More than a decade before Bears and grizzlies and cubs were even a twinkle in some gay men's eyes, there was Girth & Mirth, the now-international organization for big men and their admirers. Yet even before that, one such big man, Reed Wilgoren, came out into gay life the year after he graduated high school in Boston, 1969: the same year as the Stonewall Revolution. Reed quickly became involved with the informal network of Chubbies and chasers on the East Coast. When he moved to the San Francisco Bay area in the mid-'70s, he was at the forefront of the network that was to become the first Girth & Mirth group there. When Reed later returned to Boston, he also founded Girth & Mirth of New England.
Photo: Ron Suresha

Jack Fritscher has stood at the forefront of gay men's culture and erotica for more than twenty years. Twenty of his 400 published stories, and 40 of the 125 videos he's written, directed, and/or photographed, are Bear-themed. Jack received his Ph.D. in American Literature from Loyola University of Chicago and taught journalism and creative writing at several Midwestern universities. He served as founding San Francisco editor-in-chief of Drummer. In 1979, after writing his groundbreaking book, Leather Blues, he founded the quarterly MAN2MAN, the first 'zine of the 1980s. In 1981, he established the Bay Area tabloid California Action Guide. His nonfiction, literary fiction, and comic-erotic fiction have received both critical acclaim and an international cult following. His epic novel, Some Dance to Remember, has been called "the gay Gone with the Wind," and is the fiction counterpart of Mapplethorpe: Assault with a Deadly Camera. Five anthologies also collect his writing and photography, as well as The Journal of Popular Culture, In Touch, Honcho, Uncut, International Leatherman, and Hombres Latinos, to name just a few periodicals. He brings a loving ear, erotic eye, and lyric voice to American Gay Popular Culture and is an archivist active in researching, recording, and preserving the heritage of gay history. He and his partner of more than twenty years, Palm Drive publisher Mark Hemry, were married in a civil union in Vermont. Discover much more at www.JackFritscher.com.
Photo: © Mark Hemry <www.PalmDriveVideo.com>

"Bonsai Pete" Vafiades was born in the Bangor, Maine area. He left Maine at age twenty to seek a place where he could be more at peace with himself and to pursue his quest: "Homos and Hort" (horticulture). Friends gave him the nickname "Bonsai Pete" because of his love of the art of bonsai - the miniaturization of trees. At UCLA, he earned a degree in landscape architecture. While visiting the San Francisco Bay area, its magic cast a spell on him. In just a few short weeks after returning from vacation, he landed his first job over the phone working for a plant rental company, and moved to SF in 1979. Pete is now the manager of the Hole in the Wall Saloon in the South of Market (SOMA) area of San Francisco.
Photo: courtesy of P. Vafiades

Les Wright was the first-born of a family of day laborers and railroad workers in Syracuse, NY, in 1953. First a student at SUNY Albany, he spent the 1970s as an expatriate studying at German universities (origins of his gay left activism), then spent fourteen years in "gay finishing school," residing in San Francisco's Castro district while completing his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley. He has trained formally as a German, Russian, and American Studies scholar, and as a community-based gay cultural historian. As a long-term survivor of multiple trauma and various forms of "social death" (incest, addiction, homelessness, HIV/AIDS), Les has also trained to become a certified thanatologist, examining the traumatizing effects of being queer in heteronormative societies. He is the founder/curator of the Bear History Project, editor of the groundbreaking The Bear Book, vols. I & II, lead curator of Bear Icons Exhibitions I & II, author of numerous articles, and currently a teacher of Cultural Studies at Mount Ida College in the Boston area.
Photo: from the BHP Archive Collection