There must be worse ways to deal with a boycott than the RVT did, but I can't think of any.
So your community tells you that they're not keen on ESC this year and they get busy and organise alternative events to fill your venue instead, so you don't lose any money. You accept and new events are announced (the organisers even agreeing not to mention the boycott as you want to stay out of politics).
Then a week before the ESC you panic because you might not make as much money as you might otherwise do, so you cancel all community events, announce an ESC viewing, watch your community go from stunned to angry to furious, and cancel their other events in your venue as well.
So now the RVT is completely shut on Saturday and some events have decamped to other venues
it hurts me to see a rich owner not understanding his own community - or maybe he's right and it has already split into two separate communities.
Is there an older gay community that doesn't care about anything any more? Just wanna be left alone?
@jay_peper this is something that is playing out in a lot of the gay areas of cities - they've become so gentrified that it's mostly homogenously filled with middle-class, white, gay men who have access to all the rights, privileges, and security that their well-to-do straight peers have. This is one of the biggest things that has killed lesbian bars too - women and non-women lesbians still earn less on average and got priced out of the neighborhood. So now it's just rich hipsters with no community vibrancy or soul...grumble grumble rant rant....
Basically, this is a rant in agreement that there is a class of middle-class gay that "I got mine" and now doesn't see how different a world the rest of the queer community lives in.
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