Once a legitimate blog. Now just a collection of memes 'n menz.
Damn, Andy Bell was cute. But then, weren’t we all at that age?
“Live never to be ashamed if anything you do or say is published around the world—even if what is published is not true.” ~ Richard Bach, Messiah’s Handbook
Quote above notwithstanding, there’s a lot more to that photoshoot that I am not going to share. (Although if you were on a certain BBS in the early 90s you might’ve come across a photo from that shoot of me in a cowboy hat, leather vest, and…not much else.)
Sammy Davis Jr. – Rhythm Of Life (1969)
Tucson, 1980. But mine was chocolate brown.
Hey…it was the late 70s and all of us of a certain age have photos like this hidden away. Don’t deny it!
Anyway, I was listening to this while I was getting ready this morning, and what struck me most was the fun embodied in the songs, especially the first track. While the late 70s were not without their problems, there’s no doubt that in comparison to 2025, it was a much simpler, more joyful time in this country.
As I’ve grown older, the list of absent friends continues to grow, and while not all of them are AIDS-related at this point, on every December 1st, I remember them all…
Kent Kelly
Ken Cohen
Steve Golden
Dennis Shelpman
Rick Ashworth aka Miss KC Dare
Jeffrey Laughlin
Jim Hagen
Chuck Krahe
Michael Nelson
Jim Nye
Kevin Ohm
Rick King
Ron Aiazzi
Grant Neilsen
Ric Hathaway
David Koston
Kim Holstein
Jerry Straughn
Fred Sibinic
Russ Alvarez
Ken Borg
Marty Kamner
John Trapp
Harold Gates
Peter Whitman
Scott Woods
Bobby Farina
Brian Lea
Chuck Mayer
Richard Gulliver
Jim Girard
Keith Roseberry
Tom Farrel
Ben Walzer
Steve McCollom
Philip Ruckdeschel
…of a typical night at Mike’s Night Gallery (Folsom Street, SF, 1991)
Oh, the stories I could tell.
Take a moment. Sit down. Close your eyes. Think of all the places you’ve lived over the course of your life. Which of them made you feel the safest, the most loved? A place where, when you think of it brings a spontaneous grin to your face. In other words, Home with a capital H?
For me, it was the house my family lived in during my high school and college years. We moved in the day I started high school in September 1972. That morning I left the house we’d lived in since 1964 as an 8th grade graduate and came back to a totally new abode a high school freshman.
It was brand new construction in a new subdivision, “Bethany Heights,” located about a half mile south of where we’d lived for my grade school years.
It was also quite probably haunted. (Hard to explain with new construction, but there you go.)
My bedroom was downstairs. To this day I can close my eyes and see the afternoon sunlight streaming in through the window. It was quiet, safe, and felt like a private sanctuary from the hustle and bustle of the rest of the house. Ironic, considering the main gathering space in our house, the family room, occupied the same floor.
My dad had big plans for that house, only a few of which actually came to pass. He built a pair of floor to ceiling bookcases, dividing the living room from the dining room. He also built a wall of bookcases framing the window in my bedroom. He wanted to have a fireplace sunk and built in the family room as well as digging a secondary exit through the sewing room and putting in concrete stairs back to surface level, but neither of those ever happened. We did finally get an in-ground pool, but it happened only as I was getting ready to move out on my own.
My soon-to-be best friend lived across the street. We met shortly after my family moved in. Ken got me turned on to hi-fi equipment and rock-n-roll. As I’ve mentioned before, we’d sit in his room after he got back from CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Chicago every summer and pour over the bags of brochures he’d brought back, dreaming of someday owning the equipment ourselves. When it came time to upgrade my childhood bicycle for my new commute to the high school, I followed his lead and got a yellow Schwinn Continental. Did parents really let their kids bicycle nearly three miles to school on these Phoenix streets on their own back then? Apparently so. Furthermore, it was expected. I got a ride to and from school only under extraordinary circumstances.
During my senior year, I had a crush on Daniel, a boy whose family had moved into the newly built part of the neighborood on the same street about a block to the west. When I say crush, I mean crush. We became friends. We hung out. We liked the same music. I liked taking long drives with him in his pink mustang. And keep in mind this was 1975. I wasn’t out, and profoundly frightened to profess my undying love, especially since he’d given no hints the feelings were mutual. (I’d tried that with a boy three years earlier only to destroy a friendship.) Anyhow, after my parents and sister would go to bed, I’d go out the side garage door, climb up the fence and onto the roof, and walk to the highest point of the roof that gave me an unobstructed view of the entire neighborhood—including Daniel’s house. I couldn’t see into his room, but I could see when the light was on and he was home. Crazy, huh? It’s not like today, where kids can call or text each other’s personal phones at any hour. I just wanted to make sure he was home and safe. I could’ve slipped and broken my neck countless times, but thankfully I was sure enough on my feet that it never happened—and no one called the police to report a boy on the roof of the house. But it was the 70s and a very quiet neighborhood.
