32 thoughts on “#WordlessWednesday: On the Corner of Turk and Ellis”

  1. The image reminds me so much of Soho in London during the 1970s and early 1980s, Rob. It’s such a different place now, although there are small parts that remain the same. For many, these were exciting yet often dangerous places. The guy on the floor looks like he’s been there a while. And does the running guy have a weapon in his hand?

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    1. This is an astute comment, Hugh. Were the cities of our youth seedier, darker, and more dangerous? The Docks and St. Marks Place in New York was a rush of adrenalin and all of San Francisco in the 1980s. San Francisco was living up to its reputation as a bordello when I moved here. It was fun until people started dying and by the mid-1980’s it was a place of oppression and grief. The guy on the floor is scrounging for crack, and the kid on the skateboard has a bat. I don’t know if these images are illustrations or the whole story. Thank you for stopping by and leaving a comment. You always make me think.

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      1. I’m glad my comment made you think, Rob. I always love comments like that.

        When I first moved to London in 1986, gay bars and clubs were often in parts of the city thought to be dangerous and which many saw as forgotten places. Today, many of those places now have buildings where apartments can sell for upwards of seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds – and that’s just for a one-bedroom apartment. Over the last forty years, the gay village has moved around – almost as if property developers pushed it out. Many of the clubs and bars I visited have long gone. I still have the memories, though, many of which were happy ones.

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      2. Thank’s Hugh. The first time I went to a gay bar I had to walk into a dark alley and knock on the door. So, in a sense, cities were darker and more dangerous in 60’s and 70’s for people in the LGBTQ community. The other interesting thing about the gay bars in Charleston is they were owned by straight people who belonged to some kind Mafia like gamg.

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      3. Same here, Rob. Many of the gay bars were owned by straight people who saw just how powerful and lucrative the pink pound was. Some bars were gay for the first few hours, then closed and became straight for a few hours. I don’t think that happens anymore, but I could be wrong.

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      4. Almost five decades of gradual acceptance has moved us from the darkness to the light. I think the author John Rechy, who wrote ‘City of Night’ coined the phrase ‘sexual outlaw’ to describe how we lived before gay liberation. Something was exciting about it, but it was a system of oppression designed to destroy us.

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      2. It’s interesting to work on a project in VR, especially after ten years of therapy. The virtual plot of ‘land’ I use for staging the images is like an extension of my subconscious; different aspects of myself emerge to tell a different story. The primary benefit of treatment in this regard is instead of competing for time as they were when I was getting sick, they are logging in as a team to build sets and tell stories. It’s like having a quantum mind. Which is my way of saying, it does. 🙂

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