With more than 900 articles penned for the
Bay Area Reporter, I feel a strong connection as the newspaper celebrates its 50th anniversary this week. I ve written columns, listings and reviews since 1992. Having assigned and edited the expansive features in this section, I thought to share some behind the scenes tales as well.
My career in journalism started in 1989 in New York City with
OutWeek, the revolutionary weekly publication that emerged from ACT UP, Queer Nation, but didn t last long.
After a 1990 visit for the OutWrite literary festival, my second working visit to San Francisco was in early 1992, on a freelance assignment for
Fifty years ago the gay bar that foremost location for so much dating, friendships, political organizing, and times both fun and challenging gave birth to the B.A.R., when the first copies of the Bay Area Reporter were set atop cigarette machines in San Francisco watering holes.
Since those early, heady days of what was then called the Gay Liberation Movement, the bar rag evolved to become the undisputed newspaper of record for the Bay Area s LGBTQ community, distributing 20,000 paper copies each Thursday, and of course available 24/7 online.
According to Michael Yamashita, a gay man who has been the paper s publisher since 2013, the paper has never missed an issue deadline not even when threatened by the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989.
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.
Friends of Harvey Milk Plaza has commenced yet another online survey seeking community feedback about changes to the space s design. The booster group also will conduct two town hall events later this month, its interim executive director said April 1.
The announcements were made during the monthly Castro Merchants Association meeting, at which time Brian Springfield, the interim executive director of Friends of Harvey Milk Plaza, gave a presentation.
The Friends group has been involved with plans to renovate the plaza for the last several years. The remodel proposal has been fiercely opposed by some in the community who have countered the goal of better honoring Milk can be achieved within the confines of the current design and at less cost than the estimated $10 million price tag for the fuller renovation proposal.
Yeah, we ll toot our own horn. We ve come a long way from when the first issue of the Bay Area Reporter rolled off the presses (or a mimeograph machine in the back of a gay bar) 50 years ago April 1, 1971. It was no April Fools joke. The paper had a purpose to bring the LGBTQ community together, at least as far as letting us all know what was going on and we continue to fulfill that promise. It hasn t always been easy. It definitely hasn t been without controversy or occasional missteps. But here we are, 50 years later, in the midst of another pandemic, continuing to inform queer readers on issues that matter to them.