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kunsthalextracity · 4 years

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The History of Queer Nightlife in Antwerp: Self-Interview in a Convex Mirror

In the framework of the group exhibition ‘Daily Nightshift’, Kunsthal Extra City collaborated with the Urban Studies Institute of the University of Antwerp on a lecture series. Due to COVID-19 we unfortunately couldn’t allow these lectures to take place at our premises.

To replace his lecture, professor Bart Eeckhout wrote an interview with himself.

In his text Eeckhout, board member of the Urban Studies Institute at the University of Antwerp, researches the history of queer nightlife in Antwerp and the spatial shifts that have occurred along the way. Where in the city were sexual minorities able to make contact? In what kind of places of entertainment? How did these change in shape and location? Which material traces of this nightlife remain?

Text & images: Bart Eeckhout

The History of Queer Nightlife in Antwerp: Self-Interview in a Convex Mirror

Q. So, professor, before Covid-19 changed everyone’s plans, you were going to give a lecture about the history of queer nightlife in Antwerp as part of the public program for the exhibition?

A. Well, not quite a lecture.

Q. But you were going to entertain our audience with lots of slides and flashy pictures?

A. Not really. As a matter of fact, I was wondering how to turn the presentation into something more than the delivery of an academic text, something that could satisfy an audience that is drowning in audiovisual information. The thing is that I saw myself forced to talk about a topic that is hard to illustrate, and to do so moreover as an amateur historian.

Q. How do you mean?

A. I actually teach English and American literature. But I happen to be the only board member of the Urban Studies Institute at the University of Antwerp who is simultaneously on the board of A*, the network of colleagues who specialize in gender and sexuality studies. There I have a reputation for being into queer studies and for stimulating the collaboration between queer academics and activists, since I consider myself to be both.

Q. And so the organizers came knocking on your door to ask if you could speak to the topic of queer nightlife in Antwerp?

A. Yes. And I accepted to do so because I have coincidentally been acquiring some expertise on the topic. Last year a colleague with whom I love to collaborate at the university, the media scholar Alexander Dhoest, got an invitation to contribute a chapter on Antwerp for an international book on gay neighborhoods in cities around the world – what used to be called “gay ghettoes.” We remembered that a PhD student of ours, the musicologist Rob Herreman, had spent a lot of time in archives to find out more about the recent history of LGBTQs in Antwerp in relation to music. Though we were hesitant to venture into terrain that should ideally be explored by skilled historians, we’re not aware of any Flemish colleagues doing academic research into recent LGBTQ history, certainly not with a specific focus on Antwerp. In addition, the book for which we were invited was being put together by architects and would thus probably cut us some slack. So we realized that the case of Antwerp would get attention in the collection only if we were willing to undertake the job ourselves.

Accepting to write the chapter has meant that we were forced to immerse ourselves quickly in the materials and sources we had at our disposal so as to develop a critical narrative that would meet the minimum requirements of academic scholarship. We were primarily interested in all the things we might learn from the exercise.

Q. And did you learn a few things?

A. I certainly hope so! One thing we hypothesized from the start is that the Anglo-American way of understanding gay neighborhoods would be only partially applicable to Antwerp, at best. And that is also what we argued at the more theoretical level. If you want to look for queer forms of geographic clustering in a Flemish city such as Antwerp, you should omit a lot of the social functions you find historically in the gay neighborhoods of New York or San Francisco. The “reverse diaspora” of sexual minorities from the countryside to the city that underpinned these metropolitan neighborhoods in the US never took place to the same extent, or in the same manner, in Flanders or Belgium.

In addition, a historic city such as Antwerp is relatively small by international standards. Getting around, even on foot or by bicycle, is easy, so that there’s no urgent need to choose particular residential areas if you happen to be queer. For these and several other reasons, the first thing to note about gay neighborhoods in Antwerp is that there was never anything more than some spatially clustered nightlife.

Q. Let’s talk for a moment about that nightlife then. How easy was it to go back in time to undertake your investigation?

