Gay Cruising in Kingston: Find Guys Near You in the Limestone City

Bottoms Up: Kingston's Only Dedicated Gay Bar, One Night a Week

Bottoms Up opened at 285 Queen Street on 3 January 2026, in the lower level of the Renaissance Event Venue, long known as the University Tavern. It is Kingston's first dedicated gay bar since Shay Foo Foo closed in 2009. Paul Fortier and Denis Leblanc run it.

The bar runs most Saturday nights from 8 p.m., a lounge early and a gay nightclub late. Hours have been trimmed once already. Club 477 and Wally's were gay clubs here in the eighties and nineties, and Club 338 was announced in 2023 and never opened.

One room, one night, for the LGBT population of a whole city. Gay men and lesbians share it, which is normal in a small scene. Kingston nightlife does the other six evenings without you.

• Bottoms Up owns Saturday. The map covers the other six nights.

City Park and Kingston's Long Cruising History

City Park sat at the centre of gay life in Kingston for decades, and the queer history project STONES recorded it. Kingston police from the late 1960s into the early 1980s were largely indifferent, unlike forces in Toronto. The park was social as much as sexual.

Men who were there describe groups of ten, fifteen, sometimes forty, gathered late in the evening and mostly talking. The cruisers were a mix: young guys from the colleges, middle-aged men from a few streets over, older men who had come for twenty years. For a first time it beat walking into a bar.

That version of the park is gone, along with the gay personals men once placed in the back of a paper. The need is not. Somewhere identifiable to find other men without asking anyone is what the old gay meeting places gave the city, and what the city stopped giving.

• The map keeps the finding and drops the waiting around in the dark.

Lemoine Point, the Waterfront and the Little Cataraqui Conservation Area

Lemoine Point Conservation Area covers 136 hectares at the west end of Kingston, 11 kilometres of paths between Collins Bay and Lake Ontario. Little Cataraqui Creek Conservation Area sits north of Highway 401, 14 kilometres more through marsh, field and woods. Both carry a long reputation, and both have the secluded ground it depends on.

Both also charge at the gate and open in daylight hours only. Anyone hoping to meet discreetly shares the trail with dog walkers, school groups and staff.

Closer in, the shoreline path runs west from King Street East past Kingston City Hall on Ontario St to Murney Tower at Barrie Street, with Fluhrer Park and the Queen's Campus north of it. The west end spreads along Bath Rd and Gardiners Road toward Portsmouth. These are the gay cruising areas every directory lists. Pleasant walks. Terrible odds.

• On the map you know he is looking before you leave the house.

There's No Bathhouse in Kingston, and That's the Point

No gay bathhouse operates in Kingston. No sauna, no sex club, no cruise bar. The nearest gay saunas are a two-hour drive away in Toronto or Ottawa, which means the option does not exist on a Tuesday evening.

Cities without a venue do not stop cruising. The activity moves online. That is what happened here.

• No bathhouse, no cover charge, no drive. The map is the room.

November to April, the waterfront is ice and Little Cataraqui is groomed for skiing. The map has no season.