Don Barrett (aka DBs travels)'s photos

Now this really amazed me that it was still there. Kilroy’s was a party space for undergraduate frat boys and sorority sisters when I was there – not a place that gays went. Considering the youth of its clientele, I didn’t expect it to hold on.

Very much the physical center of town when I was there, and apparently still the center, the Monroe County Courthouse. Built in 1908 and, like all older governmental buildings in the area, constructed of Indiana limestone. Though it forms a good historical marker for the town, I only vaguely recall going in there. I seem to recall paying a parking ticket there, but it’s not City Hall, so I doubt I did.

Maybe because it’s a college town, the central downtown was thriving when I was there in the 80’s, and still seemed to be in 2019 – though it looked like the small number of stores that had sold office supplies and ordinary merchandise in the 80's have been replaced by restaurants.

COVID-19 update: Given concerns over the coronavirus, I debated whether to keep posting pictures that are, themselves, documentations of a place that I knew 35+ years ago. But, Bloomington was a place that I knew best during the period of another deadly virus that was particularly important to me (HIV) and the pictures thus, in various small ways, indicate how we survive strong fears of infection. The descriptions on these pictures were written some month ago, long before the coronavirus became such a concern. I'll do some minor editing, but mostly the reflect thoughts before the new virus scare. ******** One comparison to the newness of the other campuses that I had attended in the past was that there were no commercial student-centered business zones near those campuses. IU has dominated the culture/economy of Bloomington for quite some time and the key ‘student’ commercial strip is Kirkwood (this street) coming east from the historic main gate of campus. I was surprised on this visit that the street looks basically unchanged, with very many of the same businesses, from when I was a student there in the early 80’s. Looks, though, are slightly deceptive – both here and in other areas Bloomington has somehow managed to integrate new buildings and new businesses in with the old in a way that doesn’t hurt the charm of the old. If you look on the right side of the picture you see a fairly new building – there’s a Chipotle and a chain sandwich shop in there, and across the street there’s a new building with a Panda Express. …. The church on the corner to my right, Trinity Episcopal, was important for gay culture in Bloomington since the minister had created a chapter of Integrity, an Episcopal gay group popular in larger cities – the one in Bloomington usually has something like 10-12 attendees for its meetings. More important for me (I didn’t attend the group), the minister was also a good source for insights whenever some local gay or HIV issue arose.

Not an attractive picture, but its an historic place. Though modernized, the layout of the cafeteria in the student center is much the same as it was in the early 1980’s – the food line on the right, a large amount of open seating. In the early 80’s, before there was any such thing as physical gay student centers, the ‘gay student center’ was wherever lesbians and gays happened to gather. There’s an entrance from inside the union in the back, and the tables we occupied were typically back there. At almost any time during the day, you could walk into the union and find a gathering of other gays and lesbians having lunch or just there for coffee, complaining about departments or teachers, talking state and national politics, the men discussing where to cruise on campus – all providing a sense of family. There was some status discrepancy in who gathered at the tables, but that was mainly a function of homophobia. Most of those who were open about being out as gay were undergraduate students, with a relatively small number of graduate students and no faculty – in the early 80’s, being out as a faculty (or senior staff) member was a way to lose a job. Similarly, many graduate students were closeted out of fear about being able to get references for future jobs (my situation is in a later picture). Though, despite the prejudices, there were some straight graduate students who would join us for lunch. Most important, we never kept our conversations hidden or discrete, any passerby could have figured out that this was the ‘gay section’. Though I had come to IU from San Francisco where there was a large and open gay community, it was at IU that I became most comfortable with something else – being casual and open as gay person in a predominantly straight environment, without feeling that I had to always be on edge, or be an educator about gay for straights. Just to live. For contemporary times that may seem odd, but it was quite liberating to be in a state where the students around me might have come from fairly conservative backgrounds, and to yet feel safe.

