IT’S Friday night at Termix, a nightclub in Prague’s affluent Vinohrady district, & the dance floor is clogged with unseasonably tanned Czech men in well-laundered shirts (Trebizskeho 4a; 420-222-710-462; club-termix.cz). Mirror-plated wine bottles hang from the ceiling, & the front half of a cartoon-pink sedan protrudes over over the bar, where two husky patrons shout over vintage Madonna.
Down the street are a quantity of other gay-friendly bars, cafes & clubs, including the multilevel disco Valentino (Vinohradska 40; 420-222-513-491; club-valentino.cz). Two decades after the fall of Communism, Prague’s gay community appears to be making up for lost time, turning Vinohrady in to the center of what is two of the most vital gay scenes in the former Eastern Bloc.
“Every gay mate I have lives here in Vinohrady,” said Grant Maxfield, a student from Connecticut who moved to Prague two years ago & now helps run Come2prague.com, a gay-oriented tourist site.
Another hub is the Piano Bar (Milesovska 10; 420-222-727-496; pianobar.sweb.cz), which looks like a traditional Czech pub but serves an older, mostly gay clientele.
Among this young community’s fixtures are places like Prague Saints (Polska 32; 420-222-250-326; praguesaints.cz), which has become a hub for gay expatriates & tourists since opening two years ago. “Ten years ago, there were gay bars here, but there weren’t lots of,” said Paul Coggles, a former Londoner who owns Prague Saints. Now the maple-lined streets of Vinohrady, they added, are peppered with gay-owned businesses.
Two of the newest is FenoMan (Blanicka 28; 420-603-740-263; fenomanclub.cz), a small basement club that opened last November & caters to a young, mostly Czech crowd. The music varies from schmaltzy Czech pop to European techno, & the club hosts theme parties like Hollywood night & so-called travesty shows, which are similar to drag shows but more rooted in European burlesque.
A couple of blocks away is Bumbum (Ondrickova 15; 420-724-585-676; club-bumbum.cz), a gay club that opened last December & also caters to the young, but with a more licentious crooked. It's several backrooms where sexual activity takes place openly.
“People don’t care what other people do in private,” said Petr Vostarek, a drag queen who goes by the stage name Chi Chi Tornado. Mr. Vostarek performs several nights a week at Tingl Tangl (Karoliny Svetle 12; 420-224-238-278; tingltangl.cz), a restaurant cabaret in Prague’s Elderly Town. & while some social stigma remains, among the older generation, that, , appears to be fading.
Some attribute the growing tolerance toward gay life in Prague to a kind of live-and-let-live indifference. Indeed, gay soldiers can serve openly in the military, & the Czech Republic legalized registered partnerships for same-sex couples in 2006.
“From the eastern part of Europe, Prague is the place where there is the most freedom for gays,” said Mr. Vostarek, who bills himself as the first drag queen in the post-Communist Czech Republic. While touring in Poland & the former Yugoslavia, Mr. Vostarek says, they encountered considerable homophobia. But in Prague, they added, “I don’t have problems when I go to costly restaurants. With or without makeup, I do whatever I need.”
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