These LPs are all from people who are handicapped, in one way or another. All are from between the 1960s and ’70s, and all are on private labels.
The prevailing maladies seem to be either blindness, dwarfism or lack of limbs. And almost all are about their relationship with Jesus. Most appear relatively happy and excited to be singing for the lord. This isn’t meant to make fun of the handicapped but to show how amazing it was a few years back when anyone could make their own album, individuals, churches, etc.
​https://vintagenewsdaily.com/real-people-with-real-problems-a-different-kind-of-lp-album-covers/

In the 1950s and 1960s Christian teachers turned to ventriloquism to teach kids about Jesus. They made albums
​​https://flashbak.com/20-mid-century-christian-ventriloquism-albums-52632/

Back in the 1970s the term bōsōzoku (or “speed tribes”) was first used to describe Japanese biker gangs that routinely fought in the streets with rival gangs and the police. Often dressed like Kamikaze pilots, the bōsōzoku wreaked havoc speeding through the streets on their illegally modified bikes, blowing through red lights, and smashing the car windows of any motorist that dared defy them with baseball bats. Foreigners were an especially favorite target of the bōsōzoku’s aggression.
The earliest incarnation of the bōsōzoku, the kaminari zoku, appeared in the 1950’s. Not unlike their idols from the films, The Wild Ones or Rebel Without a Cause, the group was formed by the youthful and disenchanted members of Japan’s proletariat, and the gang provided a place for the emerging delinquents to call their own. A fiercely disciplined and rebellious group, the bōsōzoku once boasted more than 40,000 members. By 2003 the bōsōzoku’s numbers had dwindled to just over 7000. According to first-hand accounts from former senior members, the modern version of the bōsōzoku (known as Kyushakai) no longer embody the rebel spirit of their predecessors. In fact, some have returned to homaging their rockabilly idols by donning elaborate Riizentos, a style of pompadour synonymous with disobedience. These days many ex-bōsōzoku parade around on their bikes in non-disruptive groups and enjoy dancing, performing music and socializing in groups in Harajuku, an area well known for its outrageous fashion.
 Many factors are to blame for the demise of the traditional bosozuku. A former leader of from the Narushino Specter gang in the 90s (and one time Yakuza loan shark), Kazuhiro Hazuki recalls that the police were once content to allow the bōsōzoku to run riot and no matter how many times they were arrested, a gang member never had their license revoked. Over the years, revised traffic laws have led to a rise in the arrest and prosecution of the bōsōzoku. Some also point to the inclusion of women as bōsōzoku riders, now a common sight in Japan, and a less than robust economy (many bōsōzoku bikes can cost as much as ten grand) for the drastic reduction in the gang’s
If this post has piqued your interest of vintage Japanese biker culture, there are several documentaries and films based on the bōsōzoku and other speed tribes in Japan, such as 1976’s God Speed You! Black Emperor, 2012’s Sayonara Speed Tribes, a short documentary that features historical perspective from the aforementioned Kazuhiro Hazuki, or the series of films from director Teruo Ishii based on the bōsōzoku that began in 1975 with, Detonation! Violent Riders. If you are a fan of Japanese anime, the story told in the cult film Akira deeply parallels the real world of the bōsōzoku in their heyday. Many images of the bōsōzoku of the past and their mind-boggling motorcycles follow.

Kevin Bubriski's photographs will take you back in time.
By 
Carolina Moreno
May 11, 2016, 03:32 PM EDT
Kevin Bubriski was 26 years old when he arrived in New Mexico in 1981. The Massachusetts native had spent three years in Nepal with the Peace Corps and another year working in a mountain village before moving to Santa Fe to study film.
But once in the American southwest, he found a burgeoning and vivacious culture and people so far from anything he'd ever known, and he spent the next two and a half years of his life documenting their daily lives through his photography.
"The vitality and beauty of the Hispanic New Mexicans caught my eye, as well as [their] vibrant cultural life," the documentary photographer told The Huffington Post.
Bubriski recently compiled these images of intimate celebrations, casual car rides, romance and friendships into his new book, "Look into My Eyes: Nuevomexicanos por Vida."
"The photographs allow the viewer to encounter this community of three decades ago, quietly 'look into their eyes,' and ideally find a sense of our shared humanity," Bubriski told HuffPost. "The specific take away for me from the experience was a deep appreciation for the Hispanic culture and history of New Mexico."
Bubriski's subjects often gaze intently into his camera lens, indeed offering a look into their eyes and a brief glimpse into their world, which is accentuated by big hair, bold make-up and all the glamour of the early '80s. He says his photographs are a result of the "mutual respect" between the person behind the camera and those in front of it.
"As a new person to New Mexico, I felt that Hispanic New Mexicans were in some ways neglected by the other communities of Santa Fe and Albuquerque," Burbriski said. "I was there for a brief two and a half years, so I did not have a personal history with the place and the people. Maybe that is what gave me a freedom to experience the place with a fresh outlook. I had no preconceived notions of who anyone or any community was. I was young and interested in exploring the variety of landscape and people."
The photographer left New Mexico in 1983, and 33 years later he still remembers how "Santa Fe felt very much like a small town with a sense of casual friendliness." The state, he says, has grown immensely since.
​https://www.huffpost.com/entry/vintage-photos-give-a-glimpse-into-hispanic-new-mexican-life-in-the-80s_n_573237bce4b096e9f092f3d7

