{"id":18692,"date":"2016-02-10T12:04:45","date_gmt":"2016-02-10T10:04:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/balticguide.ee\/?p=18692"},"modified":"2018-10-10T09:52:51","modified_gmt":"2018-10-10T06:52:51","slug":"a-guide-to-gay-friendly-tallinn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/balticguide.ee\/en\/a-guide-to-gay-friendly-tallinn\/","title":{"rendered":"A Guide to Gay-Friendly Tallinn"},"content":{"rendered":"
LBDT Tallinn<\/strong><\/h5>\n

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I<\/span><\/strong>t\u2019s sometimes said that Tallinn<\/strong>\u00a0<\/b><\/span>doesn\u2019t cater that well for the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans) community, and, while it\u2019s 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\u2019s take a look at the best places for a night out in Tallinn if you\u2019re LGBT and you want a night on the town.<\/span><\/p>\n

Butterfly Lounge<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/h5>\n

Vana-Viru 13, Tallinn Old Town<\/a><\/i><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

kokteilibaar.ee<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Most of the LGBT places in Tallinn are nightclubs, meaning they\u2019re 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 \u2013 singers and performers – at weekends and on special nights, and for its open, friendly atmosphere to all, is Butterfly Lounge. It\u2019s 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\u2019s also a great place to open the party, with quality food and smiling service.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is a sister club, Club Butterfly, across the street from Viru Keskus. It\u2019s pretty new, but offers the same pastel-coloured positivity as Butterfly Lounge, though in a nightclub setting. It\u2019s 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\u2019s cocktails such a consistent pleasure. Manna La Roosa, just next door to Butterfly, is also an option – but I\u2019m not a fan of the sniffy service or the snobbish elitism of the place. Butterfly is for everyone.<\/span><\/p>\n

X-Baar<\/b><\/span><\/a><\/h5>\n

Tatari 1, Tallinn<\/a><\/i><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

www.xbaar.ee<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n


\n<\/i><\/span>For a more personalised experience, you need to go to X-Baar, which preceded and has outlived other beloved establishments like Sauna Street\u2019s Angel, and is Tallinn\u2019s oldest gay bar. It\u2019s a mission to find the door \u2013 you need to go through a car park, to what looks like the side entrance to an old building \u2013 but once you\u2019re there, the fun starts. Each customer is given a coupon for a free drink, and although the party doesn\u2019t usually get started here until around midnight, once it begins, the pace doesn\u2019t let up.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

G-Punkt<\/b><\/span><\/a><\/h5>\n

P\u00e4rnu Mnt 23, Tallinn<\/a><\/i><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

www.gpunktclub.com<\/strong><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

G-Punkt is the Kelis to X-Baar\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is, pure and simple, a place to come when you\u2019re 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.
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Click on the address to see the location.<\/span><\/p>\n

TEXT STUART GARLIC<\/span><\/p>\n

Stuart Garlick<\/span> is a journalist and English language teacher based in Tallinn. Since 2012, his blog,\u00a0Charm Offensive, has covered food, music and fashion in Estonia.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LBDT Tallinn   It\u2019s sometimes said that Tallinn\u00a0doesn\u2019t cater that well for the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans) community, and, … Read more<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":18697,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-leisure"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/balticguide.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/balticguide.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/balticguide.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balticguide.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balticguide.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18692"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/balticguide.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51239,"href":"https:\/\/balticguide.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18692\/revisions\/51239"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balticguide.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/balticguide.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balticguide.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balticguide.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}