This is also the house from my youth that still appears most often in my dreams.
I was laying wide awake at 4 am this morning, and I was thinking how we consume music has so fundamentally changed over the past 40 years. Then I found myself remembering walking into Tower Records on Market Street in San Francisco as I’d done a countless number of times in the 90s. And once inside, I could easily recall the smell of the store. Next thing I knew I was grinning ear to ear.
Tower was a magic place for music lovers like myself. It had been since I first set foot in the original SF store at Columbus & Bay on a trip to the City before we eventually relocated there. It was a bit of a wonderland for me. I’d ordered Michael Stern’s Chronos soundtrack from them a month earlier, only to discover after it arrived that the disc was defective. I physically brought it with me on that trip so I could exchange it. While there I also found a record I’d been seeking for months: Michael Garrison’s Airborn that I dragged home on the plane with me. (Yeah, I was in the middle of my electronic new age period.)
A few years after we’d relocated to SF and Tower opened another store in the concrete monstrosity that had been constructed on Upper Market, somehow making up for the eyesore it occupied. I remembered many an afternoon pouring through the racks, either searching for something specific or just seeing if something piqued my interest enough to shell out $18 for a disc.
And then there were the times your favorite band/singer/group released something new and you prayed Tower had purchased enough copies that they’d still have one available when you got to the store.
It was also within walking distance of my apartment, so it was doubly dangerous.
Remember getting the disc home and trying to get it out of those horrible plastic blister packs without amputating a finger in the process? And then putting the disc in your CD player, sitting down, and pouring over the liner notes?
Ah, the ritual!
All that was lost with the advent of MP3s and streaming. I think that’s the reason there’s been a resurgence in the sales of physical media. It’s part nostalgia (at least in my case) to be sure, but it’s the physicality of the process. It’s the knowledge that you own the music you just bought; it won’t arbitrarily be pulled from your streaming service because of some corporate fight over licensing. And you can listen to it any time you want. No worries about network connectivity! And if you want to rip those discs to MP3 for your phone, you can!
The purpose of this post? I dunno…those memories that came flooding back (and the unexpected recollection of the smells) just kind of gobsmacked me in the dark silence this morning.
Grace Jones: Portfolio (1978)
Alan Parsons Project: Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1976)
And thus began my love affair with the music of APP…
I first heard this at my buddy Gary’s house the summer immediately following our high school graduation. He had, in my mind, an absolutely killer system: a Kenwood KR-7400 receiver, Infinity 1001A Speakers, and a Technics SL-1400 turntable. I remember sitting there just mesmerized as this album played.
Gary and I had been friends since grade school. I remember him being a brilliant kid and we shared the same dry sense of humor as we moved into high school. We stayed in contact for years after graduation. He worked in high school as a stock boy for one of the local supermarket chains, and as I understand it, he went on—following the American dream of old—of rising up in the ranks, eventually becoming store—and later regional—manager.
We lost touch after I moved to Tucson in ’85. Though a mutual friend we briefly reconnected via email a couple years ago, exchanging photos and a brief outline of what had happened in our lives over the past 40-odd years. I never heard back from him after the second round of emails, but he seemed uninterested in rekindling our friendship. I have a feeling that in the intervening years he—like so fucking many of my absolute best friends from that period—had found religion and/or taken a political hard right and judged my lifestyle unacceptable. (There’s a reason you can never go home again.) But I’ll always be grateful to him for introducing me to the Alan Parsons Project.
*There are a couple different dates on the internet as to when this album was officially released, but I’m going with this one.
As a newly minted gay in the spring of 1977, I first heard this album in the dorm room of one John…McGuire. He was first man I ever did the deed with, and he was shocked—shocked I tell you—that at the time I had no idea who this Bette Midler was, and quite frankly her music did not appeal to me in any way. (I know, right? Should’ve turned in my gay card then and there.) But ya know, over the years it grew on me to the point that as I said, I know every note forward and backward and can now quote from it as effortlessly as I can from Personal Services.
