April 7, 2026. Kroch Library, Cornell University.
Andy Langdon (documentary filmmaker), Les K Wright (queer historian), Nick McGlynn (bear studies scholar), Karen Rodriguez (cameraperson extraordinaire), Brenda Marston (archivist, Cornell).
Nick and Les cataloging BHP archival materials, Andy shooting for his documentary on beast.

“San Francisco: Genius of Place” (March 28, 2026) {Academia Ursorum feature story)

San Francisco is a collection of distinct neighborhoods, each with its own characteristics. Eureka Valley was an ethnic neighborhood settled by working-class Irish and Scandinavians. In the 1970s gay newcomers settled in the sleepy neighborhood and renamed it the Castro District. It is in the geographical center of San Francisco. It had a streetcar and a bus line that ran directly down Market Street, a quick trip to the commercial and financial districts. The MUNI Metro subway has replaced both.

San Francisco was large enough to attract a sufficient number of gay immigrants but small enough to not get lost in the anonymity of megapolises like New York or London. The Castro is a physical neighborhood permitting all the infrastructure of an ethnic neighborhood.

Gay restaurants, gay bars, gay sex clubs, gay bookstores, a gay bank, a gay travel agency, a gay real estate company, Harvey Milk’s (gay) camera shop, and other gay specialty shops sprang up. The spirit of The Castro street scene in the 1970s and early 1980s has been described as “joyous, liberating, and uncomplicated.” You knew your gay neighbors, you did business with gay merchants, you were part of the gay grapevine.

San Francisco became a gay city after World War II, when huge numbers of American service men and women were discharged there. Finding it a beautiful place that welcomed them, many stayed. Polk Street became the first commercial, entertainment, and residential gay neighborhood.

Life magazine published an article “Homosexuality in America” in its June 24 1964, issue, proclaiming San Francisco “the gayest city in America.” The article included a two-page spread of Chuck Arnett’s mural which hung in the Toolbox, a leather bar in the South of Market district. It introduced the American public to the existence of masculine gay men. It served as a beacon drawing like-minded gay men to The City.

In the 1970s gay men began to move South of Market (SOMA) and to Castro Street, where the housing was more affordable. The white-flight to the suburbs had left many Victorians in The Castro empty and available for cheap rent. Carl Wittman and Armistead Maupin sent out clarion calls. In his 1970 “A Gay Manifesto” Wittman wrote, “San Francisco is a refugee camp for homosexuals. We have fled here from every part of the nation, and like refugees elsewhere, we came not because it is so great here, but because it was so bad there. […] And we have formed a ghetto, out of self-protection. It is a ghetto rather than a free territory because it [still belongs to the heterosexuals].”

In 1976 Armistead Maupin began writing a column in the San Francisco Chronicle called “Tales of the City.” His endearing portrait of the emergent gay life in The City amplified Wittman’s clarion call.

In the 1980s the standard of sexual desirability was the Castro clone—young, smooth-skinned, and gym-toned. Older, hairy, and fat gay men [Girth and Mirth clubs began in Berkeley in the 1970s] were often shunned, sometimes barred from gay bathhouses, and even made fun of in public. Black men were often blocked from entering the bars in the Castro. (Some bars required three photo IDs but only demanded them from black customers.) Bars in other neighborhoods catered to lesbians, to Latinos, or to Asians. This resulted in the Castro being mostly white and mostly young.

Gay Bears taking over

In the 1980s the idea of gay bears was part of the zeitgeist. At that time self-identifying bears in San Francisco connected with each other through several local channels. Out of this inchoate beardom a loosely cohesive bear community took root. They rallied around the idea of “beards, bellies, and body hair.”

Cruising

Part of the Castro street scene was that the street was a cruising ground. Gay men walked the two-block loop up and down Castro Street. This was where you flagged your preferences—earring, key chain, and hanky (left for top, right for bottom). Your hanky was color-coded to indicate your proclivities, for example, dark blue for anal, red for fisting, gray for bondage, and purple for piercing. As a camp rejection of gay men reducing themselves to what they do in bed, some bears tucked a small teddy bear in the back pocket of their jeans to signal “I like to cuddle.”

AIDS and Bear play parties

In the face of the AIDS epidemic the San Francisco Health Department closed the bathhouses (dramatized in Randy Shilts’s And the Band Played On). Private sex clubs formed when the bathhouses were shut down. Bears followed suit and created the Bear Hug and Leather Bear play parties which were held in a Victorian house on 15^th Street on the edge of the Castro.

Bears as fresh alternative

About the only option older gay men previously had to remain sexually viable was to become a leather man. Bears became an alternative for gay men not drawn to leather. However, many leathermen embraced a new leather bear identity.

AIDS-related wasting syndrome led Castro clones to put on extra weight. Being hefty became sexualized. Some Castro clones transformed into bears.

