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The Rathskeller, on SW Taylor Street, developed a reputation by the ’40s in roughly the same era, women seeking women gathered at the Buick Café, at SW 13th and Washington. A few works of scholarship document this lost world, notably the online GLAPN archives and a 2004 Oregon Historical Quarterly essay by historian Peter Boag, readily accessible online. Some dated to the ’30s or before many flickered in and out of existence according to the usual whims of business, culture, and real estate. (Customers asked at the counter.) In the years after World War II, a small crescent of welcoming spaces evolved along our rainy streets. By the early 1960s, Rich’s Cigar Store stocked ONE and the “homophile” Mattachine Society’s Review, decorous political magazines published out of Los Angeles and San Francisco, respectively. “There was no organization,” Nicola says, “and everything was very closeted.” Progress was basically subterranean. )įive decades and more ago, it was a different town.
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(Almost, but given certain ideologies prominent in national politics, not quite. It’s almost impossible to imagine queer Portland in the shadows. An out bisexual Portlander serves as Oregon’s governor an out Portland lesbian, as state Speaker of the House. As George Nicola, a longtime activist and historian for the Gay and Les bian Archives of the Pacific Northwest (GLAPN), notes, the local power structure embraced equality long ago: “Since Bud Clark was elected in 1984, every mayor has been gay-friendly.” The city elected its first gay mayor in 2008. T oday, June’s Pride celebration is a decades-old civic tradition.