I was just texting my old friend and housemate Michael (who shares my love of Bette and Personal Services) and in discussing Miss M., he said he was now going to have to dig out his copy and give it a listen because he—like most of us these days—needs some cheering up.
Giorgio & Chris: Love’s in You, Love’s in Me (1978)
Never one of my favorites, but looked back upon fondly, especially Burning the Midnight Oil.
I get the totally unsubstantiated feeling that Giorgio was fucking Chris at the time and was hoping to make her the next Donna Summer. Unfortunately, Chris didn’t possess the vocal talent of Summer and this is why I think this was a one-off album…
I could never really afford LaCoste; in the early 80s, they were $25 a pop, well beyond what my budget would allow at the time. I did have a rainbow of colors from Brittania, however.
At one point I did manage to buy the real deal. It was red, and I never wore it much because I got a size too small and was too naive to realize I could take it back and exchange it—even after I’d washed it.
In much later years I have been able to snag a few gently used alligators from eBay. Terribly out of fashion these days, but I still love them. Put one on, dab some Halston Z-14 behind my ears and I’m 25 years old with a 31-inch waist again.
San Francisco, May 2000. A very chunky pre-cancer 240 lbs. And hair!
…is close my eyes and I can taste the cheeseburgers.
This photo brings back memories. Summer, 1984. I was living in Mesa (a suburb east of Phoenix) with an absolute lunatic. (Another story for another time.)
I took a chance one weekend—knowing full well I might return home to find his dead body—and drove down to Tucson to spend time with friends, away from the madness.
It was a typical Saturday night at The Fineline. My friend Lee and I closed the bar as we often did, and while I lingered in the parking lot (a common activity at this particular club) hoping that even though the cruising had been dismal there might be some cute boy hanging out desperate enough to get laid that he’d hook up with me. (Hey, it happened before.)
This particular evening there was one guy with whom I’d been playing cat-and-mouse all evening. I don’t remember who struck up the conversation, but we connected and soon realized we were both interested (in fact, had been interested all evening) but he lived at home, and I was staying in a spare bedroom at Lee’s place. I knew he had asked some mutual friends back to his place (actually his mom’s place—she was out of town and he lived in a casita in back of the main house) to talk, dance, listen to music and generally hang out because no one really wanted to call an end to the evening. As Lee was leaving I told him I’d be, um…delayed…and he just told me to be safe.
Bobby and I had no idea where we’d consummate things, but for some strange reason I suggested we take a drive up the Catalina Highway to Windy Point. It was a nice overlook and I figured at that hour (now almost 2 am) it would be deserted.
It was. And it was then and there that I discovered my brand new Toyota Corolla SR-5 was not designed for…well, you know.
I learned sometime later that Bobby had a very apropos nickname: “Beer Can.”
By the time we got back to town, dropped him off, and headed to Lee’s place, the neighborhood was clogged with cars. Lee’s place was full of people.
Apparently, someone had passed around the bar that there was an after hours party at Lee’s. At one point the police were called. Lee was in tears as he was pushing people out the front door.
Good times.
LA Cares AIDS campaign (c.1984) starring Zelda Rubinstein
Zelda Rubinstein was a little person (the term she preferred) who began acting in her 40’s. Her big break came in 1982 with her role as Tangina Barrons in the film Poltergeist.
In 1984, she was the the central figure in a series of advertisements, directed towards gay men specifically, promoting safer sex and AIDS awareness. Rubinstein did so at risk to her own career, especially so shortly after her rise to fame, and admitted later that she did “pay a price, career-wise.” “I lost a friend to AIDS, one of the first public figures that died of AIDS,” the actress said in an interview with The Advocate. “I knew it was not the kind of disease that would stay in anybody’s backyard. It would climb the fences, get over the fences into all of our homes. It was not limited to one group of people.” She attended the first AIDS Project Los Angeles AIDS Walk. (Source:Wikipedia)
I had just split up with my first partner. I moved into a brand new apartment complex in Mesa, AZ called Crestwood. Very brutal architecture for 1984, no?
Madonna hadn’t even released Like a Virgin yet.
I ended up getting the exact unit I wanted, top floor end unit. Not surprising considering most of the apartments in this part of the complex were still empty. As I recall my rent was $300/month for a one-bedroom. Imagine that.
Lots of interesting adventures while I lived there. That’s all I’m gonna share right now.
I suppose it does look like a 25-year-old’s apartment…
The only things I still have in this picture are the two paintings, the poster (rolled up in a tube somewhere I think), and the antique lamp. The lamp is no longer in use because it needs to be rewired. Another project for retirement, I guess!
