Gay living neighbourhoods in London

Last Friday, I received the following e-mail from a gay guy who's going to be moving to London:

Dear GB,

I have been following your blog for quite a while and I have to say that I am most impressed by your writing. To put it shortly: you write well.

But I am not writing just to praise your writing. I am going to move to London in September to study Law and am wondering if you could recommend a gay neighbourhood in which to live, sort of like the Village and Chelsea were in New York (and where Hell's Kitchen is becoming). Not just a neighbourhood to go to for fun, but to live in. I have lived in a gay neighbourhood in Chicago before ('Boystown') and I had a really good time. It's just that I feel more at ease, and enjoy the almost palpable sexual energy in the air, in a gay ghetto than in a conventional neighbourhood. I know segregation is not good, and that integration is important, but I suppose for myself, I just want to live somewhere I can be absolutely comfortable in, where cruising boys is not only safe but also acceptable.

So: not sure if you could help with this?

Many thanks in advance!

It's a good question. But in fact, I don't think we really have a neighbourhood like New York's Village or San Francisco's Castro here in London.

The gay centre of London is in Soho, but it's not really an area where many people live. It is possible to live there of course, but being right in the very centre of London it's quite expensive. For example, looking on Foxton's web site this morning, the cheapest place to rent was £265 a week, but with only 195 square feet it's very small!

Historically, the residential areas with a higher proportion of gay people have been the areas where people mainly voted for the Labour party. So places like Camden and Islington. Back in 1997 when Tony Blair was elected Prime Minister for the first time, he was living in Islington. But again, because Camden and Islington are both quite central, they too can be quite expensive.

Like many old European cities, the cheaper places to live tend to be in the East, and the more expensive ones in the West. Apparently, the reason that this pattern is repeated across lots of cities relates to the fact that the wind tends to blow from West to East. So when everyone had coal fires, the west side of a city was more desirable because the air blowing in was fresh, whereas the people living in the east of the city had to suffer the smoke from the people in the west! Hence Bow and Whitechapel in the East are cheaper places than Kensington and Notting Hill in the West.

All the places that I've mentioned above are in North London of course. South London is another possibility. But apart from Soho, none of the places that I've mentioned are particularly gay. Perhaps that's a good thing though, because as the reader suggests, in principle integration is preferable to segregation.

Do any other readers have any thoughts on this subject?