VICE: "Photos from New York’s Post-Stonewall, Pre-AIDS Cruising Scene"
 

I hope you all will enjoy this as much as I did. VICE has an article up Photos from New York’s Post-Stonewall, Pre-AIDS Cruising Scene with the scene on the Piers in Manhattan in the 1970s.

This is from a show at Galerie Buchholz, Alvin Baltrop
"At the Hudson River Piers".

There's more photos on the gallery page than on VICE, although VICE's are a little easier to view and also have an article placing the pics in context.

Of course, this is the stuff I fantasized about as a teenager in San Antonio even when I didn't really know what I was fantasizing about. ;)

The "casualness" these pictures show would have been amazing to have lived though.

As a kid in health class they talked about STD's - but they were all curable (as far as we knew).

I clearly remember one buddy saying "It's safer with a guy - no chance of anyone getting pregnant" because at that age that was the message we got from the adults - DON'T HAVE KIDS!

But as I was getting ready to go to college you started to hear more and more about "gay cancer" and eventually it was named AIDS. It was a real curve ball - right at the age I was trying to grapple with the fact that I was not "outgrowing" my interest in guys like I thought I would suddenly being gay could kill you.

It was a quick step back in the closet and lock the door! But I would hear about places where strangers would meet and just go for it - bathhouses where people would just walk around naked and have sex not even knowing each others names - a very weird concept but also exciting!

Society by making gay sex so forbidden it was easier to have an anonymous no strings hook up that try and forge a relationship.

Funny how a time when you could have been shunned by family and society - could have been fired - could have been arrested - now looks carefree and simple!

I've often thought I was born too late. I don't have time to write a long explanation of that, nor to rehash the things I've said before about gathering reliable information and evaluating acceptable risk, whether about HIV/AIDS or whatever.

So I was 18 in 1979 but sort of "stuck" in socially conservative San Antonio, in a Catholic church choir, shy, withdrawn, still uncertain about what to do about my sexual identity and desires. I knew what I wanted, but in my unique convoluted way had to work it all out emotionally, mentally, even spiritually before I could actually do anything.

Ah, well. If I only knew then what I know now. :)

Born too late? Maybe by a few years to enjoy the free "sex for sex sake" that you read about in New York or San Francisco -

But yet a few years before that (and even up to that period in some places) you could have been arrested just for having private consensual sex with another man.

Who would have thought then there would be "gay / straight alliance" clubs in Junior High and High Schools now - when I was that age no one would have dared join a club like that!

Well, I was the youngest. The oldest of my siblings was a brother nine years older, very straight and conservative, who spent his freshman college year near NYC. I remember him coming home saying he didn't like the city much when he visited there a few times. Oh well.

He transferred to a university in Texas for his remaining three years, and then was a military officer. Different destinies...

I just went through the entire exhibit that is on the link -

Amazing how bold and brave of the guys willing to be photographed like that at a time when they could face so many repercussions if any one knew they were gay.

But I can't imagine the relief and release they must have felt - after Stonewall had opened the door on gay rights - but yet before AIDS closed down safe casual sex. The pent up frustration they must have had - amazing.