“There’s not a single place I haven’t had sex,” reminisces LGBT campaigner and former porn actor Gerrit-Jan Wielinga, 47, showing me around Amsterdam’s oldest gay bar, the Spijker, which turns 40 this year. From 2000 to 2005 he worked as a bartender here: a place where lifelong friendships were made and sex and cheap beer were on tap.

Since those days, the Spijker has hardly changed. The small, dimly lit bruin cafė, with its blacked-out windows, red lights and erotic art, still has its vintage pool table at the back and an open fire. Spijker’s trademark twin TVs behind the bar – one showing porn, and one with cartoons (today it’s Snow White) – have been there since the 80s. Punters would sometimes do a double take, Wielinga remembers, when they recognised him in the onscreen action.

Upstairs, though, the voyeur mirrors around the urinals have gone and the famous dark room is now more of a cupboard – illustrating the bar’s shift from prime cruising spot to a place to meet friends.

The interior of the Spijker. The decor has not changed in years, although the bar’s primary function has shifted from cruising to a place to meet friends. Photograph: Courtesy: Deborah Nicholls-Lee

The city beyond the bar echoes this change, with mass tourism now engulfing Amsterdam’s gay scene, and gay and straight visitors partying side by side. Since the late 90s, budget air travel has attracted stag parties and other young weekenders, drawn to the red light district and coffee shops, creating a lucrative market for property investors and squeezing the gay bars out.

In the beginning, people came here and did not tell the outside they were gay. It was safe, very private Ted Scheele

Ted Scheele, 67, and her husband Pim, 78, have been coming to the bar since the 70s, when Spijker catered mainly to the leather crowd. “In the beginning, people came here and they did not tell the outside that they were gay. This [place] was very safe, very private,” she says. Today, it is the open friendliness of the bar that makes it special. “Many gay people bring their sisters, their brothers and even their mothers! Even with the videos, they don’t mind – they see actually what it is to be gay.”

When the Spijker opened on Amsterdam’s Kerkstraat in 1978, the area was bursting with gay bars and hotels, and the Leidsestraat – cutting through it and book-ended with gay discos – was nicknamed the “Rue de Vaseline”. Spijker was known for its most beautiful butt competition, in which the winner received a 100-guilder note between their bum cheeks. In 1983, when the bar came under the ownership of theatre enthusiast Raphael Brandow, it even opened its own 65-seat repertory theatre, staging experimental pieces as well as jolly musicals.

When the Spijker bar opened on Kerkstraat in 1978, the area was bursting with gay bars and hotels. Gay tourism is now more concentrated on festivals and events. Photograph: Deborah Nicholls-Lee

But the Spijker was hit hard by the advent of Aids in Amsterdam. “One by one, they dropped dead like dominoes,” remembers Pim. “There were times when there were [just] five people in the bar, standing there like skeletons in their leather pants.” Then a GP in the red light district, he estimates that between 1980 and 1986 his practice lost around 150 patients to the disease.

The epidemic demonstrated the importance of the Spijker community and brought its customers closer together. Under a new owner, New Yorker Tony Derosa, the Spijker responded to the Aids crisis and re-engaged a reeling community by organising safe-sex parties during which marshals would circulate carrying trays of condoms and making sure the house rules were observed.

“We were a family and it was a support system,” says Mancunian Paul Tarrant, 57, the Spijker’s current owner, who started at the bar as a cleaner and condom distributor in 1995. “In those days, people needed people to confide in.”

Didi Licious hosting Saturday night bingo at the Spijker. The event draws the bar’s biggest crowd. Photograph: Courtesy: Deborah Nicholls-Lee

Today, the gay heartlands of the Kerkstraat, the Reguliersdwarsstraat and the red light district are struggling to survive. Since 2010, gay bars such as Argos, Bar Arc, Bump, Café April, Café Soho, Cockring and Havana – to name a few – have all shut up shop despite an action programme launched by the municipality in 2009 to re-establish Amsterdam as the gay capital of Europe. Bankruptcy is the biggest cause, but drugs busts and rent arrears have also forced closures. Now touristy bars, restaurants and karaoke joints serving a mixed crowd have taken their place.

The younger gay people don’t need gay bars any more. They have empowerment now Paul Tarrant, owner

Just one gay sauna remains, NZ, co-owned by New Zealander Richard Keldoulis, also the manager of Church cruise club. “We [the gay community] had 34 venues with dark rooms when I came here [in 1990],” he says. “Now we’re down to, I think, eight or seven.”

Amsterdam’s cruise bars never really recovered from the Aids epidemic, he says, which knocked out a whole generation of business people and tainted the sex industry. Cruising patterns have since changed and the sector has failed to adapt. “Gay business has stopped being inventive and new and fashionable … There’s a lot where you go in and they’re still playing Eurovision … I don’t think we’re giving people what they want.”

A typical artwork by by Touko Laaksonen, aka Tom of Finland, who once drank at the Spijker. Illustration: Illustrations © Tom Of Finland Foundation

It’s a trend mirrored across the globe, with gay meccas such as London, New York and Tel Aviv all reporting a diminished gay scene. In Soho and Vauxhall, London’s vanishing gay villages, and in New York’s “gaybourhood” of Chelsea, gentrification and rent increases have made it hard for independent gay clubs to compete with the budgets of large property developers and their more profitable super-sized ventures. A once-thriving alternative scene has made way for luxury flats and a homogenised entertainment district.

Gay dating apps such as Grindr and Hornet have also made gay bars increasingly obsolete.

“In the 70s, 80s and 90s, you needed to get out of your house; you needed to go to a park or a bar or a discotheque,” says Wielinga. “I remember all those long nights, hunting men like crazy … With the apps, you can have sex with your neighbour.”

Tarrant believes emancipation is also a factor in the scene’s decline. His regulars tend to be over 40. “The younger gay people don’t need gay bars any more,” he says. “They have empowerment now.

“The typical 90s gay scene is changing,” agrees Janine Fluyt, spokesperson for Amsterdam Marketing, but says Amsterdam is still known as “the open, tolerant and inclusive city, where everyone is welcome”. Gay tourism is still thriving here, she says, but is now more about festivals such as Milkshake and Pride.

In this changing climate, the Spijker has done well to outlive so many of its competitors. To celebrate its 40th anniversary, the bar will have its own boat in the canal parade on the 4 August, the highlight of Pride Amsterdam. This year the theme is “heroes”, and the Spijker crew will be commemorating the bar’s early days by dressing as gay icons of the 70s, including Tom of Finland, who once drank at the bar.

The orgies are no more. Now it’s bingo night, hosted each Saturday by drag act Miss Didi Licious, that draws the biggest crowd. The strength of the Spijker, says Tarrant, has really always been the social aspect rather than the cruise scene: “You can come in here on your own and you don’t know anybody and they’ll say, ‘Hi, how are you doing?’ … It’s just so friendly.”

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