The first dance of the 1973-74 school year was Saturday, September 15, 1973.
It was a new school year and the ISU Daily staff was interested in us queers once again; it seemed like we weren't going to just go away. The paper had begun the year with a different style on their Monday editions that was called "New Dimensions." It was sort of a lifestyle oriented rag ahead of its time (or else the Daily was on the bandwagon and I was behind the times). It looked nothing like the daily newspaper we were used to seeing; they'd take a general campus issue and delve into it a bit more deeply than they might have before. I figured they could finish their deadlines on this type of paper earlier than they would a regular daily rag, so most of the time it made less work for them to do on weekends.
Who better to feature early on in the school year in this new format than those fun radicals over in the gay community?
This early season dance was right before the gay issue (next page). It provided fertile fodder for the reporters.
The Unitarian "Fellowhip" was the place!
At the time I remember we couldn't decide if we liked this bit of Daily cartoon art or not. It's still oddly ambiguous. Bell bottoms are back in vogue at least. Sideburns are presently not required, though I have seen them sprouted in 21st Century San Francisco.
Cheap and efficient, this style of poster was not uncommon in the days before printers and fonts. We'd changed the previous year's Gay Men's Rap Group into Gay Men's Liberation already after probably a five hour meeting on what each syllable could possibly be construed to mean to the general public. Unfortunately this bland and uninspired flyer is of my own hand printing. Why worry about style, after all? We passed these out in dorms, and posted them wherever we could find a spare bulletin board.
NEXT 
Fag Rag VI (Cover Art) - Fall/Winter, 1973
HOME 
Iowa State University/Ames Gay History
email
 |