BEAR magazine

In 1987 Richard Bulger began publishing BEAR, a local zine. It featured photos of “naturally masculine” men Bulger found on the streets of San Francisco and personal ads, also mostly placed by local men. The BEAR office, located on the edge of the Castro, became a must-visit site for bears.

Lonestar Saloon

Rick Redewell opened the Lonestar Saloon for blue-collar gay men who felt uncomfortable in other gay bars. It quickly became the drinking hole for bears.

BBS, facebook before Facebook

Many self-identifying bears were employed in the new high tech industry emerging in Silicon Valley in the South Bay. They were pioneers in the development of BBSs [bulletin board services]. They created one specifically for bears in San Francisco. It was a place for discussions of all things bears, such as the play parties, BEAR magazine, making friends, finding a job or an apartment, and “flaming” (attacking) each other.

Rise of the community

There are two important but forgotten catalyzers that contributed to creating bear community in San Francisco. One was the AIDS epidemic, which caused gay men to eroticize hefty body weight. The other was the bears’ self-determination that bears are “self-identifying.” If you say you’re a bear, then you’re a bear. This self-determination served both as an inoculation against being judged by in-group outsiders as well as a means of bonding together in a self-accepting body-positive community.

About Tallinn Bearty

Tallinn Bearty is an annual international festival celebrating Bear culture and queer creativity. Each year focuses on a specific artistic discipline—visual arts, music, or cinematography, rotating on a tri‑annual cycle. The 2026 edition is dedicated to Music. Academia Ursorum is series of free public lectures in light format to create academic awareness about different topics featuring academic members of bear community.

PHOTO CREDITS: “The Castro DVD cover” (Les K Wright, private collection), (“beards, bellies, and body hair” and “Lone Star Saloon Back Courtyard. (Cornell “Les K Wright papers and Bear History Project files, #7656. Division of Rare and Manuscripts Collections, Cornell University Library).

[Source: “Bear Culture,” Wikipedia]: The bear concept can function as an identity or an affiliation, and there is ongoing debate in bear communities about what constitutes a bear. Some bears place importance on presenting a clear masculine image and may disdain or shun men who exhibit effeminacy while others consider acceptance and inclusiveness of all behavioral types to be an important value of the community.

The concept of gay bears was part of the Zeitgeist of the 1980s and 1980s. The first recoded use of “bear” so far discovered was in the meeting minutes of the Satyrs, a gay men’s motorcycle club in Los Angeles in 1966. In 1979 The Advocate published “Who’s who in the Zoo,” a tongue-in-cheek essay in which George Mazzei made up gay stereotypes, including a “bear.” The Advocate‘s current (2020s)claim to have invented bears has been refuted as a piece of revisionist history.

In the mid-1980s gay men in the San Francisco Bay Area who called themselves ‘bears’ met informally at Bear Hug (sex) parties and via the newly-emerging Internet. Steve Dyer moderated the first bear-centered BBS “Bears Mailing List.’ The term “bear” was popularized by Richard Bulger, who, along with his then partner Chris Nelson (1960–2006), founded Bear Magazine in 1987.

Jack Fritscher was the founding editor of San Francisco’s California Action Guide (1982). With California Action Guide, Fritscher became the first editor to publish the word “Bear” (with the gay cultural meaning) on a magazine cover (November 1982). “Sociology of the Urban Gay Bear” (Les K. Wright) was the first academic article to appear in print in 1990 in Drummer 140 magazine. “Exploring the Gay ‘Bear’ Phenomenon,” a version of his article appeared in Seattle Gay News in August 1990.

In 1989 Rick Redewell opened the Lone Star Saloon in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood, home to gay leather bars and, prior to the AIDS epidemic, gay bathhouses and discos. Redewell wanted to create a space for working-class gay men, which drew bears, and became the first bear bar in the world. In 1992 the first Bear Expo was held. It preceded International Bear Rendezvous (1995-2007). The rapid proliferation of these bear-oriented actives and institutions established San Francisco as the birthplace of bears.

The Bear History Project, founded by Les K. Wright in 1995, documented the emergence and early evolution of bear identity and bear community. It became the source material for much of The Bear Book (1999) and The Bear Book II (2001). Publication of The Bear Book led to the Library of Congress adding “bear” as a category. The Bear History Project is archived in the Human Sexuality Collection at Cornell University. It continues to be added to since 2005.

The bear community has spread all over the world, with bear clubs in many countries. Bear clubs often serve as social and sexual networks for their members, who can contribute to their local gay communities through fund-raising and other functions. Bear events have become very common, to include smaller sized cities and many rural areas. Most gay oriented campgrounds now include some type of bear-related event during their operating season.

Wright suspended active collecting and archiving in 2005 for three reason: (1) The bear phenomenon had expanded so rapidly and become too large for a single person to oversee;(2) The expense of continuing this work became too costly for a single individual to cover; and (3) The sudden shift from print to electronic media was, at that early time, very problematic to document.

The Bear History Project has been reactivated and re-invigorated in 2022 with a commitment to document “Beardom” in all its global presence and diversity.

