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.
The crew was anxious to knock off. It was a fine April afternoon in San Francisco, 1976. We'd finished the drywall in the Victorian on Fillmore. I was anxious to start ass-warming the meat rack at The Ambush on Harrison
Today the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus has grown tremendously since its early beginnings. It's gone on national tours, issued recordings, commissioned new music, and helped spur the LGBT choral movement.
That platter had the Acapulco Gold dressing. This platter of turkey came from the herbed bird. Didn't it? The small platter of dark meat came from the other bird. Or was it the other way around? Our hunger could not be sated.
It was Friday, October 31, 1975. My first Halloween in San Francisco. I'd just dropped a bundle on black leather chaps from Hard On Leathers on Polk and a Muir motorcycle cap from A Taste of Leather on Folsom.
In 1976, before the Folsom Street Fair became the iconic festival it is today, among the bars, baths, and blue-collar joints South of Market, at 979 Folsom Street, stood the South-of-the-Slot bathhouse.
Four parade cowboys in sweat stained fancy shirts reined in their horses. Wes and I were in Guerneville outside the Rainbow Cattle Company at 16220 Main Street.
It was Sunday, July 4, 1976. The City was celebrating a twin bicentennial. Sailors were in town! We meandered the Embarcadero, loading our cameras with "seafood" until lunchtime.