A. That was one of the difficulties. It’s not as if you can simply fall back on standard published histories of queer life in Belgium or Flanders, let alone histories that deal specifically with Antwerp. The larger context isn’t so hard to sketch, but the specifics are a bit of a problem. When you research the history of public sex in Antwerp – by which in this case I mean the institutional environment for nondomestic sexual interactions among citizens – it isn’t hard to figure out how the first red-light district emerged during the city’s historic heyday in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. As this red-light district catered primarily to sailors, it was understandably located close to the river, in the narrow streets just north of the City Hall that came to be known as the Schipperskwartier or Skippers Quarter.

This much is standard knowledge. But how did same-sex interactions ever figure into that lusting, lawless, lowlife milieu? What might possibly be the historic sources in which you might find reliable evidence for same-sex intercourse taking place in this environment? There isn’t much you can go by. You must hope that somewhere a slight flicker will flare up to evoke a fleeting image of what might have been going on. Let me illustrate this by showing the invisibility of our topic at its most palpable. Here’s the picture of a street in the former Skippers Quarter. Do you recognize it?

Q. Not immediately.

A. Don’t blame yourself. Though I personally love to roam through all the little streets of Antwerp’s historic center, I must confess I had never bothered to walk through this one before my research took me there. It’s called the Gorter Street and it’s a very short, narrow, one-way street that is about as bland and uninteresting as you can imagine. Do you see the red-brick house in the middle of the image? That wasn’t always there, of course. If we can trust the history of house numbers, it stands where previously the Crystal Palace was to be found, a gay bar whose building collapsed, literally, sometime in the 1960s. But before the Crystal Palace was a gay bar, it was a luxury brothel, as far back as the turn of the twentieth century and even earlier. And that’s where we were able to locate our first piece of not entirely reliable evidence for same-sex goings-on – not entirely reliable because it requires a detour via the fictive world of novels and a willingness to fill in the blanks. What do you remember about the Flemish writer Georges Eekhoud?

Q. Not much.

A. He was our own Oscar Wilde, if you like – the first famous gay writer in Flanders who, like Wilde, had to defend himself in court. Unfortunately, he wrote in French, which means we’ve forgotten him even more efficiently than if he’d written in Dutch. Anyway, he published a novel in 1888, La nouvelle Carthage, in which he appears to evoke this particular brothel in great detail as a cave full of mirrors in which “all stages of debauchery” took place. Given his own sexual orientation, it’s very easy to imagine that these must have included same-sex interactions, but in his description Eekhoud preferred to remain coy about the sexual acts, so that it’s really for our own 21st-century imaginations to flesh out the specifics.

Q. So for what period did you find the first evidence of same-sex activities in the Skippers Quarter that didn’t take the form of literary fiction but of nonfictional testimony?

A. We had to jump to the first half of the twentieth century for that. Mainly, what we then find is people testifying to drag performances taking place in the Skippers Quarter. Our favorite example is that of Danny’s Bar, a notorious bar for sailors where both the owner and his male staff were dressed as women and the sailors were being tempted into maximum binging.

On an online forum for retired sailors, we found some very juicy recollections of the kind of ritual that typically went on in this bar – how young sailors were being lured in as a sort of prank by older sailors, how these youngsters tended to be awestruck by the Hollywood-star prettiness of the women, and how they would be made to drink so much (and sometimes be drugged as well) until they woke up in bed upstairs only to find they had been sleeping with a man. It’s fair to speculate that some of the visiting sailors must have known they were going to be able to sleep with a man at Danny’s Bar and must have returned to the place to experiment with sexual desires and gender identities that fell outside the mainstream norms of their day and age.

Q. Are there any signs left of Danny’s Bar?

A. Not unless you have x-ray vision. The street is now almost entirely residential, though there is a modern-day “brasserie” in the house where the bar used to be. If walls could talk!

Q. These recollections of Danny’s Bar take us automatically into the second half of the twentieth century, I guess?

A. Yes they do. On the eve of the Second World War, we know that the Skippers Quarter had acquired a gay connotation to those in the know. Yet it didn’t stick to that area. After the war, its gay nightlife started to spread beyond the city’s traditional red-light district. A few of these new bars were still nearby, in the area around the Cathedral and the City Hall, but the majority sprang up close to the Central Station. This is also when we’re beginning to see some diversification. The Shakespeare, for instance, was a bar in the historic center. On the one hand, it was still occasionally visited by sailors and sex workers. On the other, and more importantly, it had a female bartender and gradually came to attract a female crowd – a niche for which there hadn’t been a market yet in the Skippers Quarter.

