Gay San Francisco: Eyewitness Drummer
A Memoir of the Sex, Art, Salon, and Pop Culture War
and Gay History of Drummer Magazine
The Titanic 1970s to 1999
In his 16th book, eyewitness gay activist Jack Fritscher, the lover and biographer of Robert Mapplethorpe, breaks the trance of received gay history in this fact-rich memoir of how “The Boys in the Band Played On” from the Titanic 1970s to 1999.
Built on all new information recently unearthed, this stylishly written and illustrated “timeline archive” of art, sex, obscenity, gender, culture wars, homophobia, pop culture, and the gay mafia, will get 21st-century readers and researchers up to speed fast on the serious fun of who did what to whom when and why. Fritscher was a founding member of the American Pop Culture Association in 1968, and in 1969, as academia met popular culture, he immediately knew what to do to preserve and chronicle Stonewall and the gay culture that ensued.
Back in the heyday of the First Decade of Gay Liberation, university professor and longtime Drummer editor Fritscher added erotic realism to the magical thinking of Drummer readers wanting a magazine that made newly self-inventing sex seem possible and accessible.
Attention must be paid: With an average press run of 42,000 copies for each of the 208 issues over twenty-four years, millions more people read international Drummer than have read, perhaps, any GLBT book.
Fact-based on internal evidence in Drummer, and in journals, diaries, letters, photos, interviews of dozens of eyewitnesses, recordings, and newspapers, Fritscher’s ultimate insider’s guide to the “Rise and Fall of Castro and Folsom Streets” is a brisk ride that brings back what an physical and intellectual thrill it was to pick up one’s first issue of Drummer.
Why I Wrote This Book
by Jack Fritscher
READ GAY SAN FRANCISCO EYEWITNESS DRUMMER
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Critics’ Quotes
Gay San Francisco: Eyewitness Drummer
Author and Book Credentials
Jeanne Barney, First and Founding Los Angeles Editor in Chief of Drummer: “For those of us who were there inventing Drummer three decades ago, Fritscher serves up a thoroughly researched and well-written account of a particular era in gay history, reporting on what may well have been ‘The Golden Age of Leather’ and of Drummer . . . Gay San Francisco is an historical resource for those who want to know How Things Used to Be, as well as a nostalgic look back for those of us who were ourselves eyewitness participants. I invite you all to join us in this extraordinary walk down memory lane.”
John F. Karr, Bay Area Reporter: “Veteran author Jack Fritscher is an anarchist of gay sexual prose, the man who invented the South of Market prose style (as well as its magazines . . . ) . . . . Fritscher writes with sweat and wit.”
San Francisco Chronicle: “Jack Fritscher reads gloriously!”
Samuel Streit, Director, Special Collections, Brown University: “ . . . . Gay San Francisco is a remarkable history of a remarkable time in a remarkable place, combining contemporary documents, photographs and reportage with a first-hand and first-rate memoir that brings an unforgettable era back to life . . . . ”
Planetout.com: Fritscher is “the ground-breaking editor of Drummer magazine.”
Willie Walker, GLBT Historical Society, San Francisco: “Jack Fritscher is a prolific writer who since the late sixties has helped document the gay world and the changes it has undergone.”
Catherine Johnson-Roehr, Curator of Art, Artifacts, and Photographs, The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, Indiana University: “Those of us who are concerned with the preservation of GLBT history are very fortunate that Jack Fritscher has such a remarkable memory for the people, places, and pivotal events that he has witnessed over his lifetime. His long association with Drummer in San Francisco placed him at the center of the revolution, and Gay San Francisco is filled with significant details from those years.”
Mark Thompson, editor emeritus, The Advocate, author of Leatherfolk: “What a good thing Fritscher has done in Gay San Francisco . . . This is an invaluable testament that will be useful for decades to come.”
Joseph W. Bean, former editor of Drummer and executive director, Leather Archives & Museum, Chicago, abridged from Leather Times: News from the Leather Archives & Museum: “When it came to creating an issue of Drummer, no one did it better than Jack Fritscher. He began reinterpreting popular culture in a leather context. With perfect pitch, he wrote with zest, energy, cynicism, sarcasm, respect, and awareness working out the blend of secret brotherhood and popular culture, guiding leathermen’s hearts and minds. He had the skills, talent, and lifestyle experience needed. He could juxtapose God, gonads, and drooling desire. Fritscher’s method was perfect for who we were and for the time. He grabbed us and we learned to think in his ‘language.’ He wrote with style, intelligence, and urgency. He changed as we changed in finding ourselves. I owe Fritscher a lot, starting with my adult sexual vocabulary. When I became editor of Drummer and an upcoming issue was at an impasse, publisher Tony DeBlase often counseled: ‘Do a Fritscher!’”
