Brighton & Hove is pretty gay, it’s true, but if there was a district of the city with a concentration of that queerness it would surely be Kemptown. And if we went in search of a centre to the ‘gay village’, the main drag shall we say… that would have to be St James Street.
I was recently asked to delve into the question of how all this came about by Queer Heritage South (QHS), to accompany their ‘Revealing St James Street’ oral history walking tour and online audio resource.
If you’re interested, and if you’re reading this then that’s quite likely, you can download a map and experience the walk yourself using the audio on their website: Revealing St James Street.
You get to hear some great tales on the walking tour, but QHS wanted some context to the tours for people doing it themselves off their website. So I have written a short intro to each stop, to set the scene and provide some additional info.
Written out of history
Ok, that heading is a bit dramatic, but I have to say it was quite a challenge gathering all the opening and closing dates of venues from the 1970s to 2018. Gay News, with its detailed regional listings, shut up shop in 1983. Local listings magazine Gscene (and The Queer Guide before it), only started in 1995. And of course the decade and a bit in-between these two sources is when the bulk of the changes came about.
I reached out to some non-LGBT regional publications, such as The Punter, but no luck. All the queer pubs and clubs were simply missing, like they didn’t exist. This gave me an unwanted flashback to trying to find out where my people socialised when I first arrived in town in the late 1980s – thankfully Switchboard came to the rescue on that occasion.
Something happened at The Punter in November 1985, maybe they got a queer intern or something, but they announced in a quarter page piece entitled Coming Out:
“With an estimated population of 15-20 thousand gay people in Brighton and loads of tourists, the town has gathered a reputation as the San Francisco of the South Coast. There are about sixteen gay guest houses in town and about a dozen clubs and bars. In future we’ll be covering most of these…”
Despite that declaration, the following month they produced the one and only gay listings I found in any issue of The Punter 1984-1996. It does come with a cute advert for gay club The Beverly Hills which is something I guess.
To save you squinting the pubs listed are: The Bulldog, The Cricketers, The Beacon Royal (bar) and The Rockingham. The clubs list is as follows: Whispers, Rikki’s, Bolts [Sunday nights at Pink Coconut], The Beverly Hills, The Beacon Royal (club) and Caves.
Gay guides
Thankfully, I could delve into my own velvet vault and extract a selection of gay guides to Brighton, which list all the LGBT relevant pubs, clubs and other amenities. Each one is a little time capsule, from the places mentioned to the adverts and maps included. I had no idea how useful these would be for telling our story when I stashed them in a box under my bed!
Right, I think that’s enough of my waffle, feel free to read my history of St James Street on the QHS website. Or don’t, I’m not the boss of you. Oh yes, if you’re still wondering if it all started with the Bulldog… you’ll have to read my history. Mwahahahaha.
