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The early and mid-1980s marked the beginning another chapter, with the rise of HIV and AIDS. In San Diego, gay bars suddenly took off. and the pro-gay-rights Stonewall riots, in the summer of 1969, in New York. “It was the blossoming of gay culture,” Detwiler said, following civil rights movements across the U.S. (In the late 1950s, The Brass Rail, founded in 1934 at a different location from where it is now in Hillcrest, was bought by a straight man who didn’t mind gay patrons - and it gradually started being more gay-friendly, Detwiler said.) In the mid- to late 1950s, when McCarthyism loomed, things again became harsher for gay bars and their patrons. “The bars tolerated gay people to an extent,” he said, adding that bars in those days were the only spaces where gay people could be themselves in a public setting.
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Instead, bars had straight patrons during the day, and at night, gays weren’t excluded. In those days, there weren’t gay bars per se. “These port cities were foci for high concentrations of queer people,” he said. After World War II, LGBTQ members of the armed forces settled in San Diego and other cities that were relatively liberal. Gay bars had a different meaning for each generation, Detwiler said. “The stories and voices that come out of this community have often been repressed and suppressed,” he said, adding that studying the bars is worthwhile because they are part of America’s and San Diego’s history. It’s also a hidden history, Detwiler said. What the filmmakers have found, so far, is that establishments that catered to San Diego’s LGBTQ populations have a complicated history - one that was shaped by the local military presence, anti-gay bias in places outside San Diego, political activism and civil rights battles of decades past, the AIDS crisis, San Diego’s beach culture and, more recently, surging real estate values and the rise of online dating. The documentary was one of the finalists chosen out of a pool of 180 submissions for KPBS Explore, designed to develop programming by local filmmakers. Media Arts San Diego is a partner, and KPBS has also funded the project. The interviews will continue into the fall, and to complete production on the $38,000 project, Cashman and Detwiler are raising money by crowdsourcing. “This project really is a reflection of gay social history in the United States,” said Detwiler, the film’s director. Along the way, they’re hoping to understand the role of these bars from a cultural and historical standpoint. In dozens of interviews with LGBTQ San Diegans - activists, bartenders and bar owners - filmmakers Paul Detwiler and Chris Cashman are asking people about their memories of the city’s gay bars. If you think gay bars are just places for dancing, drinking and flirty fun, think again.Ī new documentary being filmed now in San Diego and set to air on KPBS next summer argues that the bars have a complex cultural, political and historical significance.