Visualizing Queer Space and American Life
Welcome to Mapping the Gay Guides, a digital history project that transforms the Bob Damron Address Books into interactive maps and visualizations! The Address Books were a series of gay travel guides originally published by gay entrepreneur Bob Damron. First appearing in the 1960s, an era when most states banned same-sex intimacy in public and private spaces, these guides helped gay travelers find queer-friendly spaces across the United States. They directed gays (and to a lesser extent lesbians) to bars, cocktail lounges, bookstores, restaurants, bathhouses, cinemas, cruising sites, and more. Much like the Green Books used by Black Americans during Jim Crow, Damron’s guides helped identify sites of community, pleasure, and politics for generations of queer Americans.
How to Use This Site
This site offers multiple ways to explore the Bob Damron Address Books. Rather than offering a single narrative, this site invites you to work with historical data. Maps and visualizations reveal patterns and absences, while individual listings allow close reading of how spaces were described and categorized. As you explore, consider what these gay guides make visible. What might they leave out? What factors might have shaped the queer geographies recorded here?
Read more about our Methodology
Interactive Map
Explore queer spaces across the United States by year and location. Zoom and filter to see where listings appear and disappear over time.
Visualize Change
Visualize Change Track long-term patterns in the guides. See how amenities shift across decades.
Historical Vignettes
Read short interpretive essays that use the guides and the data to explore themes in LGBTQ history and culture.
Locations Database
Search individual listings and view details across multiple years. Compare how specific places were described and recorded over time.
Who was Bob Damron?
Bob Damron published his first travel guide in 1964—a pocket-sized directory of 785 gay-friendly locations that would grow into an essential resource for generations of LGBTQ Americans. A Los Angeles native and San Francisco bar owner, Damron built a publishing empire from his side project of cataloging safe spaces. What started as 3,000 copies of that first guide grew exponentially. By 1987, when Damron sold his company, 100,000 copies circulated annually. The guides continued publication until 2019, capturing major changes in queer American life through the AIDS crisis, the emergence of the internet, and beyond. Yet despite creating such a vital resource that helped queer people find community across the country for over five decades, Damron himself remains largely unknown. Discover the remarkable story of the entrepreneur and community builder who helped map queer America.
Read More about Bob Damron