DAVIE VILLAGE

(Redirected from Davie Street)
'Davie Village' (also 'Davie District' or simply ''Davie Street'') is a gay village or "''gaybourhood''" in the West End of Vancouver, Canada. It is the home of the city's gay subculture and is centred around Davie Street and roughly includes the area between Burrard and Jervis Streets.

Along Davie Street are a variety of shops, restaurants, services, and hotels catering to a variety of customers, as well as private residences. Davie Village is also home to the offices of ''Xtra! West'', a biweekly LGBT newspaper. The Centre (formerly the Gay and Lesbian Centre) is located just off Davie Street on Bute. It provides a variety of services for the city's gay, lesbian, transgendered, and bisexual residents. The city's oldest gay bathhouses are also located on Davie Street. The business with the most notoriety is Little Sister's Book and Art Emporium ("Little Sister's"), a gay and lesbian bookstore, because of its ongoing legal battles with Canada Customs that has received extensive national media coverage. The Davie Village Cafe and Bar ("DVC") at 1141 Davie (the approximate center of the Davie Village strip) is decorated with artifacts and news articles about the history of the Davie Village and is a popular attraction for tourists starting their explorations, and meeting place for the diverse local community. The DVC has an enormous array of photos of drag and gay community personalities, decorations rescued from long-gone gay bars from the early era of Vancouver's gay community, and is operated by a long-time member and former five-year emperor of the Dogwood Monachist Society (DMS), Vancouvers local link to the Imperial Court , the international court of drag queens.
The Davie Street Business Improvement Association coined the name "Davie Village" in 1999 and also commissioned banners from local artist Joe Average, which fly from lampposts along the street. The two-sided banners depict a rainbow flag on one side and a sun design by Average on the other. Many businesses and residents along Davie and in the West End generally also fly rainbow flags as a symbol of gay pride, and many of the covered bus stop benches and trash cans along Davie Street are painted bright pink.
The Village hosts a variety of events during the year, including the Davie Street Festival which runs in conjunction with Vancouver's annual Gay Pride Parade, during which sections of the street are closed to motor traffic.
Davie Street - and, by extension, the Village - is named in honour of A.E.B. Davie, eighth Premier of British Columbia from 1887 to 1889.

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See also

See also

★ Church and Wellesley Village, Toronto

★ Gay Village, Montreal