Death of a Gay Ghetto 6

Vancouver's Dirty Gay Secret And Why They're Talking (Again)

(underlining by FuelMix)
  
But times have changed. In the past five years, Canada has seen far fewer gay travellers visiting from the United States. In 2008, Community Marketing Inc, a San Francisco gay travel research firm, reported that 27 percent of its self-selected pool of gay travellers had visited Canada in the past year. Since then, that number has dropped by half, even though overall tourism has slipped by only 10 percent.  

Vancouver has fared even worse. From 2006 to 2008, Community Marketing’s research showed Vancouver to be the most popular gay destination in Canada for American travellers, leading Toronto and Montreal by a small margin. In the last two years, Vancouver has fallen to third place. 

And there are other small warning signs. Among both American and Canadian travellers, Vancouver lags behind Montreal and Toronto as a city with a “gay-friendly reputation” — a vital measure of strength in the gay tourism industry

 ------Destination Has-Been: Why Vancouver is losing its share of gay travellers, Xtra, 17 January 2013

Hmmm........that's interesting........ We are ahead of the curve on a number of fronts. Not long ago, we did a 5 part analysis of The Unravelling of Vancouver's Gay Ghetto (and know for a fact that it received a healthy number of readers over there - none of whom commented directly on the blog - must've been something to do with this blog's policy of disallowing anonymous or venom-laden spew).

So let's see.......notwithstanding hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics, the legalization of gay marriage plus gorgeous coastal and alpine scenery, Vancouver is sliding in its ability to attract dollars and dicks.

Xtra's article lists some factors on which we comment:

1.    Since 2007, an historically strengthening  Canadian Dollar versus the US Dollar - and a weak US economy - has made it incrementally more expensive for Americans to come to Canada. 

Agreed - subject to the caveat that a gay man needs to travel.  It's like cruising with a suitcase. If they're allegedly shunning YVR, then irrespective of the macro environment, something must suck in YVR.


2.    Tourism Vancouver's shift from direct gay advertising in favour of psychographic marketing. 

In other words, this is the replacement of "hey fag, come to YVR!" with, "hey guys (str8 or otherwise) here's what you could do in YVR" - to which we would boldly add, "......if you can make it past the druggies, the homeless and the panhandlers and not get pissed off in the process."

To be fair, Xtra's article also points out that Tourism Vancouver's gay promotion budget has come back to 2007 levels, although that is less than other Canadian cities such as Montreal and only slightly higher than much smaller cities like Halifax, Nova Scotia.

We think that  given the drug-fucked, debt-ridden, diseased specimens of errr......"manhood" staggering around the 2-Block (and shrinking) epicentre of YVR's Gay Ghetto, the decision to concentrate on psychographic marketing makes sense. What rational choice did Tourism Vancouver have? 

Honestly, if the men aren't worth bragging about, move on. We don't blame Tourism Vancouver.  They needed to reframe the advertising context and they did - effectively making the YVR fag invisible. 

That's not a bad thing. It presents the YVR fag with a window of opportunity at "Qmmunity self-analysis"...... *barf*, *barf*, *puke* *hysterical laughter*........yeah, yeah we know..........it's the West Coast........we occasionally pander to political correctness.


3.    Gay travel research showing that gay men don't care about the destination - but demand that the destination care about them.   Xtra's article doesn't elaborate on this in the context of YVR, so we will:

YVR's gay scene is neither sophisticated, cosmopolitan nor varied. Small time 20-something hustlers or badly ageing queens fleeing from small towns and broken famlies in Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchawan bring their insular mentality and bigotry with them.

The urban landscape of YVR's gay ghetto is sad. How such a tiny area can be so run down for so long is surprising. What message does THAT send to a gay tourist?

Near Zero choice of quality gay venues and events - and even those are allegedly in the stranglehold of "promoters" who "add value" by drug dealing and bad mouthing or sabotaging the competition. Yeah........that's gay friendly all right, just what a gay tourist needs to know and hear - with the unmistakeable stench of poppers and pervasive criminality.


4.    The fickleness of the gay traveller.  What's hot today is so over tomorrow. 

We agree - subject to the caveat that YVR was NEVER hot. It was at best microwaved but never cooked because the dish had no substance to begin with.


5.    The need for tourism authorities to work with the "gay community". 

In contrast to Vancouver, Tourism Montreal not only buys ad space, but actively funds gay friendly events and attractions. 

Quoting from Xtra's article (underlining by FuelMix):

“It’s important that we work closely with our local community, because they are the ones who create the community which people are going to see when they’re here,” says Tanya Churchmuch, who manages gay promotions for Tourism Montreal. “We can’t have a really insular gay community and then tell the world to come and visit. They’re going to be disappointed."

Did we mention Vancouver gays have a really fucked up insular mentality.....? Yeah, we did. 


6.    The need to incubate and finance new ideas.

We agree.  

But Vancouver's insular gay mentality and history of rampant corruption, fraud, conflict of interest, silly turf wars, lack of accountability (or prosecution) and drug-fucked complacency, are symptoms of a gay societal culture that is going to need more than another Big Party or brochure to cure.

The 2 fundamental questions to be answered are these:

• Is Vancouver's gay community worth keeping?
• Is Vancouver's gay community worth promoting?

 In its present condition, we would answer, NO.  

Conclusion

For the record, we have nothing to gain by gratuitously bashing Vancouver's pathetic gay scene. However, we feel that Vancouver presents a text book example of How Not To Run A Gay Ghetto. We are witnessing a gay paradigm in its death spasms.  Like a comet sighting, they don't come along very often, but they are always harbingers of the future.

Anyone who bothers to read this blog's 6 part analysis of Gay Vancouver, will realize that we have provided not only the road map, but the solution.

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