The Darkroom Closes, the Gym Fills Up

A Tuesday evening on Reguliersdwarsstraat

A man in his early fifties walks down Reguliersdwarsstraat on a Tuesday evening. He's been coming here since 1992. He used to queue outside April. Now there's a coffee shop where you order a matcha latte. The facade is white. The music inside is soft.

He tells it without much emotion. Bars close. Darkrooms disappear. What replaces them is prettier, cleaner, often more expensive too. And often no longer just for us.

A scene in transition

The numbers don't lie. Over the past fifteen years, dozens of gay bars have closed in Amsterdam. In London, according to research by University College London, nearly sixty percent of queer spaces vanished between 2006 and 2017. New York, Berlin, Paris: the same story everywhere.

The reasons are familiar. Rising rents. Apps like Grindr make physical meeting places less necessary. Younger generations drink less. And gay people no longer need to hide in a back alley. They just go to the bar on the corner.

That sounds like progress. And it is. But something is being lost. Something hard to put into words.

The value of a separate space

A gay bar wasn't just a bar. It was a place where you recognized each other without saying anything. Where a nineteen-year-old could stand next to a man of sixty. Where teachers, construction workers, and lawyers heard the same music. Generations mixed, classes blended together.

That function is now scattered. Some of it happens on apps. Some of it happens at the gym. Some of it happens on holiday in Mykonos or Sitges. The community hasn't disappeared. It's just fragmented.

Ask a twenty-something if it bothers him, and you often get a shrug. He has enough friends. He has Instagram. He found a boyfriend via Hinge, not on a dance floor. The old scene is folklore to him. Something from Pedro Almodóvar films.

The other side

Yet there is also a countervoice. Not just from older gay men feeling nostalgic. From young people themselves too.

Research by the SCP shows that loneliness among LGBTQ+ youth is actually higher than among their peers. An app on your phone doesn't replace a bar where you can hang out for three hours. A DM is not a conversation at the counter.

Moreover: not every gay person lives in Amsterdam or Utrecht. In Emmen, Sittard, or Goes, there's often nothing. No bar, no café, no meeting place. Growing up there, you learn to know yourself mainly through a screen. That's an impoverished introduction to your own life.

Gym and sober

What takes its place is interesting. The modern gay man goes to the bar less and to the gym more. Personal trainers in Amsterdam report that a large part of their clientele consists of gay men. Protein instead of beer. Crossfit instead of cruising.

Beyond that, there are sober events, queer book clubs, running groups, cooking clubs. All alcohol-free, all serious. A forty-year-old friend said recently: "I now know more gay people through my yoga studio than through nightlife."

It's healthier. Literally. But it's also safer. The rough edges of the old scene—the sex, the drinking, the chaos—had their function too. They were an escape from a world you didn't want to be part of. Now that escape is no longer necessary. Life itself has become acceptable.

What we gain in return

The gains are enormous. A same-sex couple can walk hand in hand in virtually every Dutch city without trouble. Marriage is allowed. Having children is allowed. Getting a mortgage works. Coming out at work is no longer a drama in most sectors.

That's exactly what the generation before us fought for. It's bizarre to complain about it.

Yet in conversations you often hear an undertone of loss. Not of the past itself. But of the intensity. When something was forbidden, it felt urgent too. A kiss in a back-alley bar felt like rebellion. A kiss on a terrace by the Amstel feels like ordering coffee.

A community without an enemy

Maybe that's the real problem. A community that forms around shared exclusion doesn't quite know what to do when that exclusion disappears. The enemy vanishes, and then it turns out the community was partly made up of the enemy.

That's an uncomfortable thought. But you see it reflected everywhere. In the endless internal fights over Pride. Over who belongs and who doesn't. Over whether the rainbow is inclusive enough. A group that no longer has an external struggle finds an internal one.

It's different outside the Netherlands. In Hungary, Russia, Uganda, the struggle is still very real. A Hungarian friend said last year: "You argue about flags. We fight to exist." That puts things in perspective.

What remains

The fifty-year-old man on Reguliersdwarsstraat isn't really complaining. He's observing. The world changes. Places disappear. Others take their place.

Maybe that's the honest answer too. A community that lived on the margins for so long now has the luxury of simply being. Simply going to the gym. Simply going to yoga class. Simply home on the couch, with a partner and a cat.

What we trade away is the magic of being an outsider. That's a price. But it's a price most are happy to pay. And for those who miss the old scene, there's always Berlin. For now, at least, it's not over yet.