In San Diego’s gay and lesbian bars, people could be themselves. Beginning in the closeted 1950s and continuing through the activist ’70s, the AIDS-shadowed ’80s and the Gay Pride ’90s, San Diego’s gay bars have been so much more than a place to drink and dance.
But it was a place where people knew the real you, and that was all that mattered. For the pioneering members of San Diego’s LGBTQ community, the local gay bar was not necessarily a place where everyone knew your name.