BY KRISTINA RODULFO PUBLISHED: JUL 8, 2016
When Raphael Albert was photographing West London in the '60s and '70s, racist, anti-immigrant tensions ran high. Albert, from the Caribbean island of Granada himself, gravitated toward the West Indian community thriving at the time amidst discrimination, and used his lens to capture celebrations of black communities.
One assignment he had as a freelance photographer was to cover a local Miss Jamaica pageant for the West Indian World. That sparked three decades of photographing London's black beauty pageants and eventually led to him organizing them himself. Now, his work is being displayed in an Autograph ABP exhibit called "Miss Black and Beautiful," launching today.
Every photograph embodies the contemporary "Black Is Beautiful" movement of the time. Women are documented wearing typical beauty pageant smiles, bikinis, and adornments, but also proudly wear afros at a time when Eurocentric beauty ideals reigned.
According to Renée Mussai, curator of the exhibit and head of archive at Autograph ABP, pageants were organized in the Caribbean since the 1930s but in the U.K., there were no contests for black women. Meanwhile in the U.S., there was a "rule number seven" that prevented black women from entering pageants–the first time a black woman competed in Miss America was 1970. Today, even, there have been less than five black Miss Universe winners in over 50 years.
​https://www.elle.com/culture/news/a37666/rare-black-beauty-pageants-london-photos/

By Paul Sorene on April 17, 2019
In March 1942 Beverley Bernstein, 16, was sent home for her Brooklyn NYC school for wearing trousers. A protest ensued...
This great photograph shows students protesting the high school dress code that banned slacks for girls in Brooklyn NYC back in 1942. It illustrated a question in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle newspaper on March 26 1942. As war raged around the globe, readers were invited to consider the burning question: “Should high school girls, particularly students of Abraham Lincoln High School on Ocean Parkway… be permitted to wear slacks to class?”
The article featured Lincoln pupil Beverly Bernstein, a 16-year-old suspended by the school’s dean of girls, Bertha Cohen, for wearing blue gabardine slacks and a “lipstick-red sweater”. “She wore them to school, along with a lipstick-red sweater,” the Eagle reported.
Her rustication sparked a protest movement. The above photo was captioned: “Girls show up in slacks at Abraham Lincoln High School, in Brooklyn, in protest because a classmate, Beverly Bernstein, was suspended the day before for wearing slacks.”
Bernstein’s champions argued that slacks “are better than skirts in the event of an air raid”. Moreover they were vital to “conserve silk stockings”. They circulated a petition.
“The undersigned want to have official permission for girls to wear slacks to school for the following reasons:
a) The United Stated Government advocates slacks for school because they are better than skirts in the event of an air raid
b) They conserve silk stockings
c) They curb sexy clothes such as short skirts. Note: Boys also wish the girls to wear slacks and signing the petition in hope that it will be allowed.”
Presented with such reasoning, Lincoln’s principal shrugged, stating that “if the girls wear them, we won’t get excited about it”.
Slacks for girls was a national concern. Writing for the San Antonio Light newspaper (San Antonio, Texas) on May 22, 1942, Russ Westover, “Famous Cartoonist – Creator of ‘Tillie the Toiler'”, opined:
The girls appear to be winning their battle for the right to wear slacks to school. In Pittsburgh, for example, the superintendent of schools approved, provided, however, the girls do not take to any outlandish fashions that will create a distraction and a disturbance. In New York, when Beverly Bernstein was forbidden to wear slacks to Abraham Lincoln High School, she and fellow students staged a strike for the emancipation of women from skirts. They got up a petition which school authorities couldn’t talk down:
“The undersigned want official permission for girls to wear slacks to school for the following reasons:
(a) the United States government advocates slacks for school, because they are better than skirts in the event of an air raid; (b) they conserve silk stockings; (c) they curb sexy clothes such as short skirts.
Note: Boys also wish the girls to wear slacks and are signing this petition.”
It isn’t exactly true the government is advocating slacks for school. In fact, it’s fearful that unnecessary adoption of the style will aggravate the shortage of wool. However, in scores of other cities, girls have donned pants for school hours, and they’re on their honor not to let the fashion get beyond conservative bounds.
The least captious girls hate their beaux to present a rumpled, unpressed appearance. Let them take this tip unto themselves and keep slacks in press. Washable slacks should be kept at least as fresh as a girl keeps her blouse, her handkerchief. If the tailor stitches down the crease of wool pants, pressing them neatly is then an easy home job, and the crease doesn’t get out of line between pressing.
There has been a great spurt of publicity to get hats onto heads above slacks. And the long-visored cap, the cocoanut straw hat and the felt fedora type have been advocated for the slacks ensemble. The scarf or handkerchief turban is very popular. Another suggestion is the worsted snood.
As for the intrepid Beverly Bernstein, well, we know she was born in 1926, lived at 65 Exeter Street, Kings, New York, sharing her home with two younger brothers, Arthur and Leonard (not the musician), and parents, Russian-born Jacob and native New Yorker Ruth. We’d love to know more. Who were those campaigners in the photo? And what did Beverly Bernstein do next?
​https://flashbak.com/the-girl-suspended-for-wearing-pants-new-york-city-1942-414698/