Meanwhile, in the working-class streets leading toward the Central Station, a number of bars were opening that were all operated by men and served a male clientele – places like Fortunia, Week-End (later known as La Vie en Rose), and La Ronde. These were generally small operations. One of the streets, the Van Schoonhovenstraat, would go on to sport more than twenty such gay bars. In this picture I recently took, you get a sense of what this may have been like when you look at the structure of the street front, for instance the houses in the middle painted in blue and mauve (one of them surviving as a sex shop):

But the Van Schoonhovenstraat wasn’t the only street. Even if nearly all of the area’s gay bars have in turn disappeared, you might still recognize this iconic place, the one with the greatest staying power and cult status:

Q. Ah yes, Café Strange! It’s in the Dambruggestraat, right?

A. Yes, and it still allows you to step into a time machine and take a trip down memory lane. We used it as our prime architectural case study, because its history shows you a lot about such gay bars in the second half of the twentieth century. A few facts and details hopefully help bring this history to life.

Café Strange was started by a gay couple as a gay-friendly “brasserie” back in 1955. The name, “Strange,” was meant to be suggestive without being explicit. In those years, the curtains behind the windows were still systematically drawn so that no passerby could look inside. You couldn’t just step inside either, but had to knock or ring a bell and wait for someone to let you in. To expedite this process, a small porch was constructed so that you could first step into the anonymous porch, close the door behind you and then open the door to the actual café – all with an eye to being as discrete as possible.

Over the years, the bar became so successful that its interior had to be reorganized and expanded so that it could accommodate not only a buffet at the back but also make some space for a dance floor. The café had a good reputation for many years until one of the owners died in the mid-seventies and his remaining partner got into various kinds of trouble that ended dramatically with his getting killed. It was then that a new gay couple, Armand and Roger, took over – you probably know Armand as the remaining owner. This was in 1980, in the era of early emancipation, and so they decided to be less discrete by painting the building’s façade in a sort of pink and adding a drawing of a sexy sailor on the outside. Inside, pictures of semi-naked and naked men were hung on the walls. The buffet was moved to the front of the room and a professional DJ was hired to turn the place into a small part-time disco. For a while, the owners even produced their own little magazine to inform gay patrons about leisure opportunities – remember that this was before the internet made looking up such information a piece of cake.

The first decades under the new owners went well: the place had the reputation of being at the same time modern, unpretentious, and laid back. There were a lot of flamboyant theme parties in which patrons could win grand prizes such as a flight to Athens or a weekend in Amsterdam or Paris. What’s interesting to observe also about the history of Café Strange is the shift in demographic over the years: while in the 1980s you could find a mix of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals from a wide range of ages and social classes in the bar, this narrowed down in the 1990s to mostly gay men, and then by the new millennium morphed again into a mix of gay and gay-friendly visitors. Indeed, by the nineties, these smaller gay bars in especially the area close to the station were increasingly being pushed out of business by a new type of venue, such as The Hessenhuis.

A building with a totally different allure, of course. It’s originally from 1564 and part of the city’s historical patrimony. After undergoing renovation in 1975, it reopened as a temporary exhibition space, and then in 1993 a gay-friendly bar opened that doubled at night as a club for mainly gay youngsters. Soon, the Hessenhuis became one of their two favorite commercial nightlife venues, together with the Red & Blue. This new generation of larger, trendier, more spectacular, and essentially self-contained clubs gradually drove the small gay bars out of the market, and thus also put an end to the sense of a particular neighborhood or area in which many such bars were clustered.

