Down the Rabbit Hole I Go

The first thing to go is the memory. Or the knees. Sometimes both at once.

In my case, it's definitely memory. While some aspects of life in my 20s stand out very clearly, others are more…muddled. And what I'm increasingly discovering is that things I swore happened one way—or in such a such a month—actually did not, as backed up by photographic proof.

And while it could be that those photographs are nothing more than a glitch in the Matrix, I find it far easier to believe that I just got it wrong and it's a glitch in my matrix.

I don't exactly remember how I got there or what I was searching for, but last week I found myself knee-deep in the online archives of Arizona State University; more specifically, their collection of Arizona gay rags from the 70s onward.

The collection is far from complete, but reading the smattering of articles and opinion pieces pointed out exactly how far we've come as a community and our standing in society at large in the last 50 years.

It was also a wonderful trip down memory lane.

(Click either to embiggen.)

Seeing the ads and logos from all these long-gone establishments especially brought me back.

And then there was the card shop on 7th whose name I was searching for a few weeks ago…

…where I bought this treasure in 1983:

Done by a probably local artist, "C. Ruth", it thought it was adorable. I loved the colors, I loved the subject matter, and while my partner at the time, Dennis, didn't have a beard, he was a ginger…

Frankly, I'm amazed that it's survived the 24 moves it's gone through since then.

But I digress.

Lastly, who could forget this information-packed reference? Kids wonder how we met up before the internet? This is how.

(I never bought one. Six dollars was a lot of money back for me in 1979; it was an hour's work!)

I decided to enlist Google Maps to see what now stood on these once-hallowed locations.

To say it was a sobering experience would be an understatement. While I knew instinctively that the bars came and went even back then, it was still disheartening to see that so many were now just vacant lots, or had been torn down to make way for new strip malls and condo/apartment complexes.

Interestingly, the one bar that still remains in business and at its original location is the Nu-Towne Saloon; the one bar I have never visited. Back in the day it was "way out east" and basically surrounded by little more than open desert. Now it's surrounded by development and doesn't seem nearly so far east as it once did.