In the 1970s, gay people joyously defined themselves out in the open for the first time in our culture’s history. The gay lib movement, largely sparked by the 1969 Stonewall riots, gave a new opportunity for expression, especially in cities like San Francisco.
Combine that with a pre-AIDS existence, and it made for one hell of a party.
Photographer Hal Fisher was especially interested in these newfound gay signifiers, and as part of his 1977 publication Gay Semiotics, he provided detailed itemized descriptions of the gay experience in San Francisco at the time. Note the very early use of the term “basic gay,” though we’re guessing he didn’t mean it quite the same way.
Here’s a sampling of his work. You can purchase a copy of the paperback book today, but i’ll set you back upwards of $500.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
BLUE HANDKERCHIEF
Handkerchiefs signify behavioral tendencies through both color and placement. A blue handkerchief placed in the right hip pocket serves notice that the wearer desires to play the passive role during sexual intercourse. Conversely, a blue handkerchief placed in the left hip pocket indicates that the wearer will assume the active or traditional male role during sexual contact. The blue handkerchief is commonly used in the treatment of nasal congestion and in some cases holds no meaning in regard to sexual preferences.RED HANDKERCHIEF
Red handkerchiefs are used as signifiers for behavior that is often regarded as deviant or abnormal. A red handkerchief located in the right hip pocket implies that the wearer takes the passive role in anal/hand insertion. A red handkerchief placed in the left hip pocket suggests that the wearer plays the active role in anal/hand insertion. Red handkerchiefs are also employed in the treatment of nasal discharge and in some cases may have no significance in regard to sexual contact.
EARRING
An earring in the right lobe may suggest that the wearer prefers to play the passive role during sexual activity. Conversely, an earring in the left lobe may signify active behavior on the part of the wearer. Unlike the other signifiers, however, Right/Left placement of the earring is not always indicative of Passive/Active tendencies on the part of the wearer. Furthermore, the earring or stud is often adopted by non-homosexual men, thus making the earring the most subtle of homosexual signifiers.
KEYS
Keys are an understood signifier for homosexual activity. A key chain worn on the right side of the body indicates that the wearer desires to play a passive role during a sexual encounter. Conversely, keys placed on the left side of the body signify that the wearer expects to assume a dominant position. Keys are also worn by janitors, laborers and other workers with no sexual significance intended.
AMYL NITRITE
Amyl nitrite is a prescription capsule drug used in the treatment of angina pectoris (heart disease). Amyl nitrite, or “poppers” as it is known in slang terminology, is inhaled through either the nose or the mouth. After inhalation the user experiences a quickened heartbeat and the sensation of blood rushing to his head. Amyl nitrite is especially popular on dance floors and immediately prior to sexual climax. Since Amyl Nitrite is available only by prescription, manufacturers have created a number of commercial substitutes as well as a variety of inhalers. Although Amyl is used by heterosexuals, its immense popularity among gays has earned it the title “The Gay Drug.”
STREET FASHION
BASIC GAY
STREET FASHION
JOCK
ARCHETYPAL MEDIA IMAGE
WESTERN
The western or cowboy prototype is identified by articles of clothing: cowboy or western boots, jeans, flannel or western style shirts and in some instances hats. When the image appears in gay magazines the settings are usually barns, corrals or fence posts. The cowboy represents the frontier and a male-only society. The machismo qualities of the western archetype are vigorously exploited by advertising. Modern cowboys are used by the media to play up masculinity and sexuality in ways that are subconsciously understood by the gay populace.
ARCHETYPAL MEDIA IMAGE
LEATHER
The leather prototype is the most easily recognized look. Black leather items include everything from hoods to jackets, pants, caps and underwear. Accoutrements include motorcycles, chains and various sexual items. In the gay media black leather becomes a symbol for the unknown or untried. It is entirely, vehemently, macho in appearance. While the other archetypes have their roots in myths accepted and celebrated by the culture-at-large, the leather cult, like its straight counterpart is rooted in non-acceptance and non-conformity.