Playing dress up and shooting self-portraits at her parents' house in the suburbs coaxed Meryl Meisler out of the closet and into herself.
By Miss Rosen
Growing up in Long Island during the 1950s and 60s, Meryl Meisler had the typical suburban life: girl Scouts, ballet and tap dance lessons, and prom. But while she loved her family and friends, she didn’t quite fit in. She quickly realized she didn’t want to be a housewife, teacher, nurse, or a secretary—pretty much the only options available to young women at that time.
As Meisler came of age, she began to discover her sexuality as a lesbian as well as her identity as an artist. “Photography is in my genes,” Meisler said. Her paternal grandfather Murray Meisler, her uncle Al, and her father Jack had all been lifelong practitioners of the art.
Meisler got her first camera in second grade, but it wasn’t until she enrolled at the University of Wisconsin in Madison during the mid-1970s that she became serious about the form while pursuing an MA in Art. During school breaks, she returned to her childhood home, where she staged a series of self-portraits that examined her past, present, and future. At this point, Meisler hadn’t heard of Cindy Sherman, but she had the same instinct. She sought to examine the construction of the female gender, from its rituals to its poses to its personas.
A selection of these photographs appears in Purgatory & Paradise: SASSY 70s Suburbia & The City (Bizarre), while others have recently come to light as Meisler prepares for her next book. Here, she speaks with us about this seminal period of her life, sharing a self-portrait of the artist as a young woman ready to take flight.
​https://www.vice.com/en/article/ne48j8/vintage-70s-selfies-show-an-artist-discovering-her-sexuality?utm_source=vicefbus

Even artists on an idyll in Europe have to make money. Bettie and I found a lucrative gig selling instant photo portraits in the bars and clubs of Amsterdam. Every night we headed out for 4 or 5 hours seeking customers in Amsterdam's entertainment districts. Although at first we were not sure we would succeed, in retrospect I can see our success was virtually assured. Dutch art history is full of portraits done in bars and taverns, but apparently we were the first to update this tradition with instant photographs. Our Polaroid camera was a money machine fueled by alcohol; each photo sold for 6 guilders (approx. $3) and we usually took more than 50 pictures a night. We were soon a fixture of the city's nightlife with many regular customers eager to get new pictures whenever we happened to cross their path.
​https://98bowery.com/idyll-in-holland/amsterdam-prive-part-one

“What intrigues me when I look at these images is that they show African Americans with a distinct and powerful sense of pride and joy. Despite the fact that these pictures are ‘found’ Polaroids, that power often lingers and transcends their personal subject matter… Many of these frames echo the key purpose of the Father Figure project, a counter-balance to the prevalent visual tropes of absent fathers and dysfunctional black families”.
Photographer Zun Lee continues his work on black male identity with his latest project, “Fade Resistance“, utilizing family Polaroids either found on the street curb or picked up in flea markets and on eBay. A collection he started a year ago of African American vernacular photography that spans from the 1970s until 2000, the Polaroids offer glimpses into everyday family life and, as Lee reflects, “descriptive of universal experiences”.


Zun Lee’s work is heavily influenced by his own personal family history. Born and raised in Germany, Lee didn’t discover until he was in his 30’s that his biological father was black, rather than the Korean father he had been raised with. He turned to photography to come to terms as well as to explore the concepts of fatherhood in black families – and to counteract the stereotype of the “deadbeat” black father figure, as he did with his earlier project series called Father Figure. “I hope this work can help question preconceived notions and present a broader context of black fatherhood. Perhaps it can serve as a counter-narrative to humanize black men as present and competent fathers in a media climate that largely continues to deny this possibility.”


