1982 saw the Bay Area Reporter moving to a weekly format, which provided twice as much fascinating coverage. While big sports news included the Gay Olympics name-use lawsuit, post-Pride coverage included plenty of photos by Robert Pruzan, Rink and others.
The December 30 issue's Entertainment section prominently featured several bests of the year, decades before we began our annual Besties awards!
Among the highlights: an operatic adaptation of The Postman Always Rings Twice, Randall Krivonic's dance concert Rites of Spring, Theatre Rhino's production of C.D. Arnold's Delivery, Edmund White's acclaimed novel A Boy's Own Story, retired baseball player Glenn Burke's coming out in The New York Times, and Joe Gage's epic porn feature Heatstroke; all complimented by a half-page ad for Siegfried & Roy's Las Vegas spectacular at The Frontier. What a year 1982 was!
In a fun pair of fundraisers, let's also offer a nod to the year's very popular Dog Show, an outdoor event held Sunday June 13 along two blocks of Castro Street on a 70-foot stage, where contestants strutted for honorary titles before a massive crowd. The late Allen White's article claimed 7,000 attendees at the benefit for the "KS Cancer Fund" (yet to be renamed as AIDS).
The judges for both the canine event —and the human Man Show contest, held the previous night at the California Hall— were a who's who of the community: Mr. Marcus (Hernandez), Supervisor Harry Britt, Sylvester, Tom Waddell, with a guest appearance at the Dog Show by no less than Shirley MacLaine.
Zoom in to see leather-clad hunk Paul Okando, whose Great Dane won Best Legs.
Also of interest, more proof of gay sports fans' love of the San Francisco 49ers, as many gay bars around the Bay Area hosted Super Bowl viewing parties in January.
See all this and more at https://archive.org/details/bayareareporter.
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