I don’t know whatever happened to Scott. We ironically met in 1979 or early 1980 through his ex, who I tried to pick up one lunch hour while waiting in line at the bank. (Remember when you had to do that to cash a check?) Tom and I didn’t really have enough in common to cause a spark, but when I met Scott we immediately hit it off. We actually “dated” for a while, but our schedules never seemed to sync often enough (he was an overnight radiology tech) to ignite the kind of passion that would spark a serious relationship. We did manage to maintain a casual friends-with-benefits thing for some time, but even that fizzled after I moved from Phoenix to Tucson. We lost touch with each other completely shortly after this photo was taken on his singular trip he made to Tucson that summer, and despite attempts to locate him years later (difficult because of his relatively common name), I was unsuccessful. I finally gave up and mentally put him in the MIA bucket along with so many others lost during the plague years.
I ran across this photo in the same file folder I found the Minidisc comic strip from the earlier post, undoubtedly thrown in there years ago because I was too lazy to return it to the photo album I’d pulled it from.
Damn, I’m old.
Sumeria (Alec Costandinos): Golden Tears (1977)
As is my tradition every December 1st, I remember…
Kent Kelly
Ken Cohen
Steve Golden
Dennis Shelpman
Jim Hagen
Chuck Krahe
Michael Nelson
Jim Nye
Kevin Ohm
Rick King
Ron Aiazzi
Grant Neilsen
Ric Hathaway
David Koston
Kim Holstein
Jerry Straughn
Fred Sibinic
Russ Alvarez
Ken Borg
Marty Kamner
John Trapp
Harold Gates
Peter Whitman
Scott Woods
Bobby Farina
Brian Lea
Chuck Mayer
Richard Gulliver
Jim Girard
Keith Roseberry
Tom Farrel
Ben Walzer
Steve McCollom
Philip Ruckdeschel
And I’m certain he would’ve found that immensely amusing.
Culture Club: Waking Up With The House On Fire (1984)
Madonna: Bedtime Stories (1994)
…wandering through new age/crystal shops after taking the ferry from San Francisco across the bay to Sausalito during a balmy late autumn afternoon. It was one of those things you did with new boyfriends or out-of-towners after the obligatory walk across the Golden Gate Bridge. In fact, I believe it was in one of those new age shops that I bought my original copy of this recording. Never fails to put a smile on my face. Simpler times, fer sure!
Some memories of that trip to Sausalito…
I found this picture in my collection while looking for something else, and boy did it bring back memories. This is where—about a year after I moved to San Francisco—I sold my entire vinyl collection, because you know, compact discs! And it’s also where I simply left a box of records they didn’t want out on the street for the taking because I wasn’t going to haul them back home.
Ah, the stupidity of youth. Ironic because many years later, after realizing the error of my ways, it was the same location where I started rebuilding that same vinyl collection.
In the intervening years I bought and sold dozens of CDs at the same location as my financial situation ebbed and flowed.
Of course this led me down the internet rabbit hole as I attempted to find out what had happened to the store in the years since I left The City.
Apparently the store closed in 2016. The building (including two residential units on the upper floors) were renovated in 2019.
Now it’s a hair salon. 🙁
And speaking of places long gone where I spent copious amounts of money…
I was unable to find any photos of the interior of the Tower Records store on Market Street and these are the only ones I located of the exterior. I remember when the store first opened it was Mana From Heaven for music junkies like me. After Tower Records closed all its stores in 2006, apparently the building sat vacant for several years until CVS stepped in and the building was completely remodeled. CVS moved out in 2017 and according to Google Street View, it’s now Barry’s, a gym/heath & fitness establishment.
And while we’re on the subject…
The Record Rack was another of my hangouts.
Neil used to let me root around in the back room where they kept all the used stock that they hadn’t put out yet. There were boxes of records stacked on top of each other, loose records spilling onto the floor, unsorted shelves…I easily spent entire afternoons going through the mess and didn’t even scratch the surface.
Speaking of Neil, I present Neil Lewis: The Final Performance
What has this little trip down memory lane done? It’s reminded me that I no longer recognize the city I called home for nearly 20 years. I spent hours on Google Street View over the weekend visiting my old haunts downtown and all the way up Market throughout the Castro, and I scarcely recognized anything. Considering I’ve now been gone from The City longer than I actually lived there, this isn’t surprising. Time does move on, after all. But it’s still a little depressing, and really makes me wish I had taken more photos when I lived there than I did.
…from my last apartment in San Franicsco, January 2000