Zun Lee will be presenting “Fade Resistance” at the upcoming Magnum Foundation’s Photography, Expanded Symosium. With over 3,000 collected Polaroids, Lee hopes that they will be reunited with their families over the course of this project and expects to lead the collection into an interactive online space to assist with not only identifying them but also to allow for the public to interact with the photographs and contribute their own family photos. “My hope is, at the very minimum, to give the vintage Polaroids a new ‘virtual home’ in a present-day context but with a revitalized meaning and contemporary significance.”
http://1world1family.me/artist-defies-the-black-family-stereotype-using-abandoned-family-polaroids/

Between May 1969 and December 1970 unmarried secretary Margret S., 24, and her German businessman boss, Günter K., 39, were engaged in a clandestine love affair.
Günter kept records of the romance, hundreds of color and black-and-white photographs showing Margret S., samples of her hair (head and pubic), her fingernails, empty contraception packages, a blood-stained napkin, hotel receipts, movie and theater tickets and sexually explicit diary entries. More than thirty years later, the records were found, locked inside a briefcase.
Veit Loers notes:
“In September 1970, the diary entries set in, with precise descriptions of what happens during foreplay and then of the sexual act itself, but also mentioning all kinds of things happening besides. All this is meticulously typed, in red and black ink, as by a bookkeeper of his own obsession. The couple go on ‘business trips’ in Günter’s Opel Kapitän, stay at spa hotels and visit the casino in Wiesbaden. Then the trysts begin to take place in an attic flat in Günter’s store building. Nobody is supposed to know, but people must notice something. Margret prepares roulades and redfish filets with cucumber salad. They drink Cappy (orange juice) with a green shot (Escorial, strong liquor) and watch ‘colourful television’.
Margret dresses for him in the clothes he has bought her. He, the perfect lover, in truth is a macho man who wants to have everything under control. She enjoys his attention, his generosity, is happy to let herself be manipulated, is jealous, becomes pregnant despite the pills, and has an illegal abortion − for the third time in her young life. Just before Christmas 1970 the reports and photographs break off. The relationship appears to be at an end. Margret is scared. She tells him that ‘after Christmas the fucking will be over and you will not dance at two weddings anymore’. He gets involved with other women. These are no love stories, though, just obsessive sexual romps, chronicled nonetheless in hundreds of grotesque documents testifying to the stuffy German milieu in the early years of the Kohl era.”
Does Mrs K suspect? Yes:
Monday 7.9.1970: At lunch Leni [Günther’s wife] says to Margret: Madame, you are a lesser character, you are disrupting a good marriage.
Tuesday 8.9.1970: Around 10 a clock Margret says to me: You let this insult from your wife against me pass? No more sex, you can jump on your own wife. Whatever you do, you are not allowed to jump on me anymore.
Later, my wife has to apologize to her at lunch on 8.9.1970.
The loves retire for sex. He later adds:
Devil salad is eaten. Everything is okay again.
The photographs are extraordinary. They are also racy and NSFW. We do get to see Günther in one picture. It the part of him that did his thinking.
https://flashbak.com/found-photos-one-womans-love-affair-with-her-married-boss-53673/

You’d be pretty accurate when saying that the media in the 1950s was promoting the image of a woman’s beauty that was skewed towards the curvy slender models like typical pinup girls. But it wasn’t all like that as the illustrator Duane Bryers (1911-2012) proved with Hilda, a plus-sized pinup model.

Jessie Pink
“You start off by kicking down the doors, then you end up at Butlins!’ quips writer and musician Mark Perry. He’s recalling his experience of the punk scene, where he situated himself front and centre after founding fanzine Sniffin’ Glue in 1976. “I just felt there was a need to have a magazine that was devoted to punk rock so I had the idea to start my own fanzine,” he explains over the phone. “That’s why it was important at the time, because it was the first UK fanzine to write about punk rock.” Inspired by The Ramones, Sniffin’ Glue quickly became an authentic outlet for punk in the 70s. Writers included future NME scribe Danny Baker, and were supported by photographs from Dennis Morris – otherwise known as ‘Mad Dennis’.
As punk celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, Perry and punk historian/cultural archivist Toby Mott will go head to head on May 11 at the ICA in London, where Perry will also perform with his band, Alternative TV. Ahead of the event, we caught up with the writer, musician and publisher to talk about the historic Sniffin’ Glue, as well as punk’s place in the digital age.
https://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/30999/1/mark-perry-tracing-the-beginnings-of-the-punk-fanzine

