More Than A Feeling

More Than A Feeling
Boston, One Of America's Most Gay-Welcoming Cities

A gay flag hangs in the window of a student's dorm room at Harvard University

A city with hundreds of thousands of university students, one of the richest repositories of art in the world, a lively theatre scene, excellent restaurants galore, and one of the sexiest summer resorts now just an hour away by boat.  While New York gets busy attracting the rough edge of gaydom, Boston is Gay Refined.  Boston has high culture, but it's not snobby; in fact, it's one of the friendliest cities in the US.  The most European of American cities has a relatively compact city centre (people actually walk here, so meeting locals is easy), lots of history, and a decent public transport system. 

Harvard University's Sert Gallery recently hosted a provocative look at ACT UP posters

As in many Stage Three gay destinations, the outward appearance of gay life is not necessarily as pronounced as it was ten or twenty years ago before computers had us huddled over a little screen for most of the day for work and most of the night for play.  In Boston, capital of Massachusetts, the first US state to put gay marriage on the same legal level as heteromarriage, life goes on with acceptance and tolerance all around.  From coy images of young men at play in the Harvard Art Museum to strident ACT UP posters decrying the inertia at the beginning of the AIDS crisis in the United States at Harvard's Carpenter Center of the Visual Arts, there is enough to keep the culture vulture and his dilettante new boyfriend interested for weeks. 

Inside the ACT UP exhibit

When the Queer Theatre Festival is on, there is even more to see and do.  If you are lucky, you can catch a show by performer/activist Tim Miller, who has been shaking audiences with his jarring theatrical statements for years.  Tim is relentless in his dedication to enlightening minds one brain at a time.  In an apathetic land where change is measured by decades rather than years, the Tim Millers of the world are the lights of hope for the future.  If that all sounds dramatic, it is!  Drama and its sister Comedy ARE theatre.  Much theatre and other gay-related events and activities are increasingly taking place in Boston's burgeoning South End, the Calderwood Pavilion being among the favourite destinations for night out among savvy locals—as is Mandarin Oriental, Boston, the city's newest five-star hotel located on Boyleston Street convenient both to the chic shopping area to the north of Boyleston and to the South End to its south.

Lesbian life is alive and well in Boston, a city where women have traditionally been seen as equals in society for longer than in other parts of the US.  Massachusetts is a wonderful place to be a woman; there are many clubs, activities, and well-attended special events such as DykeNight catering to ladies. 

Spotlight on the male form at the Museum Of Fine Arts

Whatever you do, don't miss the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum or its nearby neighbour, the Museum Of Fine Arts, both of which count among the world's most outstanding art collections.  Harvard University's vast array of museums include art, yes, but also such themes as natural history, anatomy, and archaeology.  Its Museum of Mineralogy and Geology is one of the most comprehensive in the world., one of America's most respected, is home to one of the country's most intellectual campuses, with excellent museums and exhibits of its own.

Summer Scene by Jean Frédéric Bazille is one of several male works in the Harvard Art Museum.

When Boston's days are getting hotter and longer, thoughts turn to the beach, which in Gayssachusetts means Cape Cod and Provincetown.  Like its southern sister, Key West, Provincetown has long been a refuge for artists and other unconventional types; unlike Key West, though, Provincetown still has a very gay feel to it, especially on party weekends like Fourth Of July.  The aptly named Bay State Cruise Company has cut travel time from Boston to Provincetown to only 90 minutes with its new, high-speed ferry services, which include direct services from Boston's Logan International Airport to the Cape.  Like Fire Island in New York, Provincetown's quiet isolation is the main attraction, though the frenetic social scene of Fire Island is not replicated to the same degree on the Cape.