It’s the same story every time: a cheap and often culturally diverse suburb plods along. The suburb next to it – the one closer to the city – becomes too expensive, and the white, creative, often queer types move to the neighbouring location.
Cool bars appear. Creative spaces pop up. Baristas with moustaches take over the cafés. The cultural diversity dies out as the crowd becomes whiter. It becomes more expensive. The creative types and the queers can’t afford it anymore. They move one suburb over, again, while the yuppies move in.
Gentrification. It’s an old story, and one that repeats itself, over and over.
When it comes to queer gentrification – for me at least – it gets a little trickier. Recently, I was sitting at a favourite Marrickville café of mine when I looked up and suddenly realised I was surrounded by the people I refer to as (and I’m one of them) The White Dykes of Marrickville. We’ve taken over. Now, the side of the suburb north of Marrickville Road is full of them, replacing the Greek and Vietnamese communities who are no doubt being pushed farther south and west by the gentrification process.
I love living in Marrickville. It’s relatively cheap, the coffee is good, the pubs are nice, and the beer is craft. The babes abound, and I can walk around, safe in the knowledge that who I am is not only welcome, but almost a majority. Living in an area where queer people surround you, where the elections come down to Labor versus the Greens, and where bikes almost outstrip cars (OK, not really at all, but there’s still a lot of them) is a luxury I’ve come to rely on. My queer bubble, my comfort zone, gives me the freedom and safety to be who I am.
But this lovely little queer bubble comes at a cost. At a cost to those we’ve driven out, and at an elevated cost to those who will inevitably drive us out. Just as Newtown is becoming unaffordable (and full of dicks), and Erskineville is becoming almost unrecognisable (what even is that bourgie Woolies, seriously? Also, RIP Imperial), soon Marrickville will fall. It will no longer be full of The White Dykes, but instead (as is happening, just go to the Henson on a Sunday), The Yummy Mummies, and The Yuppies. Babies replace dogs, rents go up, queers go south and west, and the Greek and Vietnamese communities get forced even farther away from their Marrickville heartland.
I can howl and scream at gentrification (and, let’s be real, lockout laws) for ruining my queer bubble all I want, but I still can’t help but feel a twinge of guilt for the people whom my bubble has unseated. I want my queer bubble, and in a lot of ways I need it, but it still doesn’t feel nice to know that it’s a come at a cost to other marginalised communities.
It’s not really a problem with a solution, though. As a marginalised community, we’re quite powerless to fix it, and powerless to those who copycat us because we’re trendy and then drive us out as a result. I wish we could take a suburb from a white middle class community, because I’d feel far less guilty setting up a queer bubble in, say, Double Bay, but unless a whole host of houses become available for us to squat, or somehow Sydney’s ballooning housing prices fix themselves, it’s just not going to happen.
We’ll continue to drive out other marginalised communities, creating our short-lived bubble, before it’s burst by those richer than us, and the unaffordability of Sydney engulfs yet another suburb, and yet another marginalised community.
It’s actually fucking scary.
This week…
This Thursday August 13, the Red Rattler is celebrating taking a 60 per cent share in the building with a free party, with tunes by Kooky fave DJ Gemma. Get on down and celebrate community-run spaces.
This weekend’s a busy one for our classic parties. Girlthing, since being booted from Q Bar last month, is trialling out a new home in the form of Goodgod this Friday August 14. It’ll feature a bunch of the regular DJs, and the fantastic Kato. It’s also Cunningpants’ birthday, so go and squish her face with birthday love and kisses.
And on Saturday August 15, Heaps Gay is taking over all three levels of the Oxford Hotel – again, featuring all the regulars, as well as Lady Stardust Kate Bush and Wuthering Heights Crew. I have no idea what either of these acts are, but their names excite me very much.
[Above left: Kato; Above right: Cunningpants; Main image: photo by Brian Yap via Flickr]
