(image by Phyllis Christopher whose book of photography âDark Room: San Francisco Sex and Protest, 1988-2003â will be published by Book Works this Spring.)
I am working on Dyke â88 | San Francisco, a personal memoir of the 1980s before I left the city of my birth and when the dykes ruled. San Francisco lives in my mind as that beautiful, radical, creative, queer place. When AIDS ravaged the City and queer radicals took to the streets.
First step is to make a trailer/teaser to raise funding, no longer than 2 minutes. All footage is logged, audio is synced to video and the interviews transcribed. I am looking for a filmmaker/editor to work with me. Possibly a young queer with energy to burn. I want someone to work with, to collaborate with. I want a filmmaker who knows how to edit. Someone I click with who is interested in my story, the story of San Francisco at the height of a dyke led renaissance, when queers were coming from all over the world to be visibly out and proud. A San Francisco that no longer exists since the tech takeover. Any queries or suggestions, please contact me: [email protected]
https://pornfilmfestivalberlin.de/en/help-lulu-to-make-dyke-88-san-francisco/?fbclid=IwAR2fWb1bOOKitxdJnVg8GnIgPrtGtGbNLNHew1fc6xLVy9Tot3f3NX_PpqU
I moved to San Francisco in the late 1970s. The Castro was really coming into it's own and the sidewalk was full of beautiful (mainly) gay men. In the summer, the corner of Castro and 18th was called Hybernia Beach which was full of shirtless men in shorts sunning and cruising. I remember a 7 foot drag queen sailing down Market street in roller skates with a boom box on her shoulder and her wig barely holding on. Walking downtown you would see the two elderly twin ladies dressed impeccably head to toe in the exact same outfit and hair. One day I was rounding the corner near Castro and Market. The city had Market Street closed off so Sylvester and "Two Tons of Fun" (his back up singers) could throw a free concert right in the middle of the main drag. The men at Toad Hall bar were some of the most beautiful and masculine men I had ever seen. In the financial district, men dressed in business suits and ties would meet after work at the Sutter's Mill and Trinity Place. Both bars had the feeling of a private men's club. Trocadero Transfer was a huge dance club South of Market where patrons danced for hours, many with huge fans held up in the air. I moved from Texas where one night while leaving a gay bar, a police car pulled up next to me and the officer called me a faggot. A few weeks after moving to San Francisco, a police car pulled up next to me and when the window went down, the officer gave me his phone number. I remember going to a fund raiser in the elaborate Green Room in the War Memorial Building. The dance floor was filled with same sex couples dancing while surrounding the mayor and his wife. It all looked so very natural. There will never be a more magical time then the 1970s in San Francisco.
Gay and Lesbian Studies professor Gregory Woods agrees that thereâs a fetishisation of hyper-masculine bodies in the gay community, but says heâs unsure that it can be linked back to physique culture. âI guess itâs still, in part, a reaction against negative stereotypes of campness, which seem especially common in the context of school bullying,â he theorises. âWe go to the gym and turn ourselves into the tattooed hulks (or hunks?) our bullies wouldnât have dared to bully.â
It makes sense that we could be running from stereotypes by bulking up our bodies, or even by appropriating masculine aesthetics like the handlebar moustache or the skinhead (both famously popular amoung gay men in the 70s and 80s). But plenty of men project this pressure to âman upâ and expect it of potential partners. They plaster their dating bios with demands like âdonât be campâ or âbe a man!â and, in turn, insinuate that campness is bad. But this is untrue; not only is camp a political weapon, itâs way of being that was openly embraced by plenty of the pioneers that fought most vigorously for the rights LGBTQ+ folk we enjoy today.
Itâs not just body image, either; 2016âs #GayMediaSoWhite hashtag illustrated a huge lack of diversity in gay media which seemed to explain the racism, femme-shaming and body-shaming so prevalent on LGBTQ+ dating apps.
Originally, we were the first to bring the âcloneâ look to the UK and we were actually the first ever UK business to import Levi 501âs.
Clone Zone London
Four friends; Mike, David, Paul and John, frustrated at the lack of quality gear available to gay men in the UK, began to import American tees, tanks, leather and more overseas so the UK scene could access the âCastro Cloneâ look. Our official launch was on 5th March 1982, at Subway Nightclub in Leicester Square.
' We LOVEDMichelangelo SignoriIe's article "New Clone VB. Old Clone" [no. 72, Nov, 28]. In fact, we loved it so mch, we wanted to help out and add on to the already-humorous but truthful list. We are sure these will not be the only additions.
