When I heard about the impending closure of Flipper's (482 Hayes) last month, it got me thinking about the history of the LGBT community in Hayes Valley, where I live.

Shortly after having moved to San Francisco in the early 1980s, I was introduced to the concept of gay stand-up comedy (as it was called then).

A fire in San Francisco that was set by a workman in 1981 ignited a whole different sort of blaze: A media frenzy of anti-gay sensationalism. This feature casts a look back at a disgraceful episode from a deeply homophobic era.

From the mid-'60s through 2008 there was another type of downtown bar - the businessman's bar. The two downtown bars which lasted the longest and had the biggest impact were Sutter's Mill and the various incarnations of Ginger's.

Visitors to Pacific Heights could be excused these days for thinking there is little gay about it, save for the gay colors on Victorians like the Painted Ladies in Alamo Square. But this was not always the case.

Club Chaos (at the Crystal Pistol on 842 Valencia Street) , Club Screw (495 14th Street) and most of all Club Uranus at the End-up (6th and Harrison) both raised and lowered the bar for dance spaces that followed.

San Francisco, Mid-1970s. A perfect place at a perfect time. Mark Abramson's memoir is the next best thing to being there, and here's a sample.

The Lily Street Fair, which existed in San Francisco from 1981 to 1990, was part block party and part potluck, with a good dose of Easter bonnets and Easter parade thrown in to add zest.

Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it, or so the old adage would have us believe. There is a worse fate, however: To be forgotten and fade into obscurity.

"What happened to the other leather restraint?" Joe Taylor said. "You had four." "One of my BD buddies must have wanted a souvenir," I said. "I noticed it missing during a session last night." "Yeah," Joe said. "I can make a replacement."

Smoke drifted past our table on the patio at the Rusty Nail. We downed drafts and waited for barbequed chicken. A shirtless waiter with a rolled cowboy hat and leather vest glided among the crowd of half-naked men.

We stood inside Allan Lowery's new bar, the Leatherneck, at 11th and Folsom. It was about to open with its new United States Marine Corps theme. Gregg Coats, designer of the bar's logo, stared at the row of horizontal windows boarded up with plywood.

We looked down Market Street toward the Ferry Building. Dykes On Bikes led off the first downtown Gay Freedom Day parade from Spear Street up Market toward the Civic Center. Gay Frontiers: Past, Present, Future.

The sun found its way around the edge of the plywood that boarded-up the window in my playroom. I lit a cigarette and glanced at Terry. He was still sleeping. Naked. Terry Weekly, not yet thirty, had a dark mustache on his boyish face.