A series of related stories will sometimes cross the web-wires that we watch for Qnews without any obvious tie-in -- no book tour on the subject, no national news item to provide a hook for the local stories.

So it was last weekend when at least three daily papers ran stories about apparently unrelated local events, but with a common theme: gay neighborhoods that flowered in the 70s or 80s are now withering.

In Dallas, the Morning News recorded the likely passing at the end of the year of a gay bookstore in the city's Crossroads neighborhood.

Opened as a junk store on Dec. 5, 1980, Crossroads Market initially functioned as much as a community center as a business enterprise.

Its founders included a who's-who of early Dallas gay leaders including William Waybourn, Craig Spaulding, Terry Tebedo, Bill Nelson and Mr. Johnson.

"It became a safe place where people could go and discuss issues. We had an area in the back for political meetings," said Mr. Waybourn, who later became owner of the Washington Blade, the nation's premier gay newspaper.

It was in the back room that Mr. Nelson decided to run for Dallas City Council, the first viable openly gay candidate to do so, Mr. Waybourn said. After the AIDS epidemic struck, the AIDS Resource Center was born in the Crossroads Market, as was the AIDS Food Bank.

The Market was, the News notes, "a place to mingle."

In Dallas -- as in Seattle and cities throughout the country -- it is places to mingle that are being lost as short-lived gay neighborhoods give way to new demographic trends and real-estate imperatives.

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