Dial-a-gay book
NZPA San Francisco On the cover of the telephone directory is a photograph of a teddy bear wearing a button inscribed, “I like boys.” Inside, there is a four-page colour section on Russian River country, "America’s newest gay playground.” . It is the Gay Areas Telephone Directory, the only one of -its kind in the country, according to its publisher, Robert Adams. Within four years the directory has explanded to include Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego. Portland. and Seattle. "When it was launched. San Francisco was the only city in the country for such a venture," Mr Adams said. "But now we believe this is ah idea whose -time has come nationwide, and we are looking toward at least regional, if not a national tele-
phone guide for gays." There were small, sometimes privately circulated gay guidebooks ' in various cities, such as the "Gayellowpages” in New York, but he emphasised that such publications concentrated on listings of bars and restaurants and had no resemblance to a full-scale telephone book. Mr Adams acknowledged that the directory was “only a curiosity item for straights,” but was a valuable source of information for those who populated the homosexual world where, as he put it, "gays tend to flock together and buy gay,” San Francisco had always been- "years ahead” of the rest of the country in its acceptance of gays, who have formed their own community, securely established within the traditional community. Cities such as New York and Los Angeles looked to
San Francisco as the gaycapital, which meant that a directory such as his could be expected to attract national attention. Mr Adams recalled that when the directory was first published, in 1979 it was a skinny volume of 18 white pages and 72 pages of classified advertising,;. ' I The new directory had 216 ■pages, 500 advertising contracts throughout the west, and revenues that had increased 300 per cent, he said. The directory, in which free listings are offered to gav organisations, as well as to gay individuals, is supported by its advertisers and is available on request at the Gay Directory Office above the Elephant Walk Bar on San Francisco’s Castro Street, the heart of the gay district. "We are getting inquiries from all over the world,’,’ Mr Adams said.
Dial-a-gay book
Press, 20 October 1982, Page 9
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