Still, I'm sad to see Town close not because of a lack of attendance, but because of market forces. Town was the first gay bar I ever visited, but I met my boyfriend of the last three years at a (straight) bar. Jared Alves notes that Town didn’t close for lack of visitors: What does Town closing mean for the city’s gay community? Contributors agree that the “gayborhood” isn’t going anywhere, but it won’t look the same in the future. But it did lead the gay community’s shift further east towards Shaw, ushering in a new generation of bars, like Dirty Goose, Takoda, and Uproar. When Town opened in 2007, the sleek, warehouse-style club seemed out of place at 8th and Florida, far from DC’s traditional “gayborhood” on 17th Street. Yet many of the places I frequented are gone: Phase 1 in Barracks Row, Apex in Dupont Circle, Icons in Fairfax (which wasn’t a gay bar, but hosted a lot of drag shows), not to mention all of the LGBT clubs in Navy Yard that closed to make way for Nationals Park over a decade ago. I came out twelve years ago, and like many queer kids in DC, I sought out gay bars as a refuge. The owner sold it to a developer who plans to build an apartment building in its place. Town, the massive gay dance club in Shaw, announced last week that it will close next summer after rumors to the contrary.
