City Pride: Singapore

I haven’t done a “City Pride” for a long time. In fact, I think the last one I did was for Paris to celebrate the Gay Games in 2018. So, last year I decided it was time to highlight another city and its lgbt+ heritage. The question was, which city? Then I noticed I had a lot of readers in Singapore, and I realised that I knew hardly anything about its lgbt+ community, except for Pink Dot. So, after months of looking for appropriate points in Singapore’s queer history and culture I have selected the following. The main task was to find places that are grouped together which are as diverse as the community itself.

If you’re from Singapore I doubt any of these will be unknown to you, and I hope I have done my research correctly.

As before, the map is not intended to be used as the means for you to get from one location to another. It is intended purely as a rough guide to where the locations are situated. Many roads and streets are omitted, but I hope there is enough information for you to find them on proper maps.

1) Crocodile Rock, Scotts Road - The oldest and longest-running lesbian bar in Singapore, operating between 1992 and 2007. Alternatively known as Croc Rock.

2) KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital, Bukit Timah Road - More Singaporians have been born here than in any other hospital in Singapore, so naturally this would include a lot of lgbt+ people. However, the reason I put it on this list is because it was also the hospital which performed the first male-to-female sex-assignment surgery in the country in 1971.

3) Pelangi Pride Centre, Rowell Road - This is the original location of Singapore’s first lgbt+ centre. It was founded in 2003 by the city’s Action for AIDS (AfA) charity in the offices above their headquarters. Both the Pelangi Pride Centre and Action for AIDS have moved to other premises (see number 4).

4) Action for AIDS (AfA), Kelantan Lane - The charity’s present location. AfA was founded in 1988 by dermatologist Dr. Roy Chan (b.1955) who is still it’s President. Dr. Chan competed for Singapore in swimming at the 1972 Olympics.

5) The Substation, Armenian Street - The first independent contemporary arts centre in Singapore, founded in 1990 on the site of a former power station. It has organised many exhibitions of lgbt+ artists and interests. It was the venue of the monthly forum of People Like Us (PLU), 1993-4, an lgbt+ lobby group formed in 1993.

6) Suntec Singapore International Conference and Exhibition Centre - Venue of Singapore’s first National AIDS Conference on 12 December 1998. At this conference Paddy Chew became the first person in Singapore to come out publicly as having HIV. He died the following year. His life was the basis for the play “Completely With/Out Character” by Haresh Sharma. More recently, it was the venue for the wrestling competition at the very first Youth Olympic Games in 2010 (see number 8). Here, the oldest of the 9 lgbt+ athletes, 17-year-old Jenna Burkert, competed for the USA.

7) Rascals, Pan Pacific Hotel - Rascals was a club that organised a gay night at the Pan Pacific Hotel every Sunday. On 30 May 1993, Singapore police raided the club and interrogated its customers. It is regarded as Singapore’s “Stonewall”, an event which had a significant effect on the lgbt community and its future.

8) The Float, Marina Bay - With my specialist interest in the Olympics it comes as no surprise that I mention it several times. The very first Youth Olympic Games were held in Singapore in 2010. The opening ceremony was held at The Float, and is the first Olympic opening ceremony to be held on water, despite what Paris 2024 thinks. The Singapore Youth Olympics were also significant for currently having the most known lgbt+ athletes, 9, though none of them were publicly out at the time. Among them was British diver Tom Daley, the only one of the 9 who had competed in a previous Olympics (Beijing 2008, aged 14). If Tom makes it to Paris 2024 without injury, he will equal US equestrian rider Robert Dover’s record of competing at 6 Olympics. Only one lgbt+ Youth Olympian won a medal in Singapore 2010, a gold for Austrian sailor Lara Vadlau. She, like Tom Daley, has qualified for Paris 2024.

 9) Pink Dot, Speaker’s Corner, Hong Lim Park - Location of the annual Pink Dot Pride event. The first was held here on 16 May 2009, when it attracted the largest attendance for any gathering at Speaker’s Corner up to that date. The only years it was not held here were during the covid pandemic in 2020 and 2021 when they were held online. Pink Dot events have been held in other cities around the world, all following the same signature format of attendees wearing pink.

10) Boat Quay - Before this area was redeveloped in the 1990s, the streets around Boat Quay were popular cruising grounds for gay men.