Design International: www.katgeorges.com
DISTRIBUTED BY:
PGW/Ingram: www.pgw.com
Three Rooms Press
New York, NY
www.threeroomspress.com [email protected]
Dedicated to my wonderful siblings, Bo and Ann,who could save me a lot of embarrassmentif they were to forgo reading thisscandalous memoir of my lunatic youth.
Contents
Chapter 3: 1979: The Manly, Manly Clones of Castro Street
Chapter 7: Fashion, Turn to the Left
Chapter 9: Weimar . . . Why not?
Chapter 11: Nightmare in Hell House
Chapter 12: AIDS, AIDS, and More AIDS
Chapter 13: The Popstitutes: 1986
Chapter 15: The Daily Bump ’n’ Grind: 1987
Chapter 17: Four Blonds 1984–1986
Chapter 20: More Popstitutes 1987–1989
Chapter 21: The Boiling Outrage
Chapter 22: Clubs, Queens, Scenes, and Zines
Chapter 26: We Could Be Heroes . . . or Not
Chapter 28: Seven New Types of Sadness
Chapter 29: Sick & Twisted Players
Chapter 32: Even More Klubstitute
Chapter 33: Final Curtain: 1995
Chapter 34: Never Can Say Good-Bye
Introduction
BY ALEXANDER CHEE
THIS BOOK IN YOUR HANDS IS one you could say I’ve waited for, and I’m not alone. In the year since my own memoir of this time came out, I’ve heard from so many readers about how they have wanted what it had to offer—and more than that. The era in question, San Francisco in the 1980s and 1990s, was an enormously important time, when the city’s culture was under attack by conservative politicians and we saw the birth of the ACT UP and Queer Nation movements.
And when I arrived in San Francisco in 1989, I found the queer punk scene I had not even dared dream of, and the Popstitutes were the hot funny center of that action. Alvin Orloff was their smiling butch. He had a smile that could reach you no matter the mood, and looked like he’d escaped from The Outsiders. He’s had more life than that, as you’ll read here, but it means so much to get the view from the stage, as it were, as well as the life past it. As I learned when I was a go-go dancer, there’s nothing like the view you get and with everyone looking at you, they aren’t hiding themselves from you.
