Queer4Decades - Mark H. Freeman
The posts in this section are mostly based on interviews I did beginning in the ’90s, of people whose work in the community I loved but who were not yet given a lot of mainstream press. I didn’t see it as my job to be a “critic” or act as an expert, but to celebrate their talents– and help share them. This first one was based on 1994 interviews with George Matson, who founded the Stud bar in 1964, with its DJ “LaRue” in 1994, and then with Snow White and Mica Sigourney when the bar was closed, a casualty of Covid-19, in 2020.
THE HOUSE OF MORE Just a few blocks from the newly gentrified Twitter-verse of Mid-Market Street, on one of the realest corners that San Francisco’s Sixth Street has to offer, is the abode of Mr. David, aka Glamamore. The honorific ‘Mister’ is a throwback to a mid-century usage, applied only to hairdressers or costume designers. […]
May 26, 2022 Los Angeles has less of a pull on me every decade. I went to four high schools there, though my parents never moved during those years in the Sixties, other than apart from each other. Both passed away in their nineties, my dad 21 years ago and my mom five. In between […]
Being a history of my father, Ben Baruch Freeman better known as Budgie, written while I was passing through his hometown on a train in winter, fifteen years before he died. Following that, a series of appreciative vignettes I wrote out for him as his memory was faltering, about ten years later. “I’m Just a […]
Mark Freeman, originally published August, 1988 in Coming Up! (now Bay Times). Revised December 2014 INVOCATIONS “I can’t bear to be losing you, ‘cause I’ve loved you my whole life through. Somebody shake me, wake me, when it’s over.” “Now if you feel that you can’t go on, because all of your hope is gone, […]
I met Hannah Sim and Mark Steger through mutual artist friends David Baal and Nao Bustamante, all neighbors in twin storefront apartments on 14th Street in the Mission District. This was back at the cusp of the ’80s and ’90s when rents were already rising above the $300/month average. This was one of the key […]
The Stud: Decade by Decade from the original 1994 article by Mark Freeman, updated 2016 & 2020 THE ‘60s: Birth Pangs The Stud’s beginnings can be traced back to Beirut, Lebanon. That’s where George Matson, who was working as a pantomime entertainer met up with former acquaintance Richard Conroy and the two made plans to open a cafe in Las Vegas. […]