Gay San Francisco

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."

Professor Fritscher's "frisson" anchors San Francisco's otherwise wild Gay Lib history on the clear chronology of the issues of the legendary monthly "Drummer." This is the most complete document of the "GLBT Magazine Publishing Movement."

Fritscher is the Ken Burns of "Drummer" magazine. Justin Spring, author, "Sam Steward: A Biography": "Fritscher has done all the research work most academics won't do-thus ensuring that historians, critics, and anthropologists will cut and paste with delight in years to come."

Author & Book Credentials

"San Francisco Chronicle": "Fritscher reads gloriously!"

Marilyn Jaye Lewis, EAA Authors Association, "...an essential document of the 20th-century 'Gay Enlightenment' culled from the pages of 'Drummer.' Fritscher empowers the Truth of those revolutionary times by enabling history to tell itself."

Mark Thompson, "The Advocate," editor emeritus: "Utterly unique, an invaluable testament...historically useful for decades to come."

The Kinsey Institute, Catherine Johnson-Roehr, Curator: "Fritscher has 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."

Brown University, Samuel Streit, Director Special Collections: "'Gay San Francisco' is remarkable history of a remarkable time in a remarkable place, proving its points by combining contemporary documents, photographs, drawings, and reportage with a first-hand and first-rate memoir that brings an unforgettable era back to life."

Chicago Public Library, Jim Stewart, Department Head emeritus, Social Sciences & History Department: "Jack Fritscher as 'eyewitness' in 'Gay San Francisco' is kin to Christopher Isherwood as 'camera' in his 'Berlin Stories.' This written 'oral history' should be in every library's GLBT collection."

University of Sussex, Niall Richardson, Film-Media Studies: "...chronicles an exciting and formative era from a new and original perspective no one has ever done before."

University of California, David Van Leer, professor, GLBT Studies: "Fritscher is a key player in the gender of masculinity in homosexuality."