What About Gay Bob?
The First Openly Gay Doll (for everyone) Was a Trailblazer Toy
In 1977, Gay Bob came out of the closet. 
Thirteen inches tall and plastic, Gay Bob was marketed as the first openly gay doll and made his retail debut in mail-order catalogs. He was sold in a cardboard box designed to look like a closet. Gay Bob's packaging proudly (and wordily) explained what “coming out of the closet” meant:
"Hi boys, girls and grownups, I’m Gay Bob, the world’s first gay doll. I bet you are wondering why I come packed in a closet. ‘Coming out of the closet’ is an expression which means that you admit the truth about yourself and are no longer ashamed of what you are... A lot of straight people should come out of their 'straight closets' and take the risk of being honest about what they are. People who are not ashamed of what they are, are more lovable, kind, and understanding. That is why everyone should come out of “their closet" so the world will be a more loving, understanding, and fulfilling place to live. Gay people are no different than straight people. If everyone came out of their closets, there wouldn’t be so many angry, frustrated, frightened people... It’s not easy to be honest about what you are; in fact it takes a great deal of courage. But remember, if Gay Bob has the courage to come out of his closet, so can you!"
At face value, Gay Bob’s message about the merits of coming out seems earnest, espousing the values of courage, honesty, and living authentically; however, the branding and design of the Gay Bob doll are brash. Gay Bob’s story is deceptively complicated and intertwined in toy and LGBTQ+ history. 
THE CREATOR - WHO MADE GAY BOB?
Gay Bob was created by an advertising executive named Harvey Rosenberg. Rosenberg put $10,000 of his own money into getting Gay Bob manufactured through his company, Gizmo Development.
While Rosenberg did not identify as gay, he stated that he had created the doll to liberate men from traditional sexual roles. According to Rosenberg, regardless of a person’s sexuality, Gay Bob could serve as an example for having the courage to “come out of the closet” and be your true, authentic self. During a press blitz for the doll’s release, Rosenberg also indicated that Gay Bob was a spoof of other “amorphous, sexless dolls,” which was undoubtedly a reference to Mattel’s KenTM and BarbieTM. He had plans to release additional dolls that would have made up the rest of Gay Bob’s family (a mother, father, and two brothers); however, the other dolls were never produced.
Gay Bob dolls were sold via mail-order advertisements in gay magazines and a few boutique shops in New York City and San Francisco. 
"Does God Ever Speak through Cats?" is a book about Christian spirituality and cats. When David Evans moved into a new house in Los Angeles, he unwittingly embarked on two strange new journeys. One involved a totally new relationship with God. The other was focused on a stray cat that was living in the backyard. To David's great surprise, he discovered that these two very different journeys were related to each other and had a lot in common. This is the book he wrote to tell that story.
https://nhm.org/stories/what-about-gay-bob

Girls would come from as far as Tokyo to audition for the chance to be a Weeki Wachee mermaid in the 1960s. They performed to sold-out crowds; half a million people a year came to watch their dazzling underwater shows, including the King himself, Elvis Presley. They took etiquette and ballet lessons and they were treated like royalty wherever they went in Florida. Impossibly glamorous, even when squeezed into a sequin fish tail or eating a banana underwater, for today’s vintage muse, I’m turning our attention to the legendary mermaids of Weeki Wachee…
The underwater mermaid “stage” was (and still is) a natural ancient spring, discovered by the Seminole Indians who named it Weeki Wachee, meaning “little spring” or winding “river”. A theatre was built into the limestone around the basin in 1947, submerged six feet below the water’s surface. The spring itself however, is so deep that the bottom has never been found, and the surge of currents from the subterranean caverns are so strong they can easily knock a diver’s mask off.
https://www.messynessychic.com/2017/03/24/forgotten-glamour-at-mermaid-city/

In 1855, Allan Pinkerton founded the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in Chicago and devised the first Rogues’ Gallery—a compilation of descriptions, methods of operation, hiding places, and names of criminals and their associates. The San Francisco Police Department may have started the practice about the same time. By 1858, New York City had a collection of some 450 ambrotypes (images on glass plates). From these early instances, the practice of collecting criminal mug shots spread across the nation and around the world.
The use of photographs for this a purpose in Philadelphia first occurred in 1860 when the Police Department officially established its own Rogues’ Gallery. By then, camera exposure time had been cut from minutes to seconds, thus making mug shot portraiture practical. Note also that the use of photography in crime fighting was new technology before the Civil War, and Philadelphia was the nation’s leading city for photography in that era.
Punks, sneaks, mooks and miscreants. Hookers, stooges, grifters and goons. Men and women, elderly and adolescent, rich and poor, but mostly poor. These portraits make up a small part of Mark Michaelson’s collection of over 10,000 American mugshots from the 1870s to the 1960s.
​https://www.vintag.es/2018/10/vintage-philadelphia-mugshots.html?m=1

