Birmingham Gay Village

rdf:langString Birmingham Gay Village

rdf:langString Birmingham Gay Village

rdf:langString Birmingham Gay Village

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rdf:langString The Missing Bar displaying a giant gay pride flag at Birmingham Pride 2012

rdf:langString The Eden Bar at Birmingham gay pride 2012.

rdf:langString The Village Inn, a popular venue on Hurst Street

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rdf:langString Birmingham Pride 2012 Eden Bar.jpg

rdf:langString The Village Inn - geograph.org.uk - 259743.jpg

rdf:langString File:Birmingham Gay Village Map With Labels.png

rdf:langString Birmingham, England

rdf:langString The Birmingham Gay Village is an LGBT district or "gaybourhood" next to the Chinese Quarter in Birmingham city centre, centred along Hurst Street, which hosts many LGBT-friendly businesses. The village is visited by thousands of people every week and has a thriving night life featuring clubs, sports bars, cocktail bars, cabaret bars and shops, with most featuring live entertainment including music, dancing and drag queens. The area expanded from just the Nightingale Club and Windmill bar in the 1980s, to multiple bars and venues in the surrounding streets, with the area first curtained off from the rest of the city by the Smallbrook Queensway section of the Inner Ring Road. This took place in the 1950s, when the area was a little warehouse district with a few small businesses. The area was expanded in the 1980s when land to the east of Hurst Street was cleared for the building of the Arcadian Centre, with the only surviving building being that of the Missing Bar. The Gay Village finally took its form in the 1990s after the number of venues increased and gave the area more of a boundary, while the increasing number of bars resulted from an increasing number of customers and amount of diversity offered. The starting point for unhindered growth of the gay village was the partial decriminalisation of gay sex between males with the Sexual Offences Act 1967. A victory for gay rights and a reflection of attitudes changing towards gay people, the act became a springboard for a gay liberation movement in Birmingham and countless lesbian and gay organizations were created over the following decades to challenge attitudes. The 2017 gay, lesbian and bisexual population of the West Midlands was recorded at 2.2% or 128,920 of the estimated 5.86 million residents of the West Midlands region. In 2009, the gay and lesbian population of Birmingham was estimated to be around 6 percent or 60,000 of the estimated 1.03 million residents. At the end of May 2009, Birmingham City Council approved plans for a £530,000 environmental improvement scheme at the heart of the city's Gay Village area. The changes included extending the avenue of street trees to the full length of Hurst Street and parts of Kent Street; widening pavements to create space for café bars to provide outdoor seating and brighter street lighting with decorative lanterns.