'Mapping the Gay Guides' Highlights LGBTQ Safe Spaces

Eric Gonzaba, a historian and professor at California State University, Fullerton (CSUF), has launched a project aimed at "uncovering and preserving hidden histories" in the LGBTQ community as presented in "a series of travel guides published by Bob Damron to map historic queer spaces across the United States," also known as the 'Gay Guides.'

As Marianne Dhenin writes in Next City, the guides were produced by Bob Damron, "a traveling businessman who took note of the gay or at least gay-friendly bars, bathhouses, theaters, bookstores, restaurants, and shops he discovered on his many trips." Now, Mapping the Gay Guides has made the guides into an interactive map loaded with information about important sites and its importance in gay history.

Since its launch in February 2020, Mapping the Gay Guides has dropped hundreds of pins on its interactive map across all 50 states, Washington D.C., Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands (Damron did not distinguish between entries in the U.S. Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands, so neither does Mapping the Gay Guides) from the 1965 to 1980 address books. The project received a $350,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in April 2021, which will allow it to spend the next three years digitizing, transcribing, and geolocating data from the 1981 to 2000 guides.

In working on the project, Gonzaba also felt motivated by "a fairly depressing moment in queer communities across the country dealing with the collapse of LGBTQ spaces" as many businesses shuttered, some permanently, during the pandemic. But he cautions that understanding the context of the guides matters: they "were authored by a gay, white man from the relatively progressive city of San Francisco" with his own biases. "Mapping the Gay Guides exemplifies the many colorful possibilities of a digital history project handled with appropriate care. Like other creative digital projects, it can give users a fresh perspective on their cities" and uncover hidden and suppressed histories.