BONDAGE DEVICE
MEAT HOIST
Cover
Related Posts:
Behind The Harness: The Extraordinary History Of The Folsom Street Fair
Fun Facts About Male Prostitution Through The Ages
The History Of America’s First Gay Bar And The Iconic Artist You’d Have Found There
mascpgher
Gotta love those satin gym shorts. LOL
TTTTom
“One hell of a party!”
wpewen
I was there. The whole trip was definitely not about 500 dollar coffee table books. Not in San Francisco, Los Angeles, or anywhere. See: Stairway to Heaven, Led Zeppelin.
Jacob23
Sickening. This wasn’t liberation. All they did was take the cold, impersonal, anonymous sex of the 1950s – the only option available under those conditions – and dress it up. They made the rituals more elaborate and the venues more commercial. They added drugs and props and costumes. But it was still the same impersonal, dehumanizing, loveless experience that they would have had in a men’s room in 1952.
Well, anyhoo, it certainly was a hell of a party, even if the party came at the cost of hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of shortened lives. I am so glad I wasn’t around to see this catastrophe begin but I am here now to see it finally coming to an end.
ThatguyatORU
I guess I’m a basic gay, huh.
robho3
@Jacob23: oh ok Debbie downer. Since you weren’t even around during that time I don’t see how you can comment on it.
Chris-MI
The hanky code was a laugh a minute. Every magazine and underground paper had a key to it, but none of them agreed. Every time I saw one I would imagine two getting home and realizing that one of them wanted to bottom and one of them wanted a spanking.
sfhally
@wpewen: You need to read it closer. Nowhere is there any mention of a $500 coffee-table book.
sfhally
@Jacob23: Like you said–you weren’t there so your opinion of what it was like is useless. Impersonal, dehumanizing and loveless, huh? You weren’t there so you have no idea if what you’re saying is accurate–you’ve just fallen in with the “WE”RE not like them–we’re nice people” crowd this generation has come up with to re-write our history.
Well, until the last of us is gone you can try to change history all you want–but if you lived through it you know that no one else can tell you what it was like.
And you people trying reading the book before you throw out your opinion.
KingKong
That first picture is heartbreaking. Bubble butt’s the top and pancake’s the bottom??
Wilberforce
@Jacob23: Sorry. But it was pure liberation. The freedom, after centuries of hiding. The community events. Dances. Block parties. Halloween. The Parade. The smiles and laughter everywhere. The pure joy bursting out of a thousand hearts every Saturday night.
To appreciate that joy, you would have had to experience the oppression that came before. But you didn’t, so you can’t.
Jacob23
Wilberforce – What you are talking about sounds wonderful and no way would I ever dump on it. Community events, friends, smiles and laughter. That is liberating because it is about people connecting, not using one another. But what this post is about is the opposite: mass, commercialized, anonymous sex. Pick your sex partner based on his looks and his handkerchief color. No need to get to know him as a human being. No need even to find out his name. F#ck with him until you cum and then it’s on to the next one. Now if a newly out gay man celebrated by indulging in this for a week or a month or a few months, there likely would have been little to no harm done. But by making it a way of life for the urban gay male, the results were horrendous.
And yes it’s true, I wasn’t alive to see it. But neither was I alive during World War II, and yet I still know a thing or 2 about Midway and Stalingrad. It turns out you can learn a hell of a lot about events that pre-date your birth by reading what has been written by the people who were there.
durkART
Yep, I was there. 1978 from Niles Illinois entering the magical world of utopia of Chicago – all the nightlife and sense of community (bowling Thursday nights and softball during the summer days ) it had to offer. It TRULY was years of liberation and self discovery. I never got into the cowboy look, but I could relate to the basic gay fashion (shorts and tee) during the day and leather garb during the nights. To this very day I still wear converse gym shoes, 501 button down jeans and don my handle bar mustache: the hanky codes – I still have my hankies. And finally the music and the discos – bringing people of all cultures,of every race, nationality and body type together – a TIME of Celebration. Sadly, AIDS cut short so many of my closet friends in that era and I too carry the burden of that era – a daily pill to keep the disease at bay. I would never had changed anything. We were a community in discovery gaining our political strength. No longer we were in the shadows, a deviated people – we set the ground work to be mainstream and we are a force to be reckoned with. I truly have problems with the drug Truvada and the promises the pharmaceutical claims ( history repeating itself ) : but I know that’s for another discussion. durkART
wpewen
@sfhally: Yes,thIere is. “It will set you back $500.00. It’s a big b/w book. About an era I am from. An era which had almost nothing to do with this. This is why I bailed on the gay community as it evolved.
