Editing Gay bar (section)

=== Netherlands ===
{{see also|LGBT history in the Netherlands}}

[[File:Café ‘t Mandje.jpg|thumb|Café 't Mandje at Zeedijk in Amsterdam]]
In [[Amsterdam]], there were already a few gay bars in the first quarter of the 20th century. The best known was {{ill|The Empire (Amsterdam)|lt=The Empire|nl|The Empire}}, in [[Nes (Amsterdam)|Nes]], which was first mentioned in 1911 and existed until the late 1930s.<ref>Pieter Koenders, ''Tussen christelijk réveil en seksuele revolutie - Bestrijding van zedeloosheid in Nederland'', Amsterdam 1996, p. 704-706</ref> The oldest that still exists is [[Café 't Mandje]], which was opened in 1927 by lesbian [[Bet van Beeren]].<ref name="gaybarnl">[[Gert Hekma]] (Gay Studies University of Amsterdam), [https://web.archive.org/web/20050306020448/http://www2.fmg.uva.nl/gl/gaybar.html The Amsterdam Bar Culture And Changing Gay/Lesbian Identities]</ref> It closed in 1982, but was reopened in 2008.

After [[World War II]], the Amsterdam city government acted rather pragmatic and tolerated the existence of gay bars. In the 1960s their number grew rapidly and they clustered in and around a number of streets, although this was limited to bars, clubs and shops and they never became residential areas for gays, like the [[gay village]]s in the US.

Since the late 1950s the main Amsterdam gay street was [[Kerkstraat]], which was succeeded by [[Reguliersdwarsstraat]] in the early 1980s, when the first openly gay places opened here, like the famous cafe April in 1981, followed by dancing Havana in 1989.<ref>Reguliers.net: [http://www.reguliers.net/history.php History of Reguliersdwarsstraat]</ref> Other streets where there are still concentrations of gay bars are [[Zeedijk]], Amstel and [[Warmoesstraat]], the latter being the center of the Amsterdam [[leather subculture|leather scene]], where the first leather bar already opened around 1955.<ref name="gaybarnl"/><ref>About the history of the Amsterdam [http://www.leatherhistory.eu/ Leather Scene] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190911203247/http://www.leatherhistory.eu/ |date=September 11, 2019 }}</ref> [[The Queen's Head (Amsterdam)|The Queen's Head]] is a gay bar located at Zeedijk 20 in the centre of Amsterdam.