Broughton Street — Edinburgh's Queer Neighbourhood

Broughton Street is a six-block corridor running north from the Playhouse Theatre through New Town to Canonmills. Since the mid-1990s it has been Edinburgh's queer neighbourhood — the densest concentration of LGBTQ+ businesses, community organisations, cafés and bars in Scotland, and the natural pedestrian anchor for Edinburgh Pride and the annual Edinburgh Bear Festival. The neighbourhood's development traces to CC Blooms' 1993 opening (see separate entry) at the southern end. Through the late 1990s the Regent, the Street and Blue Moon Café opened at addresses along Broughton Street; through the 2000s LGBT Health & Wellbeing (Scotland's largest queer health charity) established its Broughton Street headquarters; through the 2010s the neighbourhood added Planet Bar, Café Nom de Plume, and roughly a dozen queer-friendly businesses. By 2015 the City of Edinburgh Council had formally recognised Broughton Street as an LGBT+ commercial corridor. Broughton Street's emergence as Scotland's queer neighbourhood is inseparable from Edinburgh's slower path to full LGBTQ+ legal equality — Scottish homosexuality was decriminalised in 1981 (14 years after England), civil partnerships came in 2005, marriage equality in 2014. The neighbourhood functioned through those decades as a specifically Scottish queer public space distinct from London's Old Compton Street or Manchester's Canal Street, with a stronger Scottish-cultural and working-class identity than either of the English equivalents. Free, open 24/7 as public street. Playhouse tram stop is at the southern end. On any Edinburgh sightseeing day this is the natural queer heritage stop — 15 minutes' walk east of Princes Street, with a substantially different character to the tourist zones. Best walked in the late afternoon; bars fill from 20:00 onwards.