Melrose "gayborhood" transformation was decades in the making

• Gay bars started moving into what's now the Melrose District in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
• While 7th Avenue became a hot spot for gay bars, it wasn't the only one. Shore says they were on 16th Street and, to some extent, McDowell Road as well.

• As the "ebb and flow" of people moving continued, Phoenix's gay scene consolidated around the Melrose district.

Zoom in: The area is known for high real estate prices now, but back then it was a nondescript commercial corridor characterized by cheap rents and housing prices, making it attractive "for entrepreneurs to come in to open up spaces … kind of off the grid," per Shore.

• It could have started with one bar, then more people gravitated to the area because of the plentiful and affordable housing stock, "and it just became a magnet."

Phoenix Pride executive director Mike Fornelli had a similar explanation, telling the Arizona Republic in 2024: "I think that's how Melrose happened. These bars were there, more bars came, people started feeling comfortable there, and then they started moving to the area."