“It was simply accepted,” he said, “that there were certain people who paired off.” In “Coming Out Under Fire,” a veteran describes going to yeoman school at the San Diego Naval Training Station and finding camaraderie with other gay sailors. San Diego’s population exploded during and after World War II, and the city’s gay population - both men and women - grew with the defense industry boom. The well-respected 1990 book “Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War II” says so-called “rough bars” in San Diego, like Blue Jacket and Bradley’s, “catered to enlisted men of many races, gay civilians and ‘trade’ (enlisted men and working-class civilian men willing to go with gay men).” World War II Drew Gays Here Indeed, Time magazine called “USA Confidential” a “slapdash gutter-side view of America.” But some downtown bars were definitely friendly to gay sailors. The book’s hysterical tone suggest it’s not a reliable source of information. This bar, named a hot nightspot by Billboard magazine in the 1940s, supposedly served up waiters who’d “sit at the bar, solicit drinks, kiss and pet customers.” “USA Confidential” claims there were dozens of gay bars in the city, “packed every night.” The authors point to one in particular: Cinnabar in the Gaslamp Quarter near Broadway. There they could serve sailors, office workers and travelers coming in on the train or bus. The first gay bars in the city set up shop in downtown, not Hillcrest.
But gays and lesbians in mid-century San Diego did find plenty to celebrate - and plenty to fear.Īs the annual LGBT pride parade and festival approach this weekend, here are five surprising facts about San Diego’s gay world before the Stonewall uprising, the series of New York City protests in 1969 that birthed the modern fight for LGBT rights.
How bad was it? Well, local sailors cast women aside and turned to “fairy dives” full of “prancing misfits in peekaboo blouses, with marcelled hair and rouged faces.” “The fairy fleet has landed and taken over the nation’s most important naval base,” they warned, adding that “what we saw in San Diego frightened us.” San Diego, a Navy town on the rise, sent their gaydar into overdrive. In 1952, the authors of an overheated bestseller called “USA Confidential” promised to blow the lid off the nation’s depraved triumvirate of Communists, labor unions and gays. SD Confidential: Inside a Lost Gay Past of ‘Fairy Dives,’ Raids and a Fallen Admiral | Voice of San Diego Close