Sochi as gay as Cape Town

It is a chaotically organised seaside resort on the country's south coast, with an irredeemably pebbly beach and a promenade crammed with cheerful tack.

True, the climate on the Black Sea is positively balmy, and the towering Caucasus mountains are awe-inspiring. And there is nothing Georgian or Victorian about the high-Stalinist architecture gems dotted around the city centre or the late-Putin concrete and glass monstrosities that now tower over them.

But if the British visitor to Sochi squints a bit, and maybe has a couple of beers, one could almost be in Brighton.

But Andrei Tanikchev, a local businessman, says the comparisons between the Krasnodar coast and Sussex do not stop there.

"Yep - gay capital. Definitely in Soviet times, anyway," said Tanikchev, who runs Sochi's leading gay nightclub.

"Back then people from all over the country and abroad used to come here. And it wasn't just the weather. It was always a very tolerant city."

The Winter Olympic Games that opened here on Friday have been mired in controversy ever since President Vladimir Putin signed a law banning promotion of "non-traditional sexual orientations" to minors last summer.

Russian and foreign gay right campaigners say the law strips the gay community of the right to free expression, leaves gay teens unable to discuss their sexuality with adults, and most worryingly gave a green light to homophobic public figures to indulge in sometimes blood-curdling rhetoric.

Tanikchev has found himself patiently leading countless foreign journalists around his establishment over the past few months, as they seek a juxtaposition between Putin's vanity project and sudden focus on the plight of Russia's gay community.

But he says it was no surprise that the resort where Putin chose to host the Olympic games is also home to one of the most vibrant gay communities in the country.

"Sochi was the unofficial gay capital of the Soviet Union, and we're beginning to regain that status now," he said.

B y the late 1980s, he says, the city was the undisputed centre of the Soviet gay scene

Sochi's gay community waned with its fortunes as a resort after the fall of the Soviet Union. The stream of foreigners who used to flock to the Sputnik hotel complex - where a gay beach still exists today - dried up, while holidaying Russians found newly accessible foreign destinations both more alluring and often cheaper to fly to.

But while the city's glory days faded, its reputation for tolerance endured. Tanikchev, a native Muscovite, moved south with his boyfriend 13 years ago at a time when Moscow was much more intolerant than it is now.

"We came down to open our first place 13 years ago. When we opened our first place here, the locals didn't bat an eyelid. That was impossible to imagine in Moscow back then," he said.

Now, as the massive investment and publicity brought by the Olympics puts the city back on the tourist map, Tanikchev expects its Soviet-era status as Russia's premier gay capital to return.

In the deafening environment of the Mayak nightclub, a lavishly furnished maze of rooms hidden behind a blank metal door on the promenade overlooking the Black Sea, that revival is already in full swing.

Like every other bar in Sochi, Mayak was packed on Friday night as regulars and visitors from around Russia and the world piled in to watch the Olympic opening ceremony on big screens.

The only difference to the other bars in town was the prevalence of ripped shirts, leather, and naked male torsos.