The Darkroom Has Vanished, and Something Else With It

Amsterdam's gay bars are closing one by one. What do we lose when the scene dissolves into apps and gentrification? On Reguliersdwarsstraat, a man in his sixties leans against a wall, smoking. He watches the street across from him. There used to be Havana there. Now there's a candle shop with forty-euro pillar candles. "It was packed here every Friday," he says to no one in particular. "Now I walk through and recognize nothing anymore." It's a scene playing out across Europe. In Berlin, in London, in Paris. The gay bars are shutting down. The darkrooms are gone. The cruising areas in the park have been cleaned up. And hardly anyone seems to mind. A Silent Exodus The numbers tell the story.…