Today, much of the city’s history of gay and lesbian nighttime entertainment has evaporated and become materially invisible in the streetscape. There was a time, during the second half of the twentieth century, that Antwerp contained literally dozens of gay and lesbian bars, but almost none of these survive now. Unfortunately, I’m not aware that anyone is actively trying to honor this material history by installing commemorative plaques or making exhibitions about it. It survives mostly in the memory of an aging cohort of participants, hence my insistence at the outset about the relative difficulty of bringing my topic to life to a younger generation raised on a constant stream of immersive images. But perhaps now that Alexander, Rob, and I have made our first archeological efforts and undertaken a basic form of mental mapping, a curious young historian will come along to flesh out our very schematic findings and dig up all the beautiful, funny, and naughty traces of queer nightlife that may still be hiding in public and private archives. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

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littlebitliz · 6 years

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wow! it’s the first blog post and i don’t quite know what to talk about. i asked my instagram stories and the overwhelming response was about the works by Becky Albertalli. specifically, the topic that struck me was, “Why do we need more movies like Love, Simon?” to expand on that, “Why do we need more queer youth and queer love stories in big name pop culture and media?”

and why do we? why is Love, Simon so important to millions of queer youth across the united states and outside? there’s no clear answer other than: gay people deserve better. for as long as humans have been around, gay people have been ostracized and oppressed. not only has homophobia been prevalent, but homosexuality has always been a significant part of human existence. homosexual people have made some of the most amazing and historical changes in our history. so often was the sexuality of these inspiration people erased, not only then, but also now.

for example, you might not have known that Alan Turing, the man who decoded Enigma (the most infamous Nazi code during WW2) and created the first general modern computer was notoriously gay. he was convicted of gross indecency in the spring of 1952 after admitting to a sexual relationship with a man twenty years his junior. both men were convicted and charged, but Turing was exempt from prison due to opting into hormonal treatment to reduce libido via injections of synthetic oestrogen. two years later, after being banned from the cryptanalysis of Enigma and after participating in consistent hormonal therapy, Turing committed suicide by cyanide poisoning. in 2014, The Imitation Game (starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing) was released, and the truth about Turing’s sexuality became far more recognized all over the united states.

furthermore, Alexander the Great, who is considered one of the greatest military minds of Persian and Green history, Leonardo Da Vinci, one of the most famous artists of all time, Bayard Rustin, Martin Luther King Jr’s partner in politics and activism, Emily Dickinson, an extraordinarily famous poet, and Eleanor Roosevelt, first lady and advocate for the poor, were (reportedly) queer. i ask you, did YOU know they were queer? some of them were openly gay (most notably Rustin, but Dickinson and Da Vinci also did not hide their sexuality), some of them came out posthumously (first lady Roosevelt, especially, who was discovered to be queer via letters after her death) and some of them never really came out at all (Alexander the Great was just...gay!)

but what does it matter anyway? all of these historical figures are far gone, and there is no point in avenging their personal life when it was erased so long ago. the answer to that might be best as another question - did YOU know they were queer? generally, their sexualities are erased by history books and the were unspoken of during their lives. and, a follow up to my previous question, why is that? why did so many gay and queer and even transgender people have their identities hidden rom the spotlight? is it because the normalization of queerness was (and in many places, still is) outlawed? is it because the general society was far more comfortable with violent hate crimes then than they are now? or is it just because people were not supposed to be gay, it was not the standard, just as people were not supposed to be women or black or whatever. not to compare the plights of gay people, black people and women, but it certainly has the same standing - hate what is different, and what cannot be changed.

so what does queer historical people have to do with movies like Love, Simon? well, did YOU know any of them were queer? most people did not. most people dehumanize queerness and queer people; most people hate and oppress and fear queerness and queer people.

even today, in 2018, countless people in modern media are so quick to hate and oppress queerness and queer people. look at the white house right now; mike pence, donald trump, etc are all considered to be homophobic. LGB hate crimes have been steadily rising in recent years, and transgender youth are in some of the highest risks they’ve been in. but it’s the little stuff too - like how my wifi blocks inappropriate content by using keywords such as NSFW and gay, or how tumblr marks posts as ‘explicit’ when tagged with lesbian or gay, or how in some developing countries, queer movies are rated higher (from PG-13 to R, R to X, etc) because gay people are ‘inappropriate’. Love, Simon, in a nutshell, was and is important because it’s not about this guy who had this horrible homophobic experience and his whole character growth is about being gay and being bullied, but instead his horrible homophobic experiences + being gay and being bullied = a minor part of his story. instead, his story is the same ugly cliches we see in every teen romance movie ever. Love, Simon was as cheesy and goofy and wholesome as The Kissing Booth or F The Prom or Candy Jar or DUFF. Love, Simon followed the same rules as these teen romances, and began to break down the barriers around gay people and sexuality as a whole.