Harvey Milk stands outside his Castro Camera store in San Francisco. There's a smile on his face. The wind flutters his striped tie, which is swept to the side over his herringbone jacket.
This now-famous image of the late gay politician — whose LGBT activism and assassination were captured in the award-winning film Milk starring Sean Penn and James Franco — was almost lost to history. Photographer Daniel Nicoletta, Milk's friend and mentee, shot the image as part of Milk's 1977 campaign for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Milk had scrapped the photo because of the wind-bent tie, opting for a more traditional shot, in which it was straight, as his official campaign portrait.
Milk won the election. But in 1978, he was infamously killed alongside S.F. Mayor Moscone by Dan White, a former city supervisor. After his assassination, Nicoletta, sorting through Milk's possessions with Milk's partner Scott Smith, found the negative of the photograph sitting on top of a box filled with thousands of loose slides. It was like it had been waiting for them. Nicoletta examined the negative, and was immediately drawn in by the big smile of his late friend — and the tie.
"Something about the wind lifting the tie in the air evoked a sense of the passing of time," Nicoletta said. "And that's why that photo became the one that was meant to go out into the world."
Today, the public can see a version of this portrait on a stamp; Milk posthumously made history by becoming the first out politician to be honored with one by the U.S. Postal Service in 2014. It's also featured in its full glory in Nicoletta's book, LGBT San Francisco. The sweeping tome chronicles over 40 years of the LGBT rights movement — largely in one of its epicenters.
In the book's forward, Milk director Gus Van Sant called Nicoletta's photography "a vital resource to the formation of Milk" - he used it as a visual reference in crafting the award-winning film's story and set. Van Sant defined it as a "treasured artistic record of the people who initiated a movement from within their own neighborhood, and the work links that exuberant time to the larger history of LGBT people. This book is a very welcome addition to our enduring collective memory."
And what a memory. In LGBT San Francisco, Nicoletta captures the historic events that swirled around Milk's election, activism, and assassination, including the White Night riots, a violent LGBT uprising that occurred after Milk's killer received a lenient sentence. Afterward, LGBT history unfolds in this book like a glorious Pride march through time. There are activists like Cleve Jones, icons like Lily Tomlin and Divine, drag queens, hustlers, gay bars, club kids, the leather lovers of the Folsom Street Fair, radical fairies, and portraits of hundreds of queer individuals who embodied the spirit of a burgeoning movement.
https://i-d.vice.com/en/article/mbvgav/these-striking-photos-of-70s-queer-life-inspired-the-film-milk

1979’s The Warriors became a cult classic by creating a fantastically dystopian world of lawlessness roamed by stylized gangs of the Romantic variety, but the reality of 1970’s NYC gangs was… well, actually… not that much different from their epic, fictionalized versions onscreen. In fact, the fear of gang violence at the time was so fevered, the film was actually blamed for crimes committed against people who were coincidentally coming from or going to the movie. This map from The New York Times is dated August 1, 1974, and the names of the gangs are so dramatic, it’s easy to see how fact and fiction could blur in the eyes of a terrified populace. 
The folks over at The Bowery Boys blog even dug up a few details on the “activities” of some of the gangs listed, including The Young Barons (an altercation that ended in one death and the slicing off of someone’s nose, 1972), a battle between the Devils Rebels and the Screaming Phantoms (two rebels were killed, 1973), and the 1974 extortion dealings of the Outlaws, the Tomahawks, the Jolly Stompers and B’Nai Zaken. If that last one threw you for a loop, B’Nai Zaken is a phrase largely associated with Ethiopian Jews, and not (as I had hoped), a bunch of Hassidim with nunchucks.
There was a even a 1973 report that a few local gangs had been cast in an autobiographical gang film,The Education of Sonny Carson, perhaps paving the way for Walter Hill to later do the same thing with The Warriors
://dangerousminds.net/comments/the_screaming_phantoms_the_dirty_ones_the_satan_souls_check_out_this_1974_m

By Alex Arbuckle  on May 18, 2016
Jamel Shabazz's New York
One man's vivid record of a city's culture
Born and raised in Brooklyn, Jamel Shabazz first took up photography at the age of 15, and went on to create a peerlessly vibrant record of the city in the 1980s.Drawing inspiration from the works of socially concerned photographers such as Gordon Parks and Leonard Freed, Shabazz roamed the streets and subways of New York, making both candid and effortlessly posed images of the city’s diverse denizens, especially black and Hispanic communities.He shot his photos with one eye on the future, hoping to contribute to the recording of history and culture. While his images brim with a timeless sense of humanity, they are also full of highly specific signifiers of New York in the 1980s, from hulking boomboxes to flashy fashion and jewelry to graffiti-covered subways.In addition to a successful photographic career with dozens of international solo exhibitions, Shabazz has maintained close ties to his community, volunteering and mentoring children and advocating for youth art education.
​https://mashable.com/archive/jamel-shabazz-new-york#c.SMzUsQukqD

