The images I’m marveling at offer candid glimpses of San Diego gay bar culture from different epochs in modern gay history. A third snapshot: a festive lineup of Halloween-costumed contestants-a drag version of Tippi Hedren (a stuffed crow entangled in her stylish platinum updo), a garish clown, and a butch female cowboy-all vying for prizes awarded long ago in an unidentified San Diego gay bar. Another photo presents a dance floor crowd, beaming faces glistening under a sheen of sweat, big 1980s hair and lip gloss in full effect on the women (and on some men, too).
There’s a shirtless, mustachioed blond on roller skates in front of a 1965 red Plymouth Barracuda the position of the Giant Dipper roller coaster and street signage in the background establishes the photo was taken in the vicinity of the Apartment, a women’s gay bar that opened in Mission Beach in 1974. I’m alone, but surrounded by faces smiling to me across the decades. I’m hunched over a smoky glass table covered with a treasure trove of photographs, shivering from the chilly air conditioning as much as from the excitement of discovering photographic gold nuggets.
