In 1985, I moved from Minneapolis to attend the University of San Francisco with a double major in humanities and communications. I was eventually admitted to USF s Honors College where I learned to fall in love with learning. Planting new roots in San Francisco enabled me to flourish as an independent person in a place very different from where I had come. It opened a universe of possibilities combined with the pride I found in discovering there was a city that embraced me as a queer person.
On weekends, friends from the university joined me and we escaped our dorms, left the work on campus, and explored the richness of the city s nightlife. Hitting the bars in the Castro, dipping into the seediness of the Polk, going to the Alta Plaza Bar gay men s club in Pacific Heights, and eventually finding the hidden parties South of Market delivered new texture to the very act of living.