The Miss American Vampire competition was conducted in 1970 as a promotional tool for House of Dark Shadows. Regional contests were held around the country, but New York City and Los Angeles generated the most interest from competitors. Almost all of the documentary evidence circulating the Internet these days comes from the New York regional contest, which took place at Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey in September, 1970. Jonathan Frid was on hand to crown the winner.
Girls 18-25 were invited to produce the most imaginative "Vampire look" with originality, charm, poise, stage presence and videogenic qualities being highly important. The last two parts being essential since the winner was to have a week-long role on the television show.
The final competition winner was actress and activist Sacheen Littlefeather, who gained greater fame a few years later when she represented Marlon Brando at the 1973 Academy Awards to decline his Oscar for The Godfather in an act of protest over the treatment and portrayal of Native Americans. Similarly, Littlefeather did not reap the benefits of her award. It’s unclear whether she declined the trip to New York to appear on the show, or whether the producers decided not to hold up their end of the deal. Either way, Littlefeather remained in Los Angeles. The prize passed to Christine Domaniecki, the winner of the New Jersey regional, where she had been crowned by none other than
https://www.vintag.es/2018/01/amazing-photographs-from-miss-american.html?m=1

Don Hudson's photographs of American's celebrating their freedom on Sunday, July 4, 1976
Don Hudson is an “experienced amateur photographer trying to understand what I photograph”. In 1976, Don was in Philadelphia for the Bicentennial. Seemingly undiluted by Vietnam, Watergate and the energy crisis, Americans went nuts for the Bicentennial. Everything from sugar packets to license plates commemorated the event, and every classroom was bedecked in red, white & blue.
“I was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1950 and have lived in the area my entire life. In 1972 I decided to act on my love of photography and enrolled in art school. During my two years there I studied the language, both the history and the history-in-making, honed my technical skills, and most importantly, began an association with like-minded souls playing the game of photography. For 40 years, through peaks and valleys of activity, my playing of the game has been about my personal relationship with how the camera describes the appearance of truth in a photograph. You will have to look at the photographs for further explanation. I consider myself a thoughtful, and proudly amateur photographer.”- Don Hudson
https://flashbak.com/on-the-street-of-philadelphias-bicentennial-party-420535/

“I witnessed it all, and through photography I perpetuated their rebellion.” Paz Errázuriz tells Irina Baconsky about defying the Pinochet regime to capture her country’s marginalised communities
With bracing candour, vulnerability and authority, Paz Errázuriz’s imagery illuminates humanity in all its poetic, unruly beauty – yet, despite a career spanning nearly four decades, the Chile-born photographer has only recently begun to accept the label of artist. “When I started taking pictures in Chile in the 70s, photography didn’t have the status it has now,” she tells us at the opening of the Barbican Art Gallery’s Another Kind of Life: Photography on the Margins. “It wasn’t really a part of the art world, and I never used the word ‘artist’ to describe myself.”
As such, rather than being interested in the strictly aesthetic value of photography, the self-taught image-maker was drawn to the political, transgressive, documentary potential of her medium, which she continuously used as a portal to the obscure corners of society’s underbelly. Born into a conservative, catholic Santiago family, Errázuriz nurtured a profound desire for escapism and a fascination for the lifestyles and communities of people whose mere existence was a radical act of disobedience to the status quo.
“I was always interested in exploring identity, especially in the context of a homogenised society,” she explains. “Through looking at the identities of others, I began to discover my own.” Following the 1973 Chilean coup d’état which established the repressive military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, photography became more than a personal interest for Errázuriz, resolutely morphing into an unapologetic means of political resistance. “I started working in the street as a photojournalist, and that’s how I first got a glimpse into the underworld of alternative and marginalised communities,” she reminisces. “I did a lot of work on female prostitution, which I knew nothing about – it was an incredibly taboo area, sex was a forbidden word.”
It was the hidden realm of prostitution that led to Errázuriz’s encounter with the dangerous, intrepid and intoxicatingly genuine world of the people both closest to her heart and most influential in her work: the transgender and transvestite communities. Documenting one of the most obscure and difficult times in Chile’s recent political and sexual history under the brutal authoritarianism of the Pinochet regime, Errázuriz’s powerful series La Manzana de Adán (Adam’s Apple) is among her most memorable works to date. Shot in the 1980s over the course of four years, it centres on the lives of Pilar, Evelyn and Mercedes, members of a community of transvestite sex workers in the Santiago brothels of La Jaula and La Palmera. “Living with them for so many years was the best education I could have asked for,” asserts the photographer. “I learned so much about love, community, and I found a family that I wish had always been my own.”
https://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/10759/the-photographer-who-documented-the-underbelly-of-chilean-society

