Gay Guide to Denver
Denver banned anti-gay discrimination in 1991, following Aspen in 1977 and Boulder in 1987. Colorado's answer arrived the next year: Amendment 2, passed by 53 percent of voters in 1992, forbade the state and every city in it from protecting gay people at all. Boycotts followed and Colorado spent four years being called the Hate State. In 1996 the Supreme Court struck Amendment 2 down in Romer v. Evans, the first decision in its history to hold that hostility toward gay people is not on its own a legitimate basis for law. Lawrence and everything after were built on that foundation.
Capitol Hill is the district, strung along Colfax and the streets either side. Charlie's does country and western with dance lessons and has outlasted most of its peers, with X Bar and R&R nearby, and the neighborhood is dense and walkable in a way little else in Denver is.
The rest is scattered by design. Tracks, out in Five Points, is the big warehouse club; Trade sits in the Santa Fe Arts District; El Potrero runs Latin nights; and Li'l Devils, the Tight End, Buddies and Town Hall Collaborative are spread across the south and west. Lannie's Clocktower Cabaret does downtown, and Hamburger Mary's covers brunch and drag near City Park.
The Center on Colfax is the largest LGBTQ+ community center in the Rocky Mountain region and does the work for a catchment far bigger than the city, with the Transgender Center of the Rockies and Prism Community Collective alongside it.
Denver is flat, bikeable and sits a mile above sea level, which is felt on a first night out more than anyone expects. The mountains are forty-five minutes west, and a good many weekends here end up there.