Wow - great posts guys.
It was a different atmosphere - a different world in all sorts of ways - between then and now.
The sense of the Church Street village as being a safe zone has become normalized and diffused. The sense of the bars being the safehouses has changed, along with the feeling of the weekends being uncommonly sacred, because that's when you could leave the 'straight' world. In an era where hockey mobs still walked up Church Street, ducking into the door of a bar was like entering another world. The weekends had marked stages to them, since every moment counted, and all the action would be happening at the bars - which were a bit like defacto community centres, and circus all at once. The drag queens would preside as paradoxical public community leaders - an important function that's been watered way down since legal equality and the internet began spreading things out and away from the village.
Phone trees - I dimly remember them. My friend used them a lot.
I remember house parties were a much bigger deal at the time. It was a way of finding your way (or being taken into) a group of friends. It was also a way of sizing people up, and meeting up in a fun, personable way outside of the din of the bars. The bars and scene had a different emphasis on being social then. Going home with someone might lead to a house party or tea dance (after brunch, gossip and looking around to see who's with who) the next day at where you could meet their friends.
You had to go meet and talk to people to hook up with them, by and large. That took time, and had a different pace to it - unless you just wanted to hang out in the shrubs somewhere! People noticed each other. The word got around the bars pretty quickly, too, if someone was a bad apple.
I was glad to see Voula from Brother's mentioned in a different post. Brother's was one of those bruch places where everyone went for a hangover breakfast and to see who was with who, and nod and say hi. I don't think the interior had ever been renovated since it opened.
I can't speak for the kids now, but I think the intensity was different. A lot of fear, from HIV, inequality and prejudice - and bonding together. A lot of pride, fury, and hard-won happiness. The intense pleasures of a participating in a real 'secret world' - though that had a lot of pitfalls, too. There was a better connection between the lesbians and the gay folk. Rough Trade on the radio, and Divine in the bars. It was pretty wild.
