The city is chock-a-block with hip coffee shops, international food options, artistic offerings, and enough outdoor activities to make you feel you’re living in a Patagonia clothing ad. You’ll find queer folks congregating in neighborhoods like Sugar House, the Marmalade District of Capitol Hill, and in the Avenues near Temple Square, but there’s no true gayborhood of which to speak. In some ways, Salt Lake City is so gay it’s post-gay. That’s higher than both New York City and Los Angeles. A whopping 4.7 percent of the population identifies as LGBT. The same year Biskupski was elected, Gallup released a poll naming Salt Lake City the seventh gayest city in the United States.
SLC is so queer-friendly that officials renamed a street in honor of the politician and gay rights activist Harvey Milk in 2016. She currently serves with three openly gay city council members: Amy Fowler, Derek Kitchen, and Chris Wharton. In 2015, Jackie Biskupski became the city’s first openly gay mayor. Nowhere is this change more pronounced than in Salt Lake’s flourishing LGBTQ+ community. Photo: Austen Diamond Photography/Visit Salt Lake
