Anyone can "sag" The Song Is Wrong Any of you old enough to remember what wearing green once meant? Guys, I mean, white guys, white guys wearing green. You got laughed at and put down, in high school especially, because green meant you were "that way" -- except on St. Patrick's Day. Actually, in real social life, wearing a red tie in certain pre-Stonewall urban circles was intended to signify exactly that, at least to those in the know. It was the same as having your trouser cuffs tailored a bit high so your socks would show, like Fred … [Read more...]

A terrycloth piece of cultural history (see below) The New Old McNally Soon there'll be no gay bars. When I read that online and elsewhere last week, I wondered if the hypocrites in charge had managed to revive some sort of pre-Stonewall "no queers and booze in the same room" prohibition, a new blue law with lavender highlights. But I was needlessly alarmed, because it was just entrepreneur.com predicting which businesses and products would vanish within a decade, like roll-film photo developers and tree-eating newspapers, because the need for … [Read more...]

View of Savannah, Georgia, 1734. The hotel we stayed at was on the uncity side of the river, between the trees. (Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection, University of Texas.) A Moment in Savannah William Blake saw the world in a grain of sand, but I saw a slice of Savannah in a grain of rice. My usual Washington Square is in New York's Greenwich Village, rescued by angry neighbors from the egomaniacal traffickings of Robert Moses. But this smaller, manicured Washington Square, eerily quiet at dusk, is in lush Savannah, Georgia, and the site … [Read more...]