The LGBTQ+ French Riviera Hub in France

For those people who havenʼt traveled to the French Riviera just yet. A question I most commonly get asked when people are about to plan a trip here is, “where are all the gay establishments in your region?”

The region itself has seemingly only become known more as an LGBTQ+ travel destination option in about the last 10 years.

This was done not only by the guidance of many of us locals but with the help of a strong consistent promotional push by the tourism boards such as Nice Tourism, Cannes, and Monaco.

LGBTQ groups, individuals, and businesses come together to provide updates on regional changes and activities to keep everything as fresh and interesting as possible for LGBTQ+ people intending to travel to this most beautiful part of France.

To answer the question. It depends on what your particular interests are as there are a myriad of things to do both day and night but I would say Nice is the central hub of the LGBTQ community in the region.

The city of Nice has the most gay bars, nightclubs, cruising bars, and a large bathhouse to name a few types of establishments. Nice is also where everyone gathers for the Pink Parade (Pride) every summer and has its own LGBTQ centre where more information can be found.

The region itself is very safe and although there are no dedicated gay establishments in places such as Antibes, Cannes, Saint Tropez, or even Monte-Carlo just yet.

There are many businesses in those place that at least promote themselves as being gay-friendly through events or even if it is a rainbow flag sticker on the door of their establishment. Apps like Scruff and Grindr can also be used as a type of guide.

One of the wonderful and encouraging things I love about the Cote d’Azur is how friendly and supportive the LGBTQ+ community are with each other and in welcoming others, no matter their sexual preference.

Its not unusual to find that almost every year a new LGBTQ business will open up or an association begins that brings more people together.

Behind Gay French Riviera

To provide a bit more context for my future postings, I thought I would offer up some more information about how I first came to the French Riviera in France. I don’t usually write posts this long but for some reason, I felt like letting it all out.

In the early 1990s, I started going on more trips to Europe from my hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada.

I love my homeland dearly but I always had a gut feeling that Europe would be in the cards for me, it did take some time but I managed to get here to live full-time.

Since it was the early 1990s, there was, of course, no internet, calling was expensive and then there was the snail mail system. For myself, any information about a location in Europe I was interested in visiting usually came from something I had seen on TV, the local library, but mainly from friends that had recently been where I wanted to travel and seemed to be a fountain of
information.

With that, and usually two jobs to save money for a trip that could last anywhere from a month to 3 months, I would plan out an itinerary the best I could.

One trip was to Greece where I stayed in Athens and the gay holy land of Mykonos which seemed to be teaming with major celebrities that year and full of outrageous parties.

To get a break, I then took the ferry to Santorini, which was stunningly beautiful, and didn’t seem to be overrun by tourists just yet. I loved it but after about a week, I was getting bored, which can be due to my nature of needing to do something constructive.

In fact, I don’t know if I would have the patience to take an actual vacation and do nothing. I have to be learning about a location, get involved in the local lifestyle and am always planning something ahead. I’m the kind that will go to a beach and am an avid swimmer but after an hour I almost start feeling guilty and need something to do. Learning to fully relax is on my list to do.

From Santorini, it was a quick stop in Athens again before heading to France for my first visit.

I’ve always been fascinated by France, its history, culture, and language, and even to this day, I find the country to be completely intriguing.

I spent my first week staying in a fantastic apartment that a friend owned and who was out of town. It was an unusually large apartment in Paris and I knew at the time I could never afford something like it if I decided to move to the city one day, at least immediately.

Day and night I began exploring on foot every part of the city I could, absorbing as much as possible and slowly becoming accustomed to how I saw people living and was fascinated by it all.

Not long after, relatives who had moved to the Dordogne region of France from the UK as part of their retirement a couple of years before invited me to come to visit.

While visiting them, by chance, most of the people my relatives had gotten to know were all gay men. And it was actually lesbians who built their home, so I was instantly introduced to many people from the small LGBTQ community as “the Canadian” staying with relatives in France.

I’ve always admired my relatives and thought of them as mentors in many ways and their friends seemed to go out of their way to tour me around the region and give me the inside scoop on everything that was happening.

During a weekend trip to Bordeaux with my relative's friend Jean Marie, in conversation one day, he asked where I thought of visiting next in France. I told him I had met a woman on the ferry from Santorini to Athens that told me a bit about Nice and even suggested a hotel to stay at if I go and what to see and do.

Jean Marie thought it was a great idea and since I had the time, a few days after our trip, I took the train to Nice.

I sometimes wonder how I managed back then but others obviously did as well. I knew maybe ten words of French, there was no internet, mobile phones, or apps back then. I recall just having some handwritten notes and a map of France.

Tourism at the time didn’t seem to be taken as seriously or prevalent as now, get anything, even minor done just took longer compared to now, but since I didn’t know any different back then, it was just part of the adventure of traveling, making mistakes and taking things in stride.

I arrived at the main train station in Nice in the early evening of almost the middle of September.