onthemark
@Jacob23: Yuck! I hate getting to know a guy and THEN having lousy sex with him! I consider that a serious waste of time, why bother. I’d much rather do it the other way around – have GREAT (safer) sex and then try to get to know him, and maybe end up with something longer-term.
If you don’t approve of this method, you really could try minding your own “f*cking” business, literally? It must be exhausting for you trying to run everyone else’s sex lives.
vive
@Jacob23, though the 70s were a bit before my time, I’ve had deeply personal connections and/or started friendships with some really nice guys I’ve met in bathhouses and at sex parties – the sex-oriented culture you dislike so much (and which is still around though in altered forms) is in my experience no more impersonal than the (mostly online) 2015 mainstream gay culture – in fact in my experience 2015 gay culture is more impersonal and treats people more as throwaway objects. At least back when you had to leave your house for sex you met a wide range of other people too.
Chris
Everyone wore a costume; but underneath each of those costumes, I met a real live human being, with desires, wants, and searching for acceptance and love. I will not pretend we were anything; but I do know we were experimenting after decades of oppression and even more coded stuff to protect ourselves. It was a liberating time to be alive. And I, for one, am glad to have lived through it.
scotshot
@wpewen: If you weren’t actually part of the gay community today you wouldn’t be commenting on Queerty. You are involved. It’s similar to “It’s not sex, it’s only a blowjob”.
scotshot
@Jacob23: Many guys today only connect with others through Grindr & other websites. “Costumes” are as much defined today as have always been, drug use is highly rampant. Nothing really changes. The examples shown and discussed here are only a subset of wildly individual people, not every one fits into the same box (pardon the pun).
From the 50s on Gays demonstrated and fought for the rights and acceptance you enjoy today, one which obviously continues today. To make the claims you have merely shows someone who’s completely ignorant of gay history. Google!
wpewen
@scotshot: No, I’m really not in the community much. I have gay and straight friends, but that’s it. It’s nothing like your sexual allegory. I’ve been out since 76. The community never really did much for me-I’m just a guy who happens to like other guys. LGBT doesn’t describe me. Generally I am most comfortable with straight men, partly because I can talk to them quite easily. I don’t dislike anybody, but I also took shit at times when I was younger because I am “me” yeah, not straight acting just a fairly masculine homosexual man. Takes all kinds.
sfhally
@wpewen: No, a friend of mine still has a copy of the original and I remember reading it when it came out. It is s typically sized book and not very thick.
wpewen
@sfhally: Well, that’s good. Again, the marketing, the liquor/credit card/gay travel ads in the Advocate late 70’s basically made me want to throw up. What happened to me and quite a few other guys was we started kind of counterculture, so to speak, only to find we were instantly a commodity, and right now it seems gay men in particular are hip again.
What I got out of all of it was that because I like to sleep with guys I am so many other things…And so when Will and Grace came along I turned it off.
vive
@wpewen, I strongly doubt that any gay man ever took shit for being masculine, unless they were perceived as looking down on the rest of us, which seems likely from what you describe.
YesIDid
@Jacob23: I couldn’t agree more with your first paragraph. For me, wearing leather or tieing up someone for humiliation is nothing to celebrate or be proud of.
Clark35
Yes you can find all sort of things like this from the era before AIDS if you look for them.
wpewen
@vive Well stop doubting and maybe do some observing. Your perception is just that. I’m not looking down at anyone. I have spoken with other guys who have the same observation as me. Literally getting ragged on for personal demeanor and told that I “didn’t accept my sexuality.” More than once. Considering that I came out in 76 at age 18 I find that strange. I don’t especially like it, as I’ve never felt anyone should set guidelines for other people on gender expression.
