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City Life

Some cities give pride a capital P, for popular

By SANDRA THOMPSON
Published June 25, 2005

It was amusing being in San Francisco last week while all the little g, little p flap was going on here.

It was especially amusing if you went to the San Francisco Public Library.

I had noticed a 4-by-6-inch ad in the San Francisco Chronicle: ""Out at the Library." It meant "out" the way you might expect in San Francisco, where City Hall flies the rainbow flag. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the James C. Hormel Gay & Lesbian Center, ""Out at the Library" is a series of exhibitions and events on lesbian, gay, bi and transgender history and culture. It opened last Saturday. Rather than trying to hide it, ads and brochures and fliers are all over town.

The Hormel Center is permanent - a room on the library's third floor with a beautiful mural on the ceiling. In it, men, women and children are depicted working at a construction site. The blocks of the building are inscribed with the names of gays and lesbians who have contributed to our culture. Socrates is one. The scene is allegorical, the library explains, as the people in it "move from the darkness of ignorance into the light of knowledge."

Appropriate for a library, isn't it?

The room itself is a research center, where archived books and papers can be used. Among the things displayed while I was there was a speech, typewritten with penned-in corrections, by Harvey Milk, the first openly gay person on the city's Board of Supervisors. He writes that he keeps running for office - I think he said it was his fifth campaign - to give hope to the people in his district - Asian, Hispanic, elderly and gay.

That was in 1977. The next year he and the mayor were assassinated.

The ""Out at the Library" show is in a small gallery space on the lower level next to the cafe (yes, right in the library, with salads, sandwiches, smoothies) in this huge library that has centers also for Latinos, Chinese, Koreans, African-Americans and Filipino-Americans.

The logo for the "Out" show is a photo of a pair of old leather boots, which are on display there, worn by surgeon Mary Walker, who had to dress as a man to treat soldiers in the Civil War. There are also lots of books, papers, letters and photographs. Push a button, and you can hear gay and lesbian writers read from their work: Allen Ginsberg, Adrienne Rich and so on.

It is a pretty low-key, quiet, library-like exhibit, and while I was there on a weekday morning, only one or two people came through to take a look. In the month to come there will be talks, films and discussions on such topics as: "ham hocks & souffle - the role of class in modern black gay life," "Nazi persecution of homosexuals," "lesbian pulp fiction" and "queer youth speak."

The last will be a video screening and panel discussion with young gays responding to "Out."

Oh, boy, can't you just see that happening here?

Today Gay Pride - big G, big P - parades and events are going on across the country. The St. Petersburg celebration is one. Last year, driving to the Grand Central District, I ran smack into it, and it was amazingly huge, even though it was about 103 in the shade.

San Francisco's parade is this weekend, too. At a BART (the Bay Area Rapid Transit system that goes through the city and out into Oakland, Berkeley and the 'burbs) station, I picked up BART's June newsletter to see how it touts public transportation.

"Declare Independence from Your Car! Ride BART to Fourth of July Fireworks" is the top story.

Also on the front page: "Take BART to SF Pride Celebration."

"Join the party all weekend long. SF Pride is two days of music, food and fun all for FREE!"

They expect more than a million people, so take BART and beat the traffic.

That's one million.

Big O, big M.

Sandra Thompson, a Tampa writer, can be reached at sandrathompson1@mac.com City Life appears on Saturday.

[Last modified June 25, 2005, 00:34:16]