Travel guides, urban spatial imaginaries and LGBTQ+ activism: The case of Damron guides

Abstract

In this paper we focus on LGBTQ+ travel guides and the creation of a North American LGBTQ+ urban imaginary as forms and facilitators of activism. Specifically, we consider one of the few continuously published sources detailing such an imaginary in the mid-20th century and its construction of an ‘epistemological grid’ onto which entries were placed. We briefly situate the guides in the context of an emerging (and frequently politicised) mid-20th-century LGBTQ+ media ecosystem, then proceed to a detailed analysis of the imaginary they evoke. Cities are the guides’ assumed building-blocks, along with certain other ontologies, most notably bars, sex establishments and other meeting places (though these change over time). As aggregators of information at a national scale, the guides standardised and communicated particular notions of what LGBTQ+ space was (and is). At the same time, as way-finding tools they helped readers navigate actual communities at the local scale. In so doing, we argue, Damron guides helped shape early forms of LGBTQ+ identity and community in North America – including the establishment of ‘gaybourhoods’. We therefore interpret the guides as both activist and facilitators of activism. They claimed space at an abstract level while simultaneously facilitating place-making, territorialisation and simple survival strategies by actual people on the ground. Our analysis contributes to understandings of the relationship, over time and at multiple scales, between travel guides, an urban-based North American spatial imaginary and LGBTQ+ activism. It also highlights Damron guides’ potential as a rich source of data.

Geographies of queer economies

“…From the mid‐twentieth century onwards, as visible gay urban geographies emerged in the global North, geographers defined the ‘gaybourhood’ as a site where gay men, and to a lesser extent lesbians both resided in and partook in commercial consumption away from a hostile heterosexual world (Brown, 2014; Ghaziani, 2014). Commercial businesses became a key identifier of gaybourhoods, with Bob Damron's ‘ Address Book’ in the United States, and the ‘ Gay Times ’ in the UK, frequently used within methodologies to locate gay commercial ventures (Castells, 1983; Collins, 2004; Knopp & Brown, 2021; Levine, 1979; Weightman, 1981). Consumption within the gaybourhood was initially celebrated as a subversive practice in a society which presumed space to be straight, with the gaybourhood viewed as “a spatial response to a historically specific form of oppression” (Lauria & Knopp, 1985, p. 152).…”

Placing LGBTQ+ urban activisms

“…Gay and lesbian historic emplacement on the North American map is the central theme of Knopp and Brown's (2021) 'Travel guides, urban spatial imaginaries and LGBTQ+ activism'. It rereads the Damron guides for lesbian and gay travellers as textual activism, excavating their complex urban historical geographies.…”

The place of transversal LGBTQ+ urban activisms

“…In particular, Currans argues that the attachment to place in small cities, amplified through forms of activism that emphasise local political histories, can provide the basis for 'affinity activisms'. Complementing this diversification of research sites, several articles examine the geographical imaginaries of LGBTQ+ activisms (Knopp and Brown, 2021;Ruez, 2021). These importantly draw attention to connections across space, emphasising networks of LGBTQ+ urban activisms and countering the analytic tendency to explore urban sites as discrete units.…”