Monroe County public library, which was surprisingly good considering how many residents had access to the libraries at the university that was only 4 blocks away. But, the story here, is not about the library but a story of 80’s gay culture and the police. One of the ways for gay men to easily meet other gay men (plus some closeted men) in those days, was cruising the block around the library in the evening. What was interesting was that when the local police drove around the library, the cruisers didn’t scurry into hiding. Why? Because the police were open about being there to protect gays from the occasional incidence of straights showing up to harass the men that were cruising – a relationship between police and gays that’s very rare.

In the 80’s the main gay bar in Bloomington was in this building, with a bar and dance floor on the lower level (a few steps down), and a large stage on the upper level where there were drag shows every weekend. Per Google, the main gay bar is now in the building to its right, with an entrance in the back and is actually called “The Back Door”. From the descriptions I’ve seen, the current gay bar in the adjacent building sounds very much like the gay bar that was in this building in the 80’s. The building in this picture is now a ‘martini bar’ without any specification as gay. The gay bar in Bloomington, in the 1980’s, was pretty much like gay bars around the country at that time – a place to relax and socialize, dance (they had good music), find a partner, and sometimes a place to meet for political stuff. My very weak effort at bartending happened there – when our political group had events there, we got a percent of the proceeds if we provided the bar staffing. The drag show upstairs on the weekend was a new experience for me since I’d never been a fan of drag shows when I lived in cities. Bloomington was small enough that you often knew the men who routinely performed in the drag shows, but the highlight for me was the amateur nights that they had about once a month. ‘Amateur’ isn’t quite the right word. It was not unusual for the men who performed to be closeted men from rural areas, often 50 to 100 miles away, who came for their monthly chance to be ‘gay’. For some their ability to do drag, and the quality of their lip-syncing, indicated they must have spent a surprising amount of time practicing in the privacy of their rural homes. I often found watching those ‘amateur’ shows to be a positive experience of their celebration, while at the same time a poignantly sad commentary on the status of gay life for many who were away from the more positive resources in cities and college towns.

Definitely a change from when I was there in the 1980’s! A sign for ‘Quarryland’ a men’s chorus for gay, bi, and friends in south central Indiana. Per their webpage (link below), they’ve been in existence for 18 years. quarryland.org

One of the other locations for gay men’s lives, at least it was back in the 1980’s – the local adult bookstore. I was surprised to see it still in the same location (and remodeled, it used to look like a dump), and still the same business 35+ years later. Back in the 80’s a number of the clerks were gay men – all were discrete about mentioning any specific customers, but their stories were a good source about closeted gay men on the faculty.

A day of fairly good harmony re COVID-19 anxiety. Things seems to fall together on the home front for the cats AND for the limited outside activity possible. Went for groceries -- had to wait to get in the store, but supplies in the store were mostly okay, the staff was friendly, and there was an atmosphere that we'll get through this together (without touching, and ignoring the President.)

The north side of the union is along Jordan River, a shallow creek that runs through much of campus but is in underground culverts in other parts of Bloomington. The tower is part of the union, and the steps shown in the adjacent picture would be just to the left of the center of the picture.

Memorial Union, home of the student union cafeterias, book stores, and much, much more, was a center for much of daily life when I was at IU. That it was so central, that it was a massive, gorgeous, building (500,000 sq ft), and that it had such a long history for IU (dedicated in 1932) was all part of what it made it feel like I was finally at a university. Unfortunately a movie was being shot in some of the best rooms when I was there this time, so I only have one interior shot (nearby to this picture), but the building has a number of elegant public rooms. Just one example was the Tudor dining room that felt like what would be a faculty club at another university, but was a public restaurant at IU. One of the links below has a picture of it. The picture here is of one of the north entrances to the union, the building is so large, and surrounded by trees, that there is no way to get a picture that captures the building as a whole. Tudor room: imu.indiana.edu/restaurants-services/tudor-room History: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Memorial_Union

One of the many monumental looking buildings on campus, just inside the gates is Maxwell Hall, dedicated in 1891 and originally the library.

