The LGBT social scene has always been pretty diverse, varying from town to town and offering both single-sex and mixed pubs and clubs. That diversity was never made more clear to me than in early 1980, when I moved to … Continue reading →
Blue Monday wasn’t one of your usual ‘high energy’ tracks but it was, from memory, still a very popular dance track in gay clubs. I certainly remember hearing it a lot on the Manchester scene in 1983 (which probably isn’t … Continue reading →
Lavender Menace bookshop opened on Forth Street, Edinburgh in 1982 as a development of earlier initiatives around both radical and LGBT bookselling. One of the two owners – Bob Orr – had previously worked in the First of May radical … Continue reading →
Back in my radical youth, I used to think that drag was, quite unequivocally, ‘a bad thing’. To me it was simply men ‘pretending’ to be women and, in the process, portraying them as shallow and bitchy. My dislike for … Continue reading →
Clone Zone began life as a series of regular market stalls in gay venues in London, Manchester and Blackpool. Right from the outset it stocked a range of goods of interest to the gay community. These included sex toys, club … Continue reading →