Nostalgia for the 80’s has never begun to fade given that it was one of the most visually striking eras of music and subculture. So, once again we at Post-Punk.com present to you another gallery of Old-Goth of pictures culled from all  over the world, representing attendees of The Batcave in London, Deathrockers in the states, and Sisters of Mercy fans in Leeds, and more.
Whether you are a fan of the music in Europe or the US. Young or old, nothing else quite compares to the DIY fashion of leather jackets, handmade buttons, bones, crosses, and skulls, eyeliner, and enough hairspray to destroy the ozone layer several times over.
Below is our fourth gallery of vintage photos curated to honor those who built an international Goth scene from the their confines of their bedrooms laden with vinyl, posters, and cassette tapes, to dancefloors drowned in a haze of clove cigarettes and fog machines.
If you are reading this article on December 15th, 2017, and are in the Philadelphia area, please consider going to Goth 101: A History of the Postpunk and Goth Subculture, 1978 – 1987, An Illustrated Lecture with Andi Harriman.
https://post-punk.com/old-school-goth-and-deathrock-gallery-four/amp/

Barbette — born Vander Clyde Broadway in 1898 — was a drag pioneer, circus acrobat, toast of Paris, friend of Josephine Baker, muse (and lover, briefly) of Jean Cocteau, and frequent subject of Man Ray’s lens.
It’s been nearly a century since the Texas native first stunned audiences by performing trapeze and high-wire stunts in full drag, yanking off his wig at the end and striking a masculine pose. The guise began when he replaced a female performer who had died suddenly; it went so well that he made a career out of the illusion.
Barbette started a solo act at the Harlem Opera House in 1919, soon taking the act on the road to England and France. During an engagement at the London Palladium, scandal broke out when he was caught having sex with a man, thus barred from further working in England.
In France, however, he was hailed by Jean Cocteau, who wrote Le Numéro Barbette in 1926, an influential essay on the nature of art. During a brief dalliance between the two, Cocteau gave Barbette a cameo in his film Le Sang d’un Poète (1930). Further, the trapeze-artist murderer in Alfred Hitchcock’s Murder (1930) is inspired by Barbette, a role not to be found in the source novel.
Barbette continued to tour Europe and North America throughout the 1920s and 30s until a high-wire accident put him into the hospital for a year. He later found work as an aerial choreographer and consultant on films, most notably Some Like It Hot (1959), for which he coached Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis on gender illusion — although a resemblance to a frothy, effervescent Marilyn Monroe is uncanny. After years of chronic pain, Barbette committed suicide at the age of 74.
https://hintmag.com/2017/06/20/barbette-van-der-clyde-broodway-june-20-2017-1019-fashion/?amp

Tough wrestler guys from Memphis posing for pictures and looking cutesy, corny and super coy.
The fashion faux pas range from preposterous poses, too-fabulous fringe and heartbreaking headbands. Lots of spandex, disco clothes, blow-dried hair, and a very strange vibe indeed!
Teams like the Fabulous Ones, Rock & Roll Express and the legendary Handsome Jimmy Valiant are pictured in the collection, hearkening back to a time when wrestling was just beginning.
https://www.vintag.es/2012/07/fancy-1980s-wrestlers.html?m=1

These LPs are all from people who are handicapped, in one way or another. All are from between the 1960s and ’70s, and all are on private labels.
The prevailing maladies seem to be either blindness, dwarfism or lack of limbs. And almost all are about their relationship with Jesus. Most appear relatively happy and excited to be singing for the lord. This isn’t meant to make fun of the handicapped but to show how amazing it was a few years back when anyone could make their own album, individuals, churches, etc.
https://www.vintag.es/2020/02/real-people-with-real-problems.html?m=1

Growing up in New York, photographer Joseph Rodriguez would take the subway from Brooklyn to east Harlem, where his uncle had a sweet shop, to spend time with the local Latino community (Rodriguez is of Puerto Rican and Venezuelan descent). He spent five years “sitting down at kitchen tables and listening to people’s stories”; the photographs he took are collected in Spanish Harlem: El Barrio in the 80s, published on 21 November by PowerHouse Books. “The only time local newspapers mentioned El Barrio was when crimes were committed,” says Rodriguez. “I knew I had to spend time to try and break these stereotypes. It’s important to show how that era was for people, to show their grit and resilience against social injustice.”
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2017/sep/09/spanish-harlem-in-the-1980s-in-pictures