Tag Archives: San Francisco

Fairy land of San Fran

This book outlines the lives of a father and daughter in San Francisco in the 80s and 90s. Well written, the daughter inherits the writing talents of her father, and shares both with the reader. A surprise is the insight that comes from the mind and experiences of the daughter on how a culture of anti-gay within society can impact those who love and are connected to gay people.

“I didn’t meet any children of gay parents until I was an adult. And among these “queerspawn,” as some have chosen to call themselves, I’ve felt a powerful bond, especially around that peculiar feeling, something like loneliness but more akin to isolation. In those first decades after Stonewall, our families had no way to connect, to make sense of ourselves and where we belonged. We had no Provincetown family week, no openly gay celebrities like Ellen or Dan Savage, no Modern Family. We saw no versions of our parents in books or on screen. And so we considered ourselves outside the social fabric, cut off from “the normal”. As kids, we often existed in a state of uneasiness, a little too gay for the straight world and a little too straight for the gay world”.

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[BGW141] 2013

The band played on

Starting July 4th 1976, The Band Played On outlines the response to the AIDS crisis in the US and elsewhere. Hindsight makes for difficult reading.

“Nineteen eighty-four was the year of the films Amadeus and Purple Rain. Tina Turner made a dramatic comeback, inspiring New Year’s Eve consumes for drag queens across the country. And it seemed that every year-in-review piece on the television newscasts featured huge American flags waving at the U.S olympics in Los Angeles and at the Republican National Convention, scored to the music of the year’s top-selling album, Born in the USA. This Bruce Springsteen album was a collection of songs about the ignored Americans who were left out of the American dream, stranded in despairing lives of unfulfilled aspirations…On December 31, the Centers for Disease Control reported that 7,699 Americans were dead or dying of a disease that had never been hear of when President Reagan was sworn in during his first term”

“In the United States no issue frustrated AIDS clinicians and researchers more in the early months of 1985 more than the lack of experimental treatments to offer AIDS patients. In no area of AIDS research was the paucity of funds having a more devastating impact. Dr. Donna Mildvan at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York has receiving five calls a day, from lovers, friends and relatives of AIDS patients, pleading for any treatment, that might work. A day rarely went by without some mother sobbing, “Please, doctor, save my son.” Officials at the National Cancer Institute assured everyone that they were screening every possible drug for experimental trials in AIDS patients. What they didn’t reveal was that this federal screening program consisted of Dr. Sam Broder and two technicians; a federal hiring freeze prevented the NCI from augmenting this program.”

“The cuts came at an inopportune time. Secretary Margaret Heckler had let it be known to gay leaders that she did not want to use her political capital to fight for AIDS funding in the administration when she knew that Congress was going to allocate more funds anyway. As it was, Heckler’s stock in the administration had dropped precipitously. In Virginia, Margaret Heckler’s husband of thirty-one years was suing for divorce, claiming, among other things, that Margaret had ceased having marital relations with him twenty-two years ago. Margaret, who was a devout Roman Catholic, had refused to get a divorce, he said, because she felt it would hurt her political career. Gay leaders were aghast at the thought that someone who apparently had had no sex since 1963 was presiding over the government’s AIDS fight”

20140720-173204.jpg [BGW245] 1987

Tales of San Fran, part I

Beginning as a newspaper serial, and now together in a book, Tales records the many residents of twenty eight Barbary Lane and their adventures in San Francisco.

“The city itself, not the weather, let Mary Ann know that winter had finally come. Ferris wheels spun merrily on the roof of The Emporium. Aluminium cedars sprouted in the windows of Chinese laundries.”

1978 [BGW246]

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Tales of San Fran, Part III

Third book of the series centring on twenty eight Barbary lane. Cataloging the lives of the friends, lovers, and neighbours of the apartment block.

“Like a lot of his friends, he made a ritual of bad-mouthing Los Angeles behind her back- her tacky sprawl, her clotted freeways, her wretched refuse yearning to breathe free….
But at times like this, on nights like this, when everyone in town seemed to own a convertible, and the warm, thick jasmine-scented air made itself felt like a hand creeping up his thigh, Michael could abandon the obvious and believe again”

“Michael moved to the edge of the dance floor and watched couples shuffling along shoulder to shoulder as they did the Cotton-Eyed Joe. There was genuine joy in this room, he realised- an exhilaration born of the unexpected. Queers doing cowboy dancing. Who would’ve thunk it? Kids who grew up in Gavelston and Tuscon and Modesto, performing the folk dances of their homeland finally, finally with the partner of their choice.
It didn’t matter, somehow, that teenagers out on the highway were screaming “faggot” at the new arrivals. Here inside, there was easily enough brotherhood to ward off the devil”.

[BGW247] 1982

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