Bear History Project International

The Bear History Project International is an all-volunteer nonprofit organization formed to capture, define, and preserve the history of bear culture for present and future generations. We are preserving the history of early bear community members, bear history beyond the English-speaking realm, and the increasingly diverse of nonbinary bears.

BHPI members are currently involved in projects include cataloging bear history materials at the archives at Cornell, collecting materials being permanently archived at the Leather Archives and Museum in Chicago, consulting with Good Pictures’ documentary Bears, supporting bear scholars and enthusiasts who first met at the Bear Studies Symposium (co-organized by a BHPI member, 2025), and continuing our oral history project interviews.

Our project functions as a vital link for scholars and enthusiasts alike, working closely with academics in bear studies and having been launched at the Bear Studies Symposium. As part of our commitment to preserving this unique subculture, we are actively cataloging materials from the beginnings of the bear movement, ensuring that stories from all corners of the community—across languages and identities—are not lost to time. Additionally, we are honored to serve as a resource for an upcoming documentary chronicling bear history, set to premiere in 2025.

We proudly acknowledge San Francisco as the birthplace of bear identity, community, and culture.

BHPI YOUTUBE CHANNEL

VISIBILITY AND INTERSECTIONALITY: Where Do We Go from Here?
KEYNOTE SPEECH: BEAR STUDIES SYMPOSIUM May 14, 2025)

FURTHER READING

NON-FICTION

Barnett, Rusty. (2017). “The Class Menagerie: Working-Class Appropriations and Bear Identity” (83-116). In From Drag Queens to Leathermen: Language, Gender, and Gay Male Subcultures (Oxford)..
Cain, Paul D. and Luke Mauerman (2019).. Bears in the Raw.
Choklat, Aki and Trippe, Christian. (2008). Bear Flavoured.
Clarke, Kevin (2013). Beards: An Unshaved History.
Hennen, Peter (2008). Fairies, Bears, and Leathermen: Men in Community Queering the Masculine.
Hörmann, Rainer and Baker, Jim). 2004). Der Bärenkult. Das Tier im Mann!
McGlynn, Nick. Bodies and Boundaries of UK Bear Space. Routledge, 2024
Suresha, Ron (2002). Bears on Bears: Interviews and Discussions. Alyson Publications.
Unofficial Guide to the Harrison Street Fair (2006).
Whitesel, Jason. (2014). Fat Gay Men: Girth, Mirth, and the Politics of Stigma.
Wright, Les K. (1997). The Bear Book: Readings in the History and Evolution of a Gay Male Subculture. Haworth Press.
Wright, Les K. (2000), The Bear Book II: Further Readings in the History and Evolution of a Gay Male Subculture, Haworth Press.
Wright, Les K. Resilience: A Polemical Memoir of AIDS, Bears, and F*cking. Bearskin Lodge Press. 2023.

FICTION

Barela, Tim (2021). The Complete Leonard & Larry Collection (contains all the strips from the long out of print previous collections of Tim Barela’s work)
Barela, Tim (Palliard Press, 1993). Domesticity Isn’t Pretty.
Barela, Tim (Palliard Press, 1996). Kurt Cobain & Mozart Are Both Dead.
Barela, Tim (Palliard Press, 2000). Excerpts from the Ring Cycle in Royal Albert Hall.
Barela, Tim (Palliard Press, 2003). How Real Men Do It.
Berman, Steve, editor (2021). Burly Tales.
Brightly, Ki (2022).Cuddle Bear.
Cohen, Jonathan (2006). Bear Like Me. Southern Tier Editions.
Drakes, Dylan (2024) Cubs & Campfires (Sweet & Stocky).
Hemry, Mark, editor (2001). Tales from the Bear Cult.
Hoffman, Wayne (2015). An Older Man. A Novella.
Hudson, Greg (2002). The Color of Bears Are People Too.
Hudson, Greg (2024). Two Bears and One Turkey.
Ash, Anne and Holbein’s, Graham (editors) (2014). Massive: Gay Erotic Manga and the Men Who Make It.
Jackson, R., editor (2016). The Biggest Lover: Big-Boned Men’s Erotica for Chubs and Chasers.
Kampf, Ray (2000). The Bear Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide for Those Who Are Husky, Hairy and Homosexual, and Those Who Love ‘Em. Haworth Press.
Labonté, Richard, editor (2008). Bears: Gay Erotic Stories.
Luczak, Raymond (2019). Flannelwood.
Luczak, Raymond (2016). The Kiss of Walt Whitman Still on My Lips.
Luczak, Raymond. Oh Yeah: an Anthology of Bear Poetry. Bearskin Lodge Press. 2024.
Mann, Jeff (2014). Cub.
Smith, Travis and Chris Bale (2012). Guide to the Modern Bear.
Suresha, Ron, editor (2004). Bear Lust: Hot, Hairy, Heavy Fiction.