I grew up and became sexually active in the 70s in the south. I'd never heard of the baths, the closest were so far away it wouldn't have mattered anyway as it would entail an entire day round trip just driving much less playing. All I had was a cruisy park that was notorious for getting busted. The beach bathroom was a hookup spot, but during the day the lifeguards (yes, this was back when the city/state paid lifeguards on the public beaches) would run you off. At night it was the cops. I ran into several there. Luckily there were cruisy trails out among the sand dunes that were safer, but some ambitious cops would walk the trails as well. If you were lucky and at the right place/time, a mall bathroom was a remote possibility. We had one gay bar right on the main drag where anyone could see you walk in so it wasn't the most popular place. Years later they finally opened one up off the beaten path but I had already moved to college.
After moving away to college into a medium sized city, I found more parks to cruise. Some had bathrooms and some had woods. All were risky and had stings from time to time. There were 3 bookstores where I now was (6 hours away in a different state). Only one of the 3 had any real action, with a few exceptions of course. Entry was $2 in quarters. The arcade generated a lot of money and raising the price to $3 didn't hurt it. Porn itself was expensive in those days. Those Swedish Erotica 8mm reel films (anyone remember Seka?) were 99.99 each. A "magazine" ran anywhere from $12 to $20. This was 1980 and working for minimum wage at 3.35/hour took one or 2 part-time days just to buy a magazine. It was the older guys that had professional paying jobs that bought stuff, but retails sales were nowhere near what they are today in sex shops. Arcade sales were their bread and butter. We were lucky to have those 3 arcades, the next closest were 3-4 hours away. Our mall had a gloryhole in the men's room that only lasted a few more years until the AIDS crisis made mall security cover it up and actually install cameras in the bathroom. One of the gay bars (we only ever had 2 at any one time) had a gloryhole in their bathroom. Ironically, the bookstore arcades did not have gloryholes. I think it would have been too much back in that era in the south, like admitting the sex shop for actually used for sex. The most active one had a security clerk that just sat on a chair at the arcade center. Every few hours he'd have to leave and go to the bathroom and you should have seen how fast the dudes paired off into booths. When one left the booth, the other would wait minutes, literally, hoping that the guard wouldn't notice that someone had already left that one without anyone entering afterwards. He would warn you against more than 1 in a booth but he wasn't mean, just a nice soft-spoken man that had the tone of "I'm just doing my job here, so be cool with me and I'll be cool with you".
Really the only place to advertise was the back of magazines and that took months to get printed, assuming they didn't just outright take your cash if you were trying to be discreet and not write a check or use a credit card (or charge card as we called them back then). So we had to be creative in parks and even bookstores. Bars were ok but bi and married guys wouldn't be caught dead in them back then. Bi was hardly more acceptable than gay. It was all about signals and clothes and which pocket your hanky was in or your earring was in. Tapping shoes. Flashing brake lights. This is the era that brought forth those now almost forgotten discreet things. Now guys just wear a rainbow T or one that explicitly says "cum in me bro" to (quietly? haha) indicate what they are looking for. It's easier today, but the fun and thrill of the hunt is diminished as is the intensity of finally getting to suck a dude off after weeks of discreetly looking around. Cruisy parks are at a low compared to back then since it was one of the few ways to hook up. In some areas bookstores have grown in number but not all have arcades or theaters, and are finding out curing this last year that they can survive well enough without them. In most bookstores, they aren't used as much as they were in the 70s wen it was a necessity of sorts. There's exceptions without a doubt but they aren't the bread and butter for most like they were even 20-25 years ago.
I know major metro areas are different and had a lot more outlets--theaters, arcades, baths and parks. I wasn't in a huge metro areas until 1983 in Atlanta and all the bookstores and theaters had been forced to close by then. I heard a lot of stories from the locals though that really made me leak they were so hot. But I was a day late and a dollar short to join in that fun. But MAN the trails in Piedmont Park back then were practically cum-paved!
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