Small is beautiful: Top 5 Surprisingly Gay Small Towns

If you're up for downsizing when it comes to planning your next vacation destination, consider these diminutive gems.

By Aefa Mulholland

Posted on Advocate.com October 24, 2008

Small is beautiful: Top 5 Surprisingly Gay Small Towns

There's one kind of scaling back that won't have you cursing the current economic climate. Opt for something a little smaller next time you pack up the Samsonite, and consider these delightfully diminutive gems, our top five surprisingly gay small towns.

1. Bloomington, Ind.
Why it's on our gaydar… This accepting, forward-thinking, progressive college town (population 70,000) is home to Indiana University and the famed Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction (itself home to one of the world's largest porn collections). Filled with hip cafés and funky stores, Bloomington markets its many merits to lesbian and gay travelers. For more information on Bloomington, visit www.visitgaybloomington.com.

2. Asheville, N.C.
Why it's on our gaydar… Set in the midst of the Blue Ridge Mountains and Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Asheville (population 73,000) is home to an excellent choice of gay and lesbian-owned inns and guesthouses, such as gay-owned 1899 Whitegate Inn and Cottage. For more choices, contact Explore Asheville. There's also a smorgasbord of thrilling, locally owned restaurants, gay bar Smokey Tavern (18 Broadway Street), hot LGBT dance spot Club Hairspray, lesbian-owned bookstore Malaprops, and a constellation of galleries.

3. Eureka Springs, Ark.
Why it's on our gaydar… A pint-sized piece of perfection, Arkansas' Eureka Springs (population 2,350) is a charming tiny town with Victorian architecture, twisting streets, and easy going, laissez fair attitude that has lured a diverse community. "Diversity Weekends" run four times a year and gay-owned businesses, including bars, hotels, and guesthouses have proliferated in the town. Check in to gay-owned, fabulously kitschy Tradewinds Motel or lesbian-owned Pond Mountain Lodge and Resort to stay gay. The resort spa town nestled in the Ozarks has gained quite a reputation over the years and answers to nicknames such as "Haven for the State's eccentrics," "The place where the misfits fit," "The hole in the Bible Belt where the buckle goes through," and "America's largest open-air asylum."

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Reader Comments

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Name: Tim Hulsey
Date posted: 2008-10-28 12:51 PM
Hometown: Charlottesville, VA

Comment:

Your blurb on Eureka Springs, Arkansas, failed to mention the ultra-fundamentalist Gerald L.K. Smith complex, built on a low mountain just outside of town. Even when you're shopping in quaintly Victorian downtown shops, it's impossible to ignore that enormous, chalk-white concrete Jesus peering down on you with arms outstretched. This local embarrassment is known far and wide as the "Christ of the Ozarks." The Smith complex is also home to the "Museum of Earth History," the third-largest creation-science museum in the US, and the "Great Passion Play" outdoor drama, which is by all objective standards more anti-Semitic than Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ," though of course not half as bloody.

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