A burgeoning mega-club in the heart of Montreal's gay village, Sky embodies many forces active in gay club cultures and villages across North America at the end of the twentieth century. This project documents the daily operations of Sky--as a complex architectural site, a complicated set of managerial practices, and a popular space in Montreal's Village--and outlines the theoretical implications of such an establishment for both the gay community and for club culture more generally. A large entertainment complex currently undergoing a major expansion, Sky cannot be theorized as either a wholly oppressive or completely liberatory development. Although Sky presents some of the advantages of a mega-club for the gay community--increased diversity, accessibility and community--it also highlights the disadvantages in the development of such establishments: concentration of ownership, the removal of a gay presence from city streets, and the promotion of certain gay identities and cultures over others.

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The city of Portland adopted different policies toward gay bars between 1948 and 1965. Portland's conservative mayors, generally uninterested in changing the city or promoting growth, ignored gay bars. Reform mayors instigated campaigns against gay bars to gain public, political, and business support for their broader economic and social goals. They were able to use crackdowns on gay bars as popular components of their reform initiatives because Portland, in comparison to other cities, professed conservatism and morality and had little economic or cultural incentive to tolerate gay bars. Blaming Portland's vice on outsiders, reform mayors argued that their actions protected Portland's traditional reputability, despite the city's long history of tolerating vice and gay bars. This thesis focuses on the reform mayoral administrations of Dorothy McCullough Lee and Terry Schrunk and their policies toward gay bars and vice. Chapter two discusses Lee's attack on all criminality in Portland, and deals briefly with why the previous administration, under Frank Riley, was rejected as corrupt. Terry Schrunk's later reform, centered in suppressing sexual deviance and promoting economic development downtown, is discussed in chapter four. Chapter three describes growing awareness of queer communities, including changing definitions of queerness and perceived threats. These changes in popular beliefs about queerness, although not the direct cause of actions against gay bars in Portland, influenced the types of vice associated with gay bars, arguments used to justify anti-queer actions, and the level of priority placed on suppressing Portland's queer community. This thesis incorporates primary and secondary sources on gay bars, Portland, and queer history. It relies heavily on city council minutes and newspaper articles, but also draws from sources including City Club Bulletins, letters from Schrunk's constituents, interviews, popular psychological works, and comparisons with articles about other cities, such as Miami, San Francisco, and New York.

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