but why are those barriers so suffocating anyway? it’s not like any law in the western world prevents people from being gay or transgender. perhaps it’s because gay youth are take their own lives four times the amount straight youth does. or maybe it’s because that number skyrockets nine times when their family has a poor reaction to their coming out. or maybe because queer young adults with rejecting families (as opposed to mildly rejecting, neutral or accepting families) are six times more likely to have major depression, four times more likely to have unprotected sex and four times more likely to do and use illegal drugs. and with the federal legalization of same sex marriage in 2015, nothing is legally stopping queerness and queer people from existing. in this, though, comes one realization: nothing is legally stopping people from hating, oppressing, fearing and dehumanizing queerness and queer people.

this is a very long, drawn out way of saying Love, Simon (and, more broadly, queer love stories in big name pop culture) is important because it’s not about this kid’s horrible experiences of being gay and how he had to fight tooth and nail and work from the ground up to become a person who’s more than just gay. instead, it’s a story about a kid who’s homophobic backstory is a minuscule detail in his character because he is so much more than the kid who suffered; his character growth isn’t going from hating himself to tolerance, it went from tolerance to LOVE and ACCEPTANCE. his story is so important because it normalizes the way gay kids feel, just like other cliche teen romances normalize the way straight kids feel. it’s just like any other romance movie except that he’s GAY and that one little detail changes so much about him as a person. his story isn’t just about being gay, it’s about finding love, and he happens to be gay; his character growth is about accepting his sexuality and being proud of his differences; he teaches others to also be proud of who they are and to never shy away from using their voice because if you don’t, who will? Love, Simon, and other stories like it (Alex Strangelove, Leah on the Offbeat, Will Grayson Will Grayson, etc) are important because they’re not just about being gay, they’re about being gay and FALLING IN LOVE! and isn’t that just so beautiful?

this was a very drawn out blog post for such a short ending but i am very excited to write better things as time goes on. i just hope you all see how important this story was for ME. his coming out was such a strong scene but such a small part of who he is; he isn’t just the gay kid. he’s the gay kid who lives for theatre and likes oreos and cute boys who make him tongue tied at football games and he thinks ferris wheels and emails are the epitome of teen romance and he drinks iced coffee and he’s a hufflepuff and he’s more important than his coming out story. but with all of that, all of those beautiful wonderful details about him (his iced coffee, his harry potter fanaticism, etc) not once is his identity as gay erased, and that’s much much rarer than so many people realize. after centuries of not only fear but also hiding...i don’t know, i just think everyone should watch Love, Simon and then try to tell me it wasn’t the sweetest gosh darn movie ever.

and that’s me, signing off for the FIRST TIME in this blog. who knows, maybe i’ll actually keep up with this?

#littlebitliz #blog blog blog #love simon #QOTD: why do we need more queer youth and queer love stories in big name pop culture and media?

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soilrockslove · 7 years

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Book Asks

Rules: Complete the qualities with books you’ve read or want to read (novels, plays, stories, etc.) then tag some friends.

Tagged by @pilferingapples !

Book I Love: Les Miserables seems like it would be cheating, as would any of the Young Wizards books. I’ve talked a lot about both!

But until I get more spoons, I’ll say Young Wizards for now! <3

Just the sheer wideness of view - that so much of the world has it’s own feelings and thoughts and needs even if they are strange to us... and the unusual melding of science fiction and fantasy and reality. And the emphasis on love for the world and making it a better place even if sorrow will always be with us...

Book I Hate: I generally try to not “hate” books. But recently I have been Having Issues with biographers and historians writing about historical people with Mental Problems/Weirdness. It’s very frustrating. I think one of the worst things is seeing people getting reduced down to their Mental Stuff, or acting like it’s not compatible with being a member of society, so their political or social opinions get downplayed or completely ignored.