I will say I have reached a point where no, I don’t want to be seen with guys in leather on the street, no, I don’t identify at all with men who do drag, etc. And I don’t have to. I support it, but it’s so far from my world.
This type of discussion was reason enough to basically split. I can assure you that I have actually been verbally attacked by effeminate men. It’s no longer my problem. I live my life how I want to live it, period.
vive
@wpewen, I am masculine presenting and have never experienced what you describe. I find it hard to believe you would have been “verbally attacked” for just being masculine. I think it was because you “don’t want to be seen with” them; in other words, your demeanor was itself an insult against guys who are different from you, as are your messages here.
wpewen
Well, try real hard. I’m not “masculine presenting” I’m just me. Son of a contractor, built like my Dad, worked in horticulture heavy work. And I HAVE been verbally put down, more than once.
Didn’t care much about being seen with anyone until a few years back, was in Big Bear and had to be totally embarrassed by some fellows who were real out of place. Leather vests at a boy’s camp where we were guests, young guys talking about their underwear in a conservative mountain town.
You display the typical weirdness-frankly, it’s not my problem anymore. My demeanor was no insult to gay guys, it’s your problem if you think so. Your attitude is oppressive, thank God I don’t have to deal with it in my life.
rand503
Was the hanky code and keychain code REAL? I wasn’t out back then, but I tried to read as much as I could, and all I remember is that everything I read contradicted one another. If there was a code, it must have been confusing as hell.
I like to think that it was just made up by some homophobic “researcher” trying to find out what makes gays tick, and say everyone with hankies. (It WAS the era of the cowboy look, after all). He goes up to some dude and asks him what it means, and the dude realizes what’s going on an decides to fuck with his mind, and so makes up a “code.”
All excited, the researcher finds code where he looks, and publishes he thesis which proves, of course, that gay men are only interested in anonymous sex. By the time this filters down to people like me, we say, hey, what the hell, it WOULD make it easier to have a code, and so a code it is. It changes daily, but then you really have to be “in the know.”
And we have the last laugh on the homophobes.
ErikO
@rand503: Yes it was real but it was a lot easier to just talk to someone and ask or find out what they were into. Some people still do the code stuff today.
Jack Meoff
Where can I get myself a meat hoist that looks like fun.
Tobi
@rand503: “Was the hanky code and keychain code REAL?”
I never saw it on the streets, only in certain bars and clubs.
Danny279
“I’ll have lots of sex with people who don’t know or care about me, and then I’ll take lots of drugs and alcohol to numb the sense of loneliness. I’m liberated!”
Sad and gross.
MacAdvisor
The young fellow with the mustache displaying the earring was the love of my life Scott Swanson (really, Donald Scott Swanson, but no one but his mother called him that). He died on December 5, 1981, in a fire in the apartment above the now 711, just a convenience store back then, at the corner of 18th and Noe. He was the most wonderful, creative young man and I miss him to this very day. He was born in San Francisco and died there, but lived mostly in San Jose.
My favorite hanky code card was the one from All American Boy, the jeans store on Castro back then.
Ogre Magi
Why was facial hair so popular back then
Danny279
@MacAdvisor: The “love of your life”? Really? Were you in a committed relationship with him or was he just one of dozens or scores or hundreds of sex partners? How many sex partners have you had over your lifetime?
dwes09
@Danny279: “The “love of your life”? Really? Were you in a committed relationship with him or was he just one of dozens or scores or hundreds of sex partners? How many sex partners have you had over your lifetime?”
You certainly sound like a cynical little twit. Please be specific about how the number of sex partners a person has affects their worth or ability to love. Cite sources and statistics, refer to professionals with more brains than you, or shove it up your lonely little butt.
Where do you trolls come from?
““I’ll have lots of sex with people who don’t know or care about me, and then I’ll take lots of drugs and alcohol to numb the sense of loneliness. I’m liberated!”
Sad and gross.”
Once again, where do you trolls come from? Why do blue nosed evangelical heterosexuals like you come here and pretend to be gay? You have nothing to offer on any level. Go back to your little Family Research Council meetings and giggle over your emotional immaturity and distaste for others.