Spartacus International Gay Guide

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Spartacus International Gay Guide is a travel guide for gay men that was taken over by the GayGuide UG in January 2018. Because of its international distribution, it is the leading publication in this category, ahead of the Bob Damron Guides , which focused primarily on the United States .

content

The travel guide offers short texts in several languages ​​on each country - including an overview of the homosexuality laws that apply there . In addition, all places within the country that have gay facilities are listed - bars, hotels, gay saunas , beaches or self-help groups. It currently contains information on around 22,000 addresses from 160 countries. The criteria for including addresses vary from country to country. For example, in a well-developed city like Berlin, no only “gay-friendly” bars are listed, in contrast to places with less gay infrastructure. In a few cases, there are also warnings about shops that only pretend to be gay-friendly for business reasons. More important cities have short introductory texts in front of the address lists. Occasionally there are warnings about areas in which there may be attacks (by thieves or the police ), but also about the special characteristics of the city for gay tourists.

Sales and reach

Since 2018 the Spartacus GayGuide no longer appears in the tried and tested print version - instead, all content has been integrated into a new app that can be used more individually for each traveler than the printed travel guide. Both on the website and in the app, gay travelers will find a travel blog as well as the world's largest Pride calendar with over 800 CSD-like events, as well as an appointment area with over 20,000 gay events worldwide. Furthermore, the Spartacus International Gay Guide offers all users not only a hotel but also a sauna guide, which shows well over 600 saunas in 36 countries. The app is available in a worldwide free version.

Since May 2006 the German-language magazine Spartacus Traveler has been published every three months in Germany, Austria and Switzerland with a circulation of 25,000 . This has been published by the Blu media group since 2018.

history

John D. Stamford (1939–1999), who was openly gay at the time, began collecting relevant data in 1968 - in 1970 he brought out the first Spartacus in Sussex . A total of 3,000 gay meeting places (“Homophile meeting places”) were listed on 109 pages. Of these, 60 were gay places in London and more than 200 places from the UK alone . The aim was to help shape a “better world for gays”, to fight against hidden loneliness, to enable contacts and to build up an international network of cooperating organizations.

1972 moved Stamford to Amsterdam to the British laws that were opposed to an open discussion of homosexuality to avoid. The Spartacus first appeared in Amsterdam in 1973.

In the 10th edition in 1980 the guide was 608 pages long with information from over 250 countries, and the cover was designed by the famous porn producer Jean Daniel Cadinot . The editorial team received 12,000 letters with information annually. In 1983 Spartacus first informed about AIDS . Before that, there was always only one small chapter on STDs . The Bruno Gmünder Verlag in Berlin took over the publication of the travel guide from 1987. In 2017, the Bruno Gmünder Verlag in Berlin filed for bankruptcy and sold all of its gay media - including the Spartacus Gay Guide, the publisher's flagship.

Works

  • Briand Bedford (Ed.): Spartacus International Gay Guide 2011/2012 39th edition (German, English, French, Spanish, Italian), Bruno Gmünder, December 2011, ISBN 978-3-86787-350-5
  • Briand Bedford (Ed.): SPARTACUS International Hotel & Restaurant Guide 2011 (German, English), Bruno Gmünder, March 2011, ISBN 978-3-86787-352-9
  • Briand Bedford (Ed.): Spartacus International Sauna Guide 2007 6th edition (German, English, French), Bruno Gmünder, October 2006, ISBN 3-86187-426-1

Web links

swell

  1. ↑ Press release: New Spartacus App sees the light of day | Spartacus Gay Travel Blog. Retrieved March 26, 2019 (American English).
  2. ↑ Press release: Spartacus finds a new home | Spartacus Gay Travel Blog. Retrieved March 26, 2019 (American English).