In Lucas Hilderbrand’s The Bars Are Ours; Histories and Cultures of Gay Bars in America, 1960 and After, the pictures, a collection of bar flyers, ads, photographs, gay press headlines, and various ephemera culled from fifteen years of research, are worth as much as—if not more than—the text. “Lick your way through the summer,” beckons … Continue reading
I’m a sucker for disco balls. There, I said it. If anywhere or anything includes a mirror ball, I’m immediately a fan. I’m like a moth to a shimmering, glittering flame.
But beyond my lizard brain fixation with shiny objects, disco balls can be harnessed as a complex symbol–a metaphor for community, excess, escapism, utopia, self-fashioned identity and even, safety in nightlife. Continue reading