Geoff Mains, author, Urban Aboriginals, in The Advocate: “Jack Fritscher writes wonderful books . . . careful writing . . . a world of insight.”
Jim Stewart, Department Head emeritus, Social Sciences & History Dept., Chicago Public Library: “Jack Fritscher as ‘eyewitness’ in Gay San Francisco is kin to Christopher Isherwood as ‘camera’ in his Berlin Stories. Climbing the scaffolding of the chapter-and-verse structure of Drummer, he unfurls a rainbow flag of narrative about the foreign country of our gay past, and of its citizens and denizens, living, lost, dead, or forgotten.”
Jim Van Buskirk, Program Manager, James C. Hormel Gay & Lesbian Center, San Francisco Public Library: “Gay San Francisco offers a uniquely personal perspective on the history and culture of one of San Francisco’s previously under-documented underground communities — the masculine-identified.”
David Perry, The Advocate: “Jack Fritscher — himself something of an icon — didn’t invent the Castro [and Folsom]. He just made it mythical . . . heady, erotic, comic . . . . If one can learn American history from the novels of Gore Vidal, one can learn gay American history from Some Dance to Remember [the ‘Drummer novel’ excerpted in Drummer] . . . . Graphically elegant style.”
Marilyn Jaye Lewis, founder, Erotic Authors Association: “Gay San Francisco is an essential document in the ‘Gay Enlightenment’ culled from the pages of Drummer . . . Fritscher empowers the Truth of those times by enabling history to tell itself.”
Richard Labonté, critic and founder, A Different Light Bookstores, BooksToWatchOutFor.com: “Fritscher’s Gay San Francisco account reads true to me . . . rewarding . . . I relish his . . . story being told.”
Harold Cox, publisher, Checkmate Magazine: “There were two great Drummer editors: Jeanne Barney and Jack Fritscher . . . Gay San Francisco is an essential acquisition for every GLBT collection.”
Chuck Renslow, founder, Chicago Leather Archives & Museum and International Mr Leather (IML): “Drummer was a map of leather culture; Fritscher and his book are unabashed and uninhibited tour guides.”
Justin Spring, author, Samuel Steward: A Biography: “Fritscher has basically done all the research work that most academics won’t do — thus ensuring that historians, critics, and anthropologists will cut and paste with delight in the years to come.”
Larry Townsend, author, The Leatherman’s Handbook and Drummer columnist: “Fritscher is the master of gay writing. He made 1977-1980 the Golden Age of Drummer, formulating entire issues, and then contributing writing and photography for 17 years through three owners.”
Queerink.org: “Drummer brought us masculinity for the sake of masculinity.”
Calamusbooks.com: “Fritscher’s Drummer in its early issues back in the late 1970s, was a terrific contribution to the erotic literature of gay men.”
Steven Saylor (Aaron Travis), author, Slaves of the Empire, fiction editor of Drummer, reviewing Fritscher’s collected Drummer writing: “There’s enough ghettoized angst to keep the Manhattan literati wired for months . . . ”
David Stein, founder, GMSMA: “Fritscher, one of the great Drummer editors, seems to have been everywhere and done everyone during the ‘good old days’ of leather culture . . . Fritscher is the editor most responsible for making Drummer what it became. His aim was to reflect changes in gay culture even as they were occurring.”
Darel Hale, LA Frontiers: “Fritscher is certainly an earthy writer, and has never been caught mincing words. And words are what Fritscher is all about. His prose is incisive. While it may offend some, it will deeply affect the reader who is not afraid of a little honesty in literature.”
Niall Richardson, lecturer, Film and Media Studies, University of Sussex, UK, author, The Queer Cinema of Derek Jarman: “ . . . a fascinating insight into gay culture of the 1970s. Containing a wealth of original writing from one of the most important gay magazines, Gay San Francisco: Eyewitness Drummer chronicles an exciting era in gay history which saw the formation of leather culture and the active de-sissyfication of gay culture: factors which have shaped contemporary gay identification. Varied and compelling . . . . a genuine enthusiasm for gay popular culture.”
Mira Schwirtz, San Francisco Review of Books: “Fritscher is not shy . . . . He plants himself squarely at the book’s center . . . as star witness, sociologist, and critic [of the] charmed circle Fritscher shared with [his bi-coastal lover] Mapplethorpe . . . . Fritscher’s study of popular culture forms the core of the book, Mapplethorpe [originally published in Drummer], as it did the setting of his memoir-novel titled Some Dance to Remember [excerpted in Drummer] . . . a personal, passionate memoir . . . a vulnerable look at a relationship with an artist, his work, and celebrity . . . . Mapplethorpe is a portrait of the artists as young men.”
