Where is the gay hotspot in Washington, DC?  “Wherever I am,” answered one lovable wise guy when a group of us was asked this question at the start of a historical walking tour conducted by the Rainbow History Project.

Of course we thought we already knew the answer: Dupont Circle.  But as it turns out, it’s an open question whether Dupont Circle remains the gay epicenter of the nation’s capital, or whether that even matters.  Our walk through the neighborhood on a sultry Saturday morning in June, the weekend of Capital Pride, seemed more about what was gone than checking off a list of iconic gay landmarks.

Tourists flocking to the District in August, the peak season for visitors, may seek out what they believe to be the city’s gay Mecca.  And for many decades, Dupont Circle was indeed that place.  But how did it come to be so?  The answer was surprisingly mundane: cheap real estate, explained our guide, Jeff Donahoe, who, with other volunteers at the Rainbow History Project, is collecting an oral history of LGBT Washington, DC, along with giving tours.

“It was the late 1960s, there was white flight, and in April 1968, when the riots happened, smoke actually filled Dupont Circle,” Donahoe said.  “Real estate was inexpensive, you could get a ratty apartment and find cheap social space.”

And you could find other “subversives.”  The area was already home in the 1960s to anti-war protesters, the Black Panthers and the alternative music scene among others.  It became the perfect training ground for a new and emerging group of activists as the gay liberation movement began to find its footing.  Cruising gay bars was still a million miles away, even though the ability to do so was eventually spawned right in the same neighborhood.

But cruising wasn’t an overnight sensation either.  When the LGBT community first began to populate Dupont Circle, you could not stand in bars except to wait for tables (this rule applied to all bars not just gay ones.)  Nor could you move your own drink, we learned, which had to be done by a waiter.  This made bars a difficult place to meet anyone.  But it was overcome, Donahoe informed us, by an ingenious idea.  Booth numbers and telephones.

And so began “gay cruising” — but in a rather sedate way.  You could sit in booth 8 and eye a cute guy in booth 15 and give him a call on the phone conveniently placed in every booth.

If you wanted to find a gay roommate or an LGBT-friendly hangout, you went to what was colloquially known as the community center, which evolved into Lambda Rising, perhaps the locale’s most important landmark, but which sadly closed in 2010.  Lambda was the inspiration of Deacon Maccubbin who opened it originally as a head shop and craft center called Earthworks.  It occupied premises at 1724 20th Street, NW, a street that became the block party precursor to Capitol Pride.

Lambda Rising eventually became a popular bookstore but retained its unofficial community center status throughout its existence.  Not far away from its original 20th street location was the short-lived lesbian collective, the Furies, which also published a newspaper and where noted out author, Rita Mae Brown, lived while writing Ruby Fruit Jungle.

Two moves later and Lambda Rising was, as Donahoe put it, “on main street,” occupying a large storefront on Connecticut Avenue, NW, a major DC thoroughfare.  The huge picture windows in front meant that you could not go in or out without being seen.  Dupont Circle was finally out.

Nearby was Rascals, a drag club that was a distinct departure from more traditional venues and featured three levels of bars and dance spaces.  Rascals followed loosely in the footsteps of the more formal training ground provided by The Academy, established in 1961 and which remains a major fixture in the DC drag scene.  But at Rascals, smiled Donahoe, “if you had a boom box, a tape and a boa you were in.  It was a much more porous way of doing drag.”

And then, even before the 2010 closure of Lambda Rising, it all began to change. Where before you might seek out beefcake, today you find cupcakes.  The bars and clubs and secret places are now pizza parlors and mattress stores.  And although Dupont Circle remains home to a sizable gay population, there has been a new “gay flight” out to the suburbs for those who want cheaper rent, their own home, or to raise kids.

Nearby Logan Circle is vying to replace Dupont Circle as the new gay hot spot now, along with the adjoining 14th Street, NW which is also the capital’s new restaurant row, and offers a decided mixture of chic and eclectic.  The drab normality of mattress discount stores on Connecticut Avenue has been eclipsed by upscale trendy furniture stores on 14th street.  The annual high-heeled drag race down 17th Street, NW at Halloween now draws straight families and their kids who drive in from the suburbs to pack the sidewalk as spectators.

But while DC has always more or less embraced grown men in frocks in their annual dash down 17th street in wobbly stilettos, there were never riots.  No Stonewall.  Donahoe paused, when asked why not, then explained the culture of DC to his tour group.  DC is a political town, he said.  Problems here are solved less on the street and more often in the law courts or on Capitol Hill.  Rather than protesting, you put on your suit and tie and you deliver your grievance in person.

It was an appropriately unexciting answer, rather like the explanation of Dupont Circle’s gay origins and its evolution into homogenous banality.  So perhaps our witty wag was right after all.  DC’s gay hot spot is now just wherever you happen to be.

Photo Credit: washington.org