A Guide to Gay-Friendly Tallinn
LBDT Tallinn
It’s sometimes said that Tallinn doesn’t cater that well for the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans) community, and, while it’s fair to say that the provision of bars and clubs specifically for anyone from that grouping is pretty thin on the ground, there is still great fun to be had. Let’s take a look at the best places for a night out in Tallinn if you’re LGBT and you want a night on the town.
Butterfly Lounge
Vana-Viru 13, Tallinn Old Town
Most of the LGBT places in Tallinn are nightclubs, meaning they’re for the middle or the end of the night. But what can you do to start proceedings off? There are a number of options, actually. By far the best, for its entertainment – singers and performers – at weekends and on special nights, and for its open, friendly atmosphere to all, is Butterfly Lounge. It’s been open for a long time, and in that time very little has changed about it, but you can still go in there and sit in a brightly-coloured, comfortable chair, sipping a well-made cocktail and watching the world go by. It’s also a great place to open the party, with quality food and smiling service.
There is a sister club, Club Butterfly, across the street from Viru Keskus. It’s pretty new, but offers the same pastel-coloured positivity as Butterfly Lounge, though in a nightclub setting. It’s on Estonia Pst 1, and you can be sure of pop and dance music to make your weekend go bang, and the same attention-to-detail that makes Butterfly Lounge’s cocktails such a consistent pleasure. Manna La Roosa, just next door to Butterfly, is also an option – but I’m not a fan of the sniffy service or the snobbish elitism of the place. Butterfly is for everyone.
X-Baar
For a more personalised experience, you need to go to X-Baar, which preceded and has outlived other beloved establishments like Sauna Street’s Angel, and is Tallinn’s oldest gay bar. It’s a mission to find the door – you need to go through a car park, to what looks like the side entrance to an old building – but once you’re there, the fun starts. Each customer is given a coupon for a free drink, and although the party doesn’t usually get started here until around midnight, once it begins, the pace doesn’t let up.
There are two floors to X-Baar, the ground floor being the one with the largest bar, a small seating area, and a big dance floor opposite a video wall playing the promos to the songs the DJ is playing. Upstairs you will find a chilled spot for sitting and contemplating your night, where it is easy to talk at a respectable volume. As with every gay club, not all customers are LGBT – there are plenty of straight women who come to X-Baar because of the unthreatening, good-natured atmosphere. The truth is, whatever your orientation, this is a no-frills, no-trouble club where anyone can enjoy themselves. As an example of the community spirit that seems to exist here in contrast with some of Tallinn’s other clubs, I have never seen a fight at X-Baar, and I have never witnessed any theft problem – people come here to have a good time, not for any other reason.
G-Punkt
G-Punkt is the Kelis to X-Baar’s Beyonce, the club that is more subversive, and somehow less controlled than its bigger brother. This leads to plenty of late-night or early-morning hijinks, as this club is open pretty much after everything else in Tallinn has closed. As the final port-of-call for fun, G-Punkt takes its role very seriously as a kind of liberated dystopia, where anything and everything can happen, pretty much unchecked. In summer it can get incredibly sweaty inside the club, due to a general lack of ventilation, though at this time of year that’s not a problem. Also be prepared: there are two poles on the dancefloor, and if you choose to swing around one of them with your buddies, you will get attention, and at the time of night when G-Punkt is popular, no-one waits to ask before introducing themselves to you.
This is, pure and simple, a place to come when you’re tired, but you feel a second wind and you want to use up all your energy on the dancefloor. Forget about customs and conventions, forget about the rum-and-cola stain on that new shirt, and just party into the morning.
Click on the address to see the location.
TEXT STUART GARLIC
Stuart Garlick is a journalist and English language teacher based in Tallinn. Since 2012, his blog, Charm Offensive, has covered food, music and fashion in Estonia.
To learn more about this and similar topics
