Travel Guide: Amsterdam’s Historic Black Queer Culture And Community Is A Way Of Life

The easy vibration emitted from locals and tourists who fill up the small streets of Amsterdam makes the Netherlands an appealing country to visit. The liberal city of Amsterdam transforms from night and day, making some neighborhoods shapeshift from storybook suburban strolls to corners full of flashy nightlife. Amsterdam, known for its experimental art scene, dodging bike riders, and slow-cruising canal boats is a place you have to feel. Exploring Amsterdam’s queer nightlife can be somewhat daunting at first, the nocturnal city well-known for its sex-positive community and influx of global visitors tend to swell up the streets from midnight till four AMam every week. Clashing red neon lights paired with the shimmering canal lights that reflect against the settled waters is an indescribable backdrop. While you navigate through herds of walkers, you experience this liberating sense of revelry that is emphasized by views of wild dancing and various spectators who stare stunned at the glowing windows inhabited by sex workers with fluid, sensual movements. If you are seeking out LGBTQIA+ life, neighborhoods like Centrum and Reguliersdwarsstraat offer safe spaces for all walks of queer folks looking for a great time and good music.

In season three, two episodes of Atlanta feature time unfolding and spent in the Netherlands, Paper Boi (Brian Tyree Henry), Darius (LaKeith Stanfield) and Earn (Donald Glover) get caught up in adult scandal and shenanigans during Paper Boi’s European leg of his tour stop in Amsterdam. Against the scenic backdrop of intersecting canals and the Red Light District, the Atlanta-bred hip hop artist goes on an unplanned drug-fueled trip that many tourists have also experienced in the otherworldly nature of the Netherlands’ very liberal city. When focusing on the city’s cultural history, the queer community has raised up Amsterdam to become the vibrant city it is today and how its contemporary nature remains so open-minded.

In 1946, the COC organization was created in the Netherlands to protect the lives of all queer individuals. It was first framed as the Shakespeare club to conceal the community of LGBTQIA+ people so that they can be safe from the violence ensued by World War I. The collective was underground and founded by members of the gay magazine, Levensrecht. Even today, COC org is the oldest queer organization in the world and thus has led to the Netherlands becoming the first country ever to legalize same-sex marriage in 2001.

The history of Amsterdam’s queer nightlife and the community-driven grassroots organizations that have supported LGBTQIA+ for decades is one of the foundational reasons why Amsterdam remains as a cultural queer hub. You will see visitors from Africa, eastern Europe, America, Asia, and more all experiencing queerness in real-time. Once you walk on the cobble-stone streets of Reguliersdwarsstraat — surrounding the Taboo Kantine and more popular queer spaces you get to experience how integrated queer life is with the entire local community of the Netherlands. This serves as a vital reminder that queer lives can be bolstered up by the allies who celebrate their everyday existence.

The standard queer club scene is populated with multi-story clubs like Club Nyx and Blend. My personal favorite was the Taboo bar which plays Latin music and hip-hop throwbacks on special nights. The trans and gay bartenders light up the space making the locale the perfect opportunity for a total blast of a night out. Club Raum is a newer venue that occupies an industrial building from the 1960’s, techno music thrives there with a rotating lineup of DJs. Club Church is another hotspot that has a darkroom for more sex-positive experiences and is mostly open as a space for trans men but has open-to-all nights on Thursdays.

Black Pride Netherlands is another platform created by Black locals that is meant for femmes, queers, and trans people who crave a shared safe haven for themselves. They offer a safe community and network of queer folks that are there to raise up the African diaspora, Black culture, and artists in the queer community. Black Pride NL hosts the annual Black Pride weekend and many volunteer to support their endeavors. There, they activate BIPOC erotic club events that are hosted at secret underground locations where dominatrix and kink-friendly activities are widely accepted. The way that Amsterdam’s Black queer folks are capable of always pushing the needle forward to experiment and widen the scope and breadth of queer culture with new ideas strengthens the community day-by-day.