets—alongside other regulars behind the deck, like Jennifer Cardini, Ivan Smagghe, Arnaud Rebotini, Scratch Massive, and Chloé—rock returned to dance floors, right alongside electronic music. Picture Bowie followed by a 130 BPM techno track. At a time when electroclash and selector DJs reigned, Le Pulp was a raucous, rebellious celebration of the return of rock, and its fruitful marriage with electronic music. Monthly parties were a regular highlight, such as Kill the DJ and No Dancing Please, both organized by Fany Corral, and would feature guests such as Laurent Garnier, Seth Troxler, DJ Koze, Luciano, Lawrence, and Andrew Weatherall. It was a utopia—a place for liberty and freedom. The club was home to a versatile community where everyone was welcome—butch lesbians, trans people, gay men, misfits, artists laying low, and, yes, even straight people who’d grown tired of the overplayed, over-filtered disco loops heard as French house started going out of style. Those drawn to Le Pulp had to follow strict, community-focused entry rules: It was free and open to everyone on Wednesdays (rock night) and Thursdays (electronic night), only queer people on Fridays, only women on Saturdays. There was no VIP section. When the club closed in 2007, its founders relocated to Rosa Bonheur, a bar located by the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, and Le Pulp events are regularly held across the French capital in venues such as Gibus, Java, Point Éphémère, and Gaîté Lyrique, where the queer festival Loud & Proud is held annually. Its legacy lives on through the many figures who made Le Pulp what it is: Chloé, Maud Geffray (Scratch Massive), and Arnaud Rebotini, who went on to compose the score for the 2017 film BPM (Beats per Minute), about AIDS activists ACT UP during the 1990s (listen in particular for a legendary tech-house remix of Bronski Beat's “Smalltown Boy”). Now and always, Le Pulp will be remembered as a celebration of freedom, liberation, music, and queerness.

“It’s not the homosexual who is perverted, but the situation in which he lives.” This sentence, the title of a world-famous 1971 film by Rosa von Praunheim, also stands as a headline to the history of gay subculture in West Berlin. In 1977, during a moment when homosexuality was still met with intolerance in Germany, the “SchwulenZentrum” (“GayCenter”) was created as a space where gay men could meet freely, away from harm. It was the starting point for a beloved queer space that still exists today. It wasn't just Praunheim's film that sharpened the public's view of Berlin's then-fledgling gay community. The social movements of 1968, largely driven by students and leftist organizations, also played an important part in the general public's perception of this marginalized community, repeatedly denouncing the so-called “Gay Paragraph 175,” which made homosexual acts a punishable offense until finally being abolished in 1994. Today, the area around Schöneberger Nollendorfplatz, known for its many bars and clubs, is considered the center of the queer nightlife scene. Each summer, hundreds of thousands of visitors meet there for Europe's largest Pride festival and the Christopher Street Day parade. The growing attention and acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community owes a lot to Germany’s music and arts scene. Berlin-based pop artist Marianne Rosenberg played a particularly important role, giving the gay movement of the 1970s its anthem, "Er gehört zu mir" ("He Belongs to Me"), and becoming known as a gay icon through her allyship and frequent appearances at SchwuZ’s "TalkSchwuZ" discussion forums. The milestones kept coming. In 2001, Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit came out, announcing what’s now an iconic phrase: "I'm gay, and that's a good thing!" Despite being considered "poor but sexy"—another quote from Wowereit—Berlin was quickly becoming a diverse, queer-friendly metropolis where being true to oneself no longer meant being part of a subculture, but a fundamental part of society. And though infamous Berlin techno clubs like Berghain and Tresor aren't specifically queer venues, they've had a major influence on the growth of LGBTQ+ communities in Germany through their inherent openness towards diversity. Ever growing in reverence and popularity, SchwuZ has changed locations regularly over the decades, along with the types of parties and events it hosts. From talks and drag queen shows to live concerts, Schlager (German popular music) and rock parties, SchwuZ is, to this day, synonymous with the dazzlingly queer club culture at the heart of Germany's capital.