hal fischer | defining the 1970s gay identity

When Hal Fischer arrived in San Francisco in 1975, one thing immediately caught his attention. “There were people all over the streets hanging out in the middle of the day,” Fischer remembers, “I thought: don’t these people work?” At the time, living was cheap, rents were affordable, jobs paid well enough, and so people didn’t have to work full-time jobs. That, coupled with San Francisco’s year-round, temperate climate, meant that the city residents — many of them gay — had plenty of time to hang around. “It was special because it was a community,” says Fischer. By 1976, it was estimated that one in five of San Francisco’s population was gay – spurred on by a great migration of queer people who’d moved to the city following ‘67s Summer of Love and ‘69s Stonewall Riots. “People were finding their voices and beginning to exercise political power,” said Fischer. The city’s liberal social scene soon began to bleed through to politics, too. In 1977, Harvey Milk became the first gay man to be elected in California. “I was at the camera store the night that Harvey Milk won,” Fischer recalls, “You did have the sense that you were in a period... Read more » The post hal fischer | defining the 1970s gay identity appeared first on Schön! Magazine.