Tim Barrus, editor of Drummer: “In the 1970s, there were two gay writers’ jobs in San Francisco. Randy Shilts had one at the Chronicle, and Jack Fritscher had the other at Drummer. Without Jack, there would be no Drummer.”
Michael Bronski, Gay Community News, Boston: Fritscher’s collected Drummer features and fiction are “graphic, explicit . . . and unabashedly romantic in a truer sense than are most books [magazines] aimed at gay audiences . . . . [The anthology, Corporal in Charge, is a] collection of [Fritscher’s Drummer] pieces which deal with individual consciousness. Like Genet’s work, Fritscher’s [Drummer writings] are essentially masturbatory fantasies . . . about the actual fantasy of romance . . . and gay men love to read about romance.”
Dave Rhodes, founding publisher, The Leather Journal: “There is no written account of Old Guard leather. Fritscher’s detailing of the Drummer Boom in Gay San Francisco is unparalleled, and we need it.”
Rick Storer, Executive Director, Leather Archives & Museum: “Fritscher is uniquely positioned as the creator of Drummer content, as a practitioner of Drummer content, and as an observer of Drummer culture. With insight and eroticism, he is the sole source for this thoroughly enjoyable erotic laydown of leather history.”
David Van Leer, professor, Lesbian and Gay Studies, University of California, Davis, and author of The Queening of America: “Fritscher is a key player in the masculinity of homosexuality . . . Must reading for those who want to know more about their past and those who simply want to relive the days when it was fun to be gay. Gay San Francisco is history for GLBT people who want to know the diversity of our gay roots.”
Eric Rofes, Associate Professor of Education, Humboldt State University, author, Dry Bones Breath: Gay Men Creating Post-AIDS Identities and Cultures: “For my university class ‘Gay Men’s Urban Cultures: San Francisco in the 1970s and Today,’ Jack Fritscher’s astounding novel Some Dance to Remember is required course reading.”
Rondo Mieczkowski, Lambda Book Report: “Fritscher’s ‘pop memoir’ Mapplethorpe [as published originally in Drummer] . . . takes the inside track . . . in the style of gonzo journalism . . . . He knows the scene he’s writing about. Unapologetically . . . iconoclastic . . . ”
Charles Casillo, New York Native: “Fritscher is intelligent, perceptive, sensitive, articulate — and a good writer.”
Ron Suresha, author, Bears on Bears: “Fritscher brings a loving ear, erotic eye, and lyric voice to American Gay Popular culture, and is an archivist active in researching, recording, and preserving the heritage of gay history.”
Joan Levin, Library Journal: “Fritscher’s brutally frank memoir of his ex-lover, confidante, and colleague, drawn from the author’s personal documents, seeks to strip away the notoriety surrounding the defiant photographer Robert Mapplethorpe . . . . In Mapplethorpe, [first excerpted in Drummer, 1978] Fritscher graphically portrays the masculine subculture of the homosexual community . . . . Recommended for popular culture collections.”
Q, Philadelphia Gay News: “Jack Fritscher is a master of gay prose pornography, a rarity in our . . . video-oriented culture . . . . The manner in which he manipulates language, sensuality, feeling, nuance, style, atmosphere, and even one’s visual sense . . . is enough to guarantee this book [of Drummer stories, Corporal in Charge] sensational status for many, many years.”
Kit Christopher, creative director, Stroke magazine: “ . . . veteran writer Fritscher’s fine prose has induced many soiled bed sheets over the years, and his style has set a standard in the industry.”
John Rowberry, editor of Drummer: “The subject matter [of Fritscher’s Drummer writing] is as varied as Fritscher’s imagination, which seems endless and totally without remorse. What may really surprise you is that amid the graphic descriptions . . . there are actually ideas here.”
Torso Magazine: In his Drummer work, “Fritscher writes funny, descriptive and on-target essays . . . Fritscher is positively riveting”
Jack Garman, Lambda Book Report: “As a document of our times and lives, Some Dance to Remember [the Drummer novel] has no peer.”
Owen Keehnen, Honcho Magazine: “Fritscher is an interesting man, a solid and intriguing blend of theory and knowledge.”
Alexander Renault, Pornographic Pulsar: “Fritscher is dedicated to the preservation and continuation of gay cultural studies and the expansion of its horizons.”
Leif Waters, Bear Magazine: “Fritscher is unlike any other chronicler of masculine perversion. His stories are . . . about growth, limits, expansion of the mind . . . ”
Virginia Sink, The Tribune, Oklahoma City: “Fritscher is a polished writer, editing his work to the bone . . . ”
Nancy Sundstrom, ForeWord magazine, “Fritscher is epicentric to gay literature . . . he is first and foremost an extraordinary American writer. He deserves a broad-based audience because his powerful and original voice rings in one’s head long after the book has been completed.”