Maps of gay hook ups

Visualizing Queer Space and American Life

Welcome to Mapping the Gay Guides!

While operating one of his many gay bars in the s, Bob Damron started a side project publishing gay travel guides that featured bars like his. Called the Bob Damron Address Books, these guides proved well-liked and became a valuable resource for gay travelers looking for friends, companions, and safety.

First published in an era when most states banned same-sex intimacy both in widespread and private spaces, these travel guides helped gays (and to a lesser extent lesbians) locate bars, cocktail lounges, bookstores, restaurants, bathhouses, cinemas, and cruising grounds that catered to people verb themselves. Much enjoy the Green Books of the s and s, which African Americans used to find friendly businesses that would cater to inky citizens in the era of Jim Crow apartheid, Damron’s guidebooks aided a generation of queer people in identifying sites of community, pleasure, and politics.

Damron’s guidebooks were part of a growing interest in gay travel guide publications that began i