p.5 http://outweek.net/pdfs/ow_76.pdf
Thanks again for making usl aughl , ⢠⢠Richard Hunter Michael Tresser Jal1]esLynch Manhattan any pOlitical gay movement. That was "their" realm over In the Wast Village. It would seem the desire to separate 'from the "old clone" was much deeper than Mlchelangelo believes. Throughout the '80s, when gay men were screamIng and pleading that their ⢠\ ⢠, Contrary to Michelangelo's statement that it Is the "old clone" who Is "aggressively apolitical," the reveree was Initially true: Those who hung out In BoyBar and Pyramid In the mld-'80s (from where the "new clone" actually emerged) were quite adamant 'about not being Involved In , , , ⢠⢠brothers were dying, the "new clone" was remarkably si.lent. In 1985, AIDS was, after all, an "old clone" disease. It was "their" disease, and we, of course, were younger and smarter and going to live forever...until we started to get sick in everincreaSing numbers ourselves. AIDS mobilized the' "new clone," not when the threat was' knockil,1g, but 'Nhe'n It was already Inside the house. I resent the Implication t~at gay politiCS were somehow meaningless before groups like ACT UP and au~er Nation came into being. While It is fun to imagine that this , , , activism is some brainstorm tha't has never been done¡ before, I am amazed how far some will contort to pat them-, , , I selves on the back John Maresca Manhattan Michelangelo Signorlle responds: You are absolutely correct that the new clone 'look was first worn by the then-complacent BoyBar and Pyramid crowd; however, the activists' soon adopted it-and many in that East . Village crowd later actually became activists themselves. But the pOint you make is on tlirget, as Is your second point about AIDS first being .an old clone disease. However, to say that I Implied that activism in the gay commu- 'nity began with the new clone is quite a reductive lreading of the piece. I spoke consistently of the "new" activism, realizing that,' of course, there was much that
p. 7-8 After reading the article on the Clones, old and new, in issue no. 74 ["Clone Wars," Nov, 28], I must seriously question where your author did his research.
"For the first time, homosexual men had actually created a uniform which would help them identify themselves." If anything, the clone look of the '70s was a reaction to the then-standing uniform of cashmere sweater and corduroy pants, which was every bit as much a uniform as the button-fly and plaid flannel. This should also give your author a little more insight into the genesis of the uniform: For years, gay men had been portrayed as wispy queens-appropriating the straight look was our way of saying that we were (and continue to be) just as masculine as the straight guys. This was not "internalized homophobia," as you r author suggests, but a reaction to a straight community that wasn't willing to concede that two men could be both gay and butch.
Insofar as the Clone look was a very white, middle-class one, again, one must look at the historic context. Most gay Blacks were more concerned with racial rights than sexual ones, and a lot of the energy of the movement in those days was diverted into support for racial civil rights; as always, we thought of ourselves last. The Clones, however, refused to think of others first; like the drag queens, we made sure people knew we were gay men, first and foremost. The infamous hankey code that the author derides as "big children playing their own games" was, for the most part, mindless fun as well as sexual communication. Maybe Mr. Signorile sees sex as a political act, but for the Clones, sex was fun so why not make a game out of it?
Those who felt excluded from the Clone movement...well, sorry, no sympathy. No one held a gun to their heads to say they had to adopt the Clone look, and a lot of gay men and women I know saw it as just another costume, much like leatherman or radical dyke or drag queen; and when you cut through it, that's all it was, just as the Clone of today wears a costume some people may find intimidating or (dare I say it?) oppressive.
To say we were elitist is, for the most part, sour grapes. I'm not an especially attractive man, but I adopted the Clone look and, through it" made many good friends. One of the joys of San Francisco in the '70s was its amazing versatility; if one so chose, he could be a Clone one night, a leatherman the next, part of the "queer intelligentsia" the night after that, One of my dearest friends (now departed) was a female impersonator in the drag-court system who was, in the vernacular of the time, ''flawless"-ne was also president of one of the Folsom Street motorcycle clubs and, when dressed in leather, looked like someone you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley (Then again, maybe you would), If anyone was elitist in
those days, it was your politically correct "queer intelligentsia," who spent more time trying to "justify" the gay community to the straight one, like a mother trying to explain a difficult child to his or her teacher. The Clones simply were; we showed the straight community that it was possible to be gay, to be a "real man" (whatever the hell that was), to have fun and to not give a goddamn about what anyone thought of it. Finally, to correct some of the more superficial errors in the article:
1. A Clone's hair was not "heavily barbered"; it was cut about three quarters of an inch short, which made it easy to maintain. You trick, you take a shower afterwards, you towel-dry your hair, and you're ready, No Clone worth his salt went near a blow-drier.
2, AI Pacino's Cruisin' was about the New York leather community, not the Clones.
3. "The Old Clone doesn't use the word 'Clone' at all." To the contrary, one of the fastest-selling T-shirts on Castro Street in that era was a white one with the word silkscreened on it. We knew who we were, and we revelled in it.
This was the final and most extreme iteration of the âcloneâ era, when gay men made themselves identifiable to each other by a code of masculine presentation â close-cropped hair, trim mustaches, tight T-shirts, faded Leviâs 501s, leather vests or harnesses. When Mailmanâs St. Marks Baths brought clones flocking to the East Village, some of the neighborhoodâs radical queers werenât happy. The book Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz relates a story about future art superstar Keith Haring stenciling âClones Go Homeâ on sidewalks leading from the West Side where clones congregated, and signing the warning âFAFHâ for the imaginary group Fags Against Facial Hair.
