DIRECTORY 43 Second Edition (1964) Gay bar guide

Minneapolis: Directory Services, 1964. 5 1/4 x 3 1/2″ (13 x 9 cm.) booklet, 63 pp. Pictorial wrappers, just about fine.

This is a gay bar guide printed five years before the watershed events of Stonewall. Although most of the establishments listed are bars, other establishments include bath houses, restaurants, clothing stores, etc. There is even a listing for a men’s room at the Milwaukee Library-Museum.

It covers cities in the U.S. and Canada. Although there are many places listed for large cities like New York and Los Angeles, it is very interesting to notice listings for places like Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Montgomery, Alabama, and Great Falls, Montana.

There are various annotations in pen and ink by a previous owner of the book. In some cases he crosses out a listing (presumably for a place no longer in business) and, at other times, writes in a new listing by hand.

Publisher Directory Services issued other directories, including ones of sources of physique photos and also of gay books. This is a second edition of a booklet which may have been issued yearly. OCLC lists four copies of this book. The University of Minnesota owns a copy of the third edition. For the other three copies (Universities of Illinois, Chicago and Connecticut) information is not immediately available as to date. In any case, clearly a quite scarce book.