There’s every chance that the crowds attending Bears on the Beach and  Delaware Pride this coming weekend in Rehoboth Beach will be bigger than ever. Official census data in the US shows how the gay population is moving to new destinations as it grows older and baby boomers start to retire. San Francisco is now only number 28 in the list of cities with the largest proportion of resident gay couples, and West Hollywood has dropped out of the top five.

The top place to live – if you analyse the statistics – is Provincetown, but places like Rehoboth Beach are seeing a big growth in their older gay population.

“The change was pretty dramatic,” said Rick McReynolds, 58, a resident. “It used to be all these boys,” but now, he said, the gay population in town is older and has less of a singles scene.

But people who used to party here, like Bob Moore, a retired communications professor from Pennsylvania, have since returned with their partners to live. Mr. Moore, who came out in his 40s, after two children and a divorce, said he and his partner were looking for a place that was gay friendly, but not an exclusive enclave.

“We liked the fact that it was gay without being the Castro” neighborhood of San Francisco, said Mr. Moore, 59, who was sitting with his partner, Steve Ortleib, in Rigby’s Bar and Grill on Tuesday night. (more in the New York Times)