Today, the discerning, craft cocktail-loving LGBT community are ripe and ready to elevate the Pride sipping experience. Popular Pride cocktails associated with the bar-going gay community include Vodka Redbull (gag), Vodka Cranberry (basic), The Cosmo (thanks Sex and the City) and the 90s favourite Appletini (vom). Heaven forbid someone pour you a glass of bottled Rev on ice. Most classic gay cocktails promoted at Pride are overly sweet, feature gimmicky rainbow colours (that I swear never taste great) or are frozen in time as appalling, jiggly Jello shooters. When people think about traditional gay drinks their visions are often unappetizing. Check out our current Cooking Class Schedule! Enjoy gay drinks at Boutique Bar in Toronto’s Church & Wellesley Village. Join Dobbernationloves founder Andrew Dobson in the kitchen by signing up for a fun virtual cooking class! Classes begin with a cocktail that you can sip while preparing 2-3 recipes that are curated around a unique culinary theme. The demonstration was a turning point in LGBT history, when the police raided a bar in Greenwich Village that was serving gay clientele cocktails. It’s important to remember the significance of the 1969 Stonewall riot in New York City. Today, these vibrant LGBT communities offer essential queer social service programs, gay bookstores, and friendly drag bars that host the best parties during Pride season. Long before gay marriage was legalized, members of the LGBT community lacked basic rights to work or adopt without discrimination. Liberal cities in Canada, America and Europe often feature gay neighbourhoods that were created as a means to keep local members of the queer community safe. The history of many gay neighbourhoods around the world offer insight into why LGBT folks gather inside their own communities. In our hometown of Toronto, gay bars make up the majority of the appeal of living in or visiting rainbow adorned Church & Wellesley Village.
Some of the most popular cocktail bars in the world can be found in gay travel destinations like Toronto, Montreal, New York City, New Orleans, Chicago, Savannah, Fort Lauderdale, Miami, Los Angeles, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico City, Floripa, Rio de Janeiro, Bangkok, Bali, Hamburg, Potsdam, Berlin, Dresden, Cologne, Leipzig, Malaga, Ibiza, Brighton, Belfast and Cardiff. Since the dawn of queer time, members of the LGBT community have had a thirst for sipping gay drinks.
These organizations are going beyond designing safe spaces for queer Black folks to dance, make out, and meet-they’re creating moments that decenter the white gaze (not to mention white gays), showcasing the artistic talents and sweet joy of Chicago’s Black queer, trans, and gender non-conforming residents and curating welcoming opportunites for folks to get down free from inhibition and fear. Several of Chicago’s queer event collectives are set on partying with a purpose, especially those with Black queers at the helm. Much of that is thanks to the hard work of folks like the Chicago Black Drag Council and countless other queer Black nightlife prose, all backed up by those of us happily partaking in the scene. While Boystown and Andersonville continue to flourish with queer and queer-friendly businesses on every corner, since last year’s uprisings and calls for accountability in Chicago’s gay nightlife scene, things have started to (slowly) change. We have some of the most renowned drag performers, incredible queer nightlife artists of all kinds, and queer neighborhoods teeming with bars and clubs. Chicago has transformed into a true queer destination in recent years, no longer looked at as some podunk midwestern city cast in the shadow of coastal meccas like New York and Los Angeles.