Anti-Aging Queens

"We've actually talked to younger gay men who say, 'So I get infected at age 25, develop AIDS by age 35, take drugs for another five years, so I'm dead at 40 or 45, so what? Who wants to be an old man in San Francisco?'"

-- San Francisco AIDS Foundation's Derek Gordon, SF Examiner, December 15, 1997

