UCLA in the time of AIDS: In the beginning
When Tom Gillman and his partner opened Hardware, a small clothing shop on Melrose Avenue in late-1970s Los Angeles, it was an instant hit. And having spent weeks at a time in New York ’s Fire Island Pines the previous six summers, their decision to open a seasonal shop there was a no-brainer.In an era of rampant homophobia, Fire Island Pines was a gay mecca — a summer sanctuary where young gay men reveled on the beaches, boardwalks and at parties, unconstrained by the need to hide their identities. The two California men signed a three-year lease and opened Hardware @ the Pines in 1979, and with a wellheeled clientele that included fashion-industry l eaders from all over the world, their first two summers were wildly successful.But when Gillman and his partner arrived to prepare the business for its third season, just before Memorial Day weekend in 1981, something was amiss. A few stalwarts of the Pines community had died of unknown causes before the season began, and their absence was painfully conspicuous. “Throughout the Pines, there was a constant whisper of a ‘gay plague,’” Gillman recalls. That summer, thanks to his store’s close proximity to the site of the daily “tea dance” — a late-afternoon tradition in which hundreds of scantily clad revelers packed together and swayed to the thumping disco beat — Gillman remembers seeing several men who in prior years could be found in the center of the action suddenly taking to the sidelines.“They watched...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
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