History of gay bars in palm springs

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They worked like the Green Book guides designed to make travel safer for Black people or the vacation guides to steer Jewish people to friendly locations. For gay people navigating potentially fraught encounters, these pocket-sized guidebooks listed bars, hotels, restaurants, and even churches across the United States that were either frequented by the gay community or accepting towards gay patrons.

The most well-known guidebook of the time was the Bob Damron Address Books. These yearly guides were published by its eponymous author, a Los Angeles native who penned the first issue in There were several different types of gay travel guides throughout the s. By far the most popular, and the one to set the standard for the genre, was the Damron Address Book.

Bob Damron was born in Los Angeles in and later moved to San Francisco where he opened several gay bars, becoming a prominent businessman in the community. The guides he would later become known for, which started as a side project, were of a collection of gay bars he would visit on his trips across and outside of San Francisco.

Damron's guides were distinguished from his contemporaries, especially in the early years by one key difference: He made a point to visit every location he included. Eric Gonzaba, assistant professor of American Studies at Cal State Fullerton, said that gave Damron a connection with owners and patrons and made it possible for him to keep the new editions of the book as up to date as possible.

A Gay Guide to Palm Springs - Bars, Hotels, History & Events

And it's that level of detail that's now the basis for a new digital history project called Mapping the Gay Guides. Gonzaba said Damron's guides provide great context, giving those studying the history a better understanding of both these gay spaces and the cities they were in. Mapping the Gay Guides is also the focus of a new exhibit at the Muzeo in the city of Anaheim.

The exhibit starts with a prehistory of gay culture before the guides were in print. This includes information about police raids and the difficulty of navigating through life while in the closet, said Silva. After the Supreme Court ruling of One, Inc. However, Gonzaba said that what visitors of the exhibit will notice is that these gay guides have very little indication that they are for the gay community.

Because it was quite dangerous to be openly gay in the s and even into the s. The exhibit also displays the rich gay history of Southern California. Separated into specific cities, visitors can learn about the gay bars in L. Both Gonzaba and Silva note that most of the Damron Address Books come primarily from the point of view of a gay, white, cis-male perspective.

The advent of the internet and other cultural shifts have made the Damron Address Bookand gay travel guides on the whole, somewhat obsolete. Silva says those changes have fundamentally changed gay life. Lots of bars, especially out here in Southern California, kind of move in between, straight bars having gay clientele, gay bars having lots of straight people come to them.