Book I Think is Underestimated: The Door into Fire and sequels by Diane Duane? Do those count? They may have had the misfortune of being published in the 80′s as pulp novels (and so having the most Unfortunate covers...) But they are really fantastic for all that. Maybe a bit over the top for some people, what with all the queerness, polyamory, and dragons. But it also has a lot of sweetness and character exploration - as well as an exploration of the standard medieval fantasy tropes (especially those around monarchy) and what responsibilities governments have to the people they govern.

Book I Think is Overestimated: I’ll have to agree with Pilferingapples on this one: The Hunchback of Notre Dame. It has some really excellent and groundbreaking parts. Especially about the place of architecture in the world and the characters of Grignoire and Quasimodo. But it was also written when Hugo was still Figuring His Shit Out both artistically and politically and it shows. >.< It’s great fodder for adaptations though!!!! Honestly all the adaptations are better than it!

Book I Want to See in a Movie Version: My partner and I have been throwing around the idea of the Silmarillion as a Heian/Edo/Meji era epic anime. It does lend itself well to that kind of drama and politics. I’ve seen some art and animation in that style that sets my mind afire with ideas! Seriously, there are some talented people on here!

Last Book/In Progress: I Just got my copy of The Salt Smugglers by Gerard de Nerval!!!! II am very much enjoying the introduction. It’s a joy to watch Nerval explain how he really didn’t want to fall afoul of the censors because that wouldn’t be Nice, and be *so thankful* that he has friends to guide him through the difficult process, unlike others whose beloved work might be stifled... all the while taking withering potshots at the censors and how full of bullshit the process was. XD

It’s a thing of beauty.

Book or Saga I Want to Finish: Moyashimon! It’s an unusual and fascinating manga about a person who can see and talk to microbes and who runs into all sorts of adventures and mysteries involving his ability when he goes off to an agricultural university! It also has a lot of interesting characters, humor, drama, cool microbiology info... and a really neat trans character. But unfortunately they translated the first few volumes into English and then stopped for years! ;_; Please translate some more into English! At this point it’s just a cocktease. I’ll bake you whatever you like!

Book or Saga I Don’t Want to Finish: The manga Kabuki. I always get sad when I get towards the end. I respect them not going on for a million volumes and keeping it at 4. But I really would like about 8 or so more volumes all focused on the Muromachi period arc. The modern stuff doesn’t interest me as much, but the immersion in the ancient era and seeing how weirdoes fit into that. I could read so much more.

Also - Mushishi! I keep slowly savoring the last few stories and drawing them out as long as possible!

Next Book: Moar Salt Smugglers! Also I’d like to read his Journeys in the Orient too.

The Worst Ending: This isn’t a book, but it’s sort of a play so that counts! :D

But right now, the ending of Elisabeth das Musical. I mean, You have Elisabeth’s father coming from Beyond the Grave and her son from the edge of the grave to remind her of who she was, is, and who she could still be... and she fails and realizes her failure. But she never gets a chance to really show herself learning from that?!? BS! I know that she’s pretty much going to die before the fullness of old age and that she doesn’t have much time left - like many people... but that doesn’t rule out room for growth.

Do I have to pull a Wie Du (Reprise) on Levay and Kunze here? Because this is sounding a bit “ zynisch, bitter, und allein” . I have it on good authority that spirits can show up from the future as well as the past at seances, so I swear I’m gonna show up for a word. “Titanie stay with me, do not disappoint me! Come and dictate another song!” *I show up* “She’ll be right on that, but in the mean time, can we have a little talk? And while we’re at it, what’s your deal with populist movements? I mean, half the play is how the Hapsburg monarchy harms people, so...?”

God it’s such a beautiful musical/opera, but some parts...

Tagging some people as soon as I recover from writing all this. But in the mean time, if you want, consider yourself tagged! :)

#memes #meme #books #les miserables #Young Wizards #Diane Duane #Moyashimon #mushishi #Nerval #elisabeth das musical

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