Everything I read or was told was to not hang around the train station at night.
When I got off the platform and was leaving the train station, there were a few homeless people but it didn’t seem that bad.

There were not many street lights and there was an edginess as though trouble could happen at any moment. The night seemed almost steamy as though the
heat from the sun on the streets during the day was being released and there was definitely a sense of mystery in the air.

I was quickly falling in love with this place.

There was no tramline near the train station as there is now, and I wasn’t about to try and figure out the bus system, yet knowing that taxis were expensive, I didn’t care and thought it was the best and safest solution.

I told the taxi driver to take me to Rue Paradis. I could see on my map that it would be a short ride from the train station and was located by the sea in a pedestrian zone area, according to the new friend I met on the ferry in Greece who suggested the hotel there, she told me it was a safe, tourist type of location.

Thinking back, the cab driver took me the most direct route to the hotel, so although definitely overpriced, he didn’t take advantage as much as he could and he was very polite in pointing out places to visit in his broken English.

To my surprise, my stop was outside a Louis Vuitton boutique and as he took my bags out of the trunk, he pointed to my hotel which was next door to the Louis Vuitton.

My first thought was if Louis Vuitton has a store here, the area can’t be that bad.

And I was to find out later that the Louis Vuitton boutique has been in the same location since the early 1940s and there are still images of it there during WWll.

My hotel was what I expect for it being a 3-star at the time, but over the years it quickly went down to a 2-star, and the service and look of the hotel got worse. The hotel eventually closed completely down at least 4 years ago and is riddled with rumors of what will be happening to the building given its prime location.

Since it was almost low season, the hotel desk clerk gave me a great deal by giving me the biggest and best room in the place that was big enough for a family and at an even lower rate than a single room also because of the length of my stay. I was exhausted from the long train ride from Bordeaux but happy about the deal.

The first morning in Nice, was the opposite of how I normally lived in Vancouver, where I felt like sleeping most of the time simply because of the bleak weather. Here in the Cote d’Azur, even to this day, there is something about the energy of the sun coming up brings to the region that I am raring to go.

I had nothing planned except for venturing around Nice that first day, and I couldn’t get ready fast enough to hit the streets and beach. Having always been good with directions, I figured out the lay of the land in no time.

Nice then as now, is a relatively small city, that to me is safe with a downtown core that offers most anything you would need.

Although Nice is set up far better and more convenient these days, with a greater selection of shops and overall much cleaner than back then, there was still something interesting about it all.

And it seemed easy to meet people, also like now and even with my very limited French back then.

If there was something I hadn’t discovered yet on my own, I would be given advice on almost anything, such as areas to avoid and why, and also what more I can see and do.

For example, back in the early 1990s, during the day, people went into Vieux Nice (Old Town), located by the sea to eat at the small selection of restaurants but it was also known that it might not be the best idea to explore that part of the city after 7 pm as the area was not as updated for tourists as it is now, nor as clean, but mainly because there were really no police security cameras in place and because of the maze of the narrow pedestrian streets, locals up to no good who knew the area could quickly mug you or pickpocket your wallet and take off and you wouldn’t know which direction they headed.

Now Vieux Nice is filled with visitors day and night with a melting pot of restaurants, shops, and bars to choose from, plus the varied street market on the Cours Saleya.

Since I had been checking out the LGBTQ bars and nightclubs in Greece and Paris, this had me wondering, where was the gay community in Nice?

One would see who I assumed were gay guys on the street but being gay didn’t seem to be as open LGBTQ-wise as it is welcomed now.

Again, because there was no internet, doing some searching around and word of mouth seemed to do the trick.

At one point, I was shopping at an obviously gay clothing boutique at the entrance to Vieux Nice. The store was quite large and I loved some very unique items available, it helped that the very handsome owner started offering up information about the local gay community, mentioning that it was a small group where everyone seemed to know each other and were supportive and friendly.

He gave me a couple of small flyers he had about what establishments were available, when is the best time to go, etc. In total, there were about 3 nightclubs, two that were not open as often, a couple of porn shops, and a small bar.

I tried to attend which place I could in Nice when I wasn’t busy exploring other places like Cannes and Monaco during the day but to be honest, on this first visit, I wasn’t that impressed with the nightclub experiences.

One club was way the hell out of the center of the city in a practically residential area, expensive to get in with not many people on any visit, and is now two family-sized apartments.

Another place was in the downtown core near Avenue Jean Medecin in a place that was at one time a theater/cinema but then it had these large clear glass windows in which you would literally see the neighbors next door hanging out their windows watching to see who was going in and out of the club, and what they were doing once inside the nightclub.

It’s like they never heard of blacking out the glass or even putting up curtains and again, this club was never busy. This was also a transgender escort area at the time, a very small group who were always very friendly.

As for that nightclub, it is now a Lidl.

Close to my hotel in the pedestrian zone was what could be considered a real nightclub, it was very up-to-date and quite large for the city but because there were even very few places for young straight people to go, they also went to this nightclub too simply because the music was better, so not totally gay but modern inside with great beats. This property is still a nightclub to this day but for heterosexuals and on about its seventh version of a nightclub.

I had already been spoiled by Mykonos and Paris so it could’ve been my mood back then not being so impressed, but I did realize that Nice was a small city and you could definitely tell the LGBTQ community was at least trying and growing.

Being someone that always fights for the underdog, I thought there was something I could build upon here.

I was already in love with everything about the French Riviera, even the bullshit hustler aspects of the region which I find add to its charm. That sunny place for shady people deal. I can most certainly tell you that living here is far different than just being a visitor and it’s like a game that I cannot play enough.

I was hooked and so the Cote d’Azur became a place I was obsessed with for every reason imaginable. It was my escape from Canada, where the limits seem endless, with the freedom to really develop into the person I want to be, even with its challenging times, I love it.

Over the years, I continued to do my research on the region and have slowly built up a network of connections from every career and background, and on every visit, it seemed the LGBTQ community expanded and evolved more with the times.

Seeing there was no real presence online for those wanting to visit this part of France, for fun, I made it a mission to provide as much information about not only the LGBTQ community but beyond for everyone. Living here for years now has made it all that much easier with zero regrets.

An Evolution for Gay French Riviera

A change is coming.

For quite some time now I have found this platform, Blogger, to be outdated, finicky, and overall limited in its capacity concerning what I would like to showcase for others.

Along with the fact that META, on many of it's platforms will not allow for any Gay French Riviera links to be posted as they assume it is unsafe sexual content.

*insert eye roll here*

With that in mind, since there seems to be a myriad of changes coming about in my life, I thought it was time to expand upon Gay French Riviera.

This website will still be regularly updated but I will also be posting articles about the LGBTQ community in the Cote d’Azur and Monaco and beyond on my new Substack page.

https://rivieraenvy.substack.com

One idea is I’ve also always wanted to update previous articles I have written on Gay French Riviera in the past 11-plus years with new information for a new audience in a “where are they now” type of format, and also post them on Substack.

And I plan on writing about a whole other range of subjects about the lifestyle here in France from my own experiences.

My business, Experience The French Riviera has also continued to grow and change, especially since the ending of the Covid19 pandemic and in ways I never imagined, which is why another business of mine, Riviera Envy is under development. With all of this happening, it was just time to expand to another medium for everyone.

So please make sure to subscribe to my new Substack account. It’s going to be an interesting journey.

The Provocative Genius: Helmut Newton Exhibition in Monaco

Before influencers, before even dare I say, Madonna. Helmut Newton was pushing boundaries with his photographic masterpieces that seemed to stir a realm of emotions in his audience.

And now, you can see a display of almost 300 of his photographs that were taken on the Cote d’Azur and Monaco that have been brought together at the New National Museum of Monaco (Villa Sauber).

The varied display of his works is on exhibition until November 13, 2022, and it all showcases 40 years of his work throughout the region.

Love him or hate him, his work has been a constant inspiration not only to those in the general public but to many up-and-coming photographers and contemporaries. 

Known worldwide as one of the best fashion photographers around, his work was featured heavily in the pages of Vogue, Paris Match, and Elle to name a few, and for many advertising campaigns with the big fashion design houses.

Helmut Newton could easily turn a model into a supermodel practically overnight from just one fashion photo shoot by using his capabilities to see past the every day and bring out the best in a person, whether clothed or nude, and yet always with a chic sense of style and strength.

And of course, having the surrounding background of the French Riviera and Principality of Monaco certainly didn’t hurt either.

With or without trying, pushing the limits seemed to be second nature to him and it certainly shows in this exhibition of his work at Villa Sauber in Monaco. 

The French Riviera was certainly a great source of inspiration for the Australian photographer who spent his childhood in Nazi Germany. And he photographed in many locations from Bordighera to Ramatuelle, from the 1960s until his death in the early 2000s. 

Some of the photos in this particular exhibition are globally famous and others have rarely been presented and made available to the public with many coming from private collectors in Monaco.

Often labeled a womanizer, Helmut Newton actually had a very close relationship with his wife June. It was with her that he moved to Monaco in 1981, and he lived there until his death in 2004. 

This period is undoubtedly one of the best of his career. Often he would use as background the luxury hotels in Monte-Carlo as well as the construction sites of the Principality for his work.

Helmut also took many pictures of the princely family. On the walls of the Villa Sauber, visitors will discover a portrait of Princess Caroline at the Monte-Carlo Beach pool. 

A highlight of this show: the public discovers the interior of Helmut Newton's Monegasque apartment, thanks to a very realistic reproduction, in order to penetrate the mystery of the character a little more.

Newton, Riviera: this new exhibit is at the Villa Sauber, from June 17, 2022 to November 13, 2022 at 17, avenue Princesse Grace in Monaco.

Photos by Helmut Newton