Sample Gates, entrance to the historic core of Indiana University. The gates are actually relatively new (built in 1987), but architecturally very consistent with the style of the older buildings. Like most of the older buildings on campus, they’re built of Indiana limestone. I went to Indiana to work on my PhD in Sociology -- my time in Bloomington was a key point in my life, not only for the PhD, but also Bloomington, and also those particular years. What years? That’s surprisingly hard to pinpoint, mainly because I spent probably the first 40 years of my life experimenting with different directions, getting frustrated and switching to something else, and thus moving around a lot. The easiest way to determine when I was in Bloomington is to look at the history of AIDS. I moved from San Francisco to Bloomington and it was in my first year in Bloomington that talk of the ‘gay cancer’ was beginning, which would put me as having arrived in Bloomington for the Fall semester of 1980. I left IU to try to put my skills to work on AIDS issues at a time when most gay men thought they had it (the commonly used test didn’t become widely available until about 1988), so working back from other parts of life history, it looks like I left IU after four years of classes, in 1983 – how I finished my PhD is a later story. From what I learned about myself in those years at IU, they were fairly densely packed years. Note in the previous paragraph that we (a partner and I) moved to Bloomington from San Francisco. When I told people in SF that I was moving to Indiana, they all thought it would be a disaster, that the culture would be terrible and that I wouldn’t be able to find adequate health care. None of that turned out to be true – Bloomington turned out be much more than even I expected. How Bloomington worked out is the story over the many following pictures. ….. So what about this picture? As noted above, it’s the Sample Gates constructed in 1987, after I had left. When I was there this was a driveway onto campus, but the buildings on both sides were there, and the thick woods right at the entrance were there. Though I had been at multiple other colleges and universities before IU, those were newer campuses where all or almost all of the buildings were of the ‘university as office park’ construction that was a common theme from about the 1960’s into the 1990’s. IU was my first campus where the physical structure provided a sense of knowledge as a reflective/scholarly activity embedded in a long history – the building on the right is Bryan Hall, built in 1936 and always an administrative building.

Lockerbie Square area of Indianapolis, a residential neighborhood very close to the center of downtown. Per Wikipedia it is the oldest intact residential neighborhood of Indianapolis with housing dating back to the 1880’s, with efforts to restore/preserve it having started in the 1960’s. While it isn’t a neighborhood that I spent much time in, I suspect it’s survival might be an example of gay gentrification saving a neighborhood. The first I heard of the neighborhood was from some friends in the early 1990’s who, along with other gays and lesbians, were moving into the neighborhood and supporting local business that seemed to be just developing at that time. That friend moved out, so I don’t know how the neighborhood progressed, but on this quick drive through it was clearly thriving with streets on one side that appeared to be thriving with the sorts of restaurants, bars, and shops found in trendy areas around the country. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockerbie_Square_Historic_District

A shady spot for the homeless…. On a windowsill at the National Headquarters of the American Legion in Indianapolis.

Though not particularly impressive as architecture, what it is and what’s hidden is impressive. This is the Indianapolis Public Library built in 1917, what’s hidden is a six story curved building (complted in 2007) behind this building that connects to the older building through an atrium. I haven’t seen any pictures of the exterior, but from the interior pictures it looks like an exceptionally well-designed space (see the link below). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indianapolis_Public_Library#/media/File:IMCPL_Central_Library_Atrium.jpg

North of the Soldiers & Sailors Monument (visible to the right of center, in the distance) is the American Legion Mall. When I would visit Indianapolis back in the 1980’s (and even still now), I was surprised at the amount of downtown space dedicated to memorials to the military and to architecture suggesting memorials. It seemed to me more like what one would expect in a nation’s capital, it felt out-of-place – and, being a Vietnam-era military veteran myself who became very much against the American expedition in Vietnam, it felt somewhat frightening. The prominence of celebration of military valor left me feeling fear that I would somehow be discovered as a ‘turn coat’. Re this picture, we’re looking at Sunken Garden/Cenotaph Square, which is another tribute to Indiana’s war dead. The entire open space is called the Sunken Garden, the space nearest to me contains the cenotpath (empty tomb) dedicated to the war dead of WWI. Surrounding the cenotpath are four shafts capped by gold eagles. The building on the left is the National Headquarters of the American Legion. Sources: www.legion.org www.indianawarmemorials.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Pocket-Brochure.pdf