I also thought that this was a good article.
CFS did have its pre-internet age predecessors, though.
For the guys who travelled for or wanted to enjoy NSA hookups while they were traveling a copy of the 'Spartacus' guide was the most indispensable item on their shopping list throughout the '70s and the '80s.
For the guys who were mostly stationed at one place, the word of mouth somehow usually sufficed. The usual gossip of the town told you where the guys were CFS. So, if you had the guts, you made your way to that particular park, movie theater, tearoom, or whatever the place may have been, hoping to score on the fly, and quickly move on till the next time.
The '80s saw a deregulation of air travel, some rise in general wealth of population in certain countries, and mass travel started turning into a global phenomenon. A few of my buddies and I actually started traveling mostly if not exclusively for the sake of cruising in the pools of guys hitherto unknown to us, and equally so, for the purpose of enjoying our own 'novelty' bonus in such cruising pools. A few dudes from smaller, rural towns saved up enough to hitch a ride to a major metro area, with its thriving selection of spas, backroom bars, movie theaters, parks and tearooms where hooking up with the like-minded guys was very easy IF you knew where to start from and what to expect there even in most elementary terms. The Spartacus guide made all of this very easy.
Hence, a copy of a relatively expensive and bulky Spartacus Guide used to be a bit of a problematic treasure every sophisticated gay guy felt compelled to cope with in those days.
Walking into a sex store and buying it was always an option alright but hardly anyone would risk doing it in his own town for the fear that he may be recognized by the store clerk, who would be going around spreading the news of your 'perverse' sexual interest over the beers with his buddies on the Friday night.
So, you saved up some, and either travelled to the next big town or had one of your buddies buy you the Spartacus (issued annually) when he was traveling.
Now, owning a copy of the latest Spartacus used to be no trifle matter. You hid it well in your digs for the obvious reasons, and a few guys planning trips here and there would be getting in touch with you to see if they could come over to copy the relevant information into their notepads, in preparation for whatever kind of travel was in store for them. Typically, a dude would take his latest 'discovery' or travel companion along, so that you could meet yet another local dude, and possibly exchange phone numbers with. This used to be one of the subtle ways of paying back for the kindness you extended to the other guys by allowing them to use your copy of the Spartacus.
On more than one occasion, once the notes were taken, and the two guys departed happily on their way home, at least one of them returned to 're-check something' which really was a code for a quick, NSA sex with the proud owner of the Spartacus guide. As one of my buddies put in those days, 'What's a BJ compared with all the help we got from his Spartacus?' Different times, indeed.
We are still talking the pre-internet age here. Actually, we are still talking an age that even had no clue of the possibilities associated with the internet and www. So, putting Spartacus together was actually almost a global gay community effort; probably the very first of its kind.
The editors/authors of Spartacus may have had quite some first-hand knowledge of the cruising grounds in say, NYC or later on in Berlin, Germany, and quite possibly a few other major cities, too. Even if relatively extensive such first-hand personal knowledge of the Spartacus team was far too limited to produce relevant information on very many gay cruising grounds around the globe.
Once you ripped the plastic sealing of your Spartacus guide open, a few postcards, and slips of paper dropped out of the book, with notes on them that your help in keeping the guide updated and going were both needed and expected. Spartacus was not paying its correspondents, as the folks who provided the information on local venues used to be called, so whoever chose to take the trouble and write to them (typewriter, possibly a word processor, envelope or an enclosed SASE plus real snail mail) did it purely because he wanted to volunteer, and genuinely support the cause.
Some of the information provided was self-promotional, and an experienced Spartacus reader knew how to read between the lines. This is where and when most of the guys using it learnt that 'if it sounds too good to be true it ain't true.'
Yet, none of the users really expected the Spartacus to be absolutely accurate. You knew only too well, that some venues may have closed since the publication date. You knew that one or the other correspondent failed to update the Spartacus folks on such closures, and you also knew that some of the newest and possibly hottest venues may or may have not made it before their publication deadline.
Until the days when AOL made internet a universally accessible aspect of our daily lives at $19.99 a month, Spartacus Guide reigned supreme.
Soon enough, many sites sprung telling interested cruisers where to head to for their specific kind of fun. The expense/trouble associated with the good, ole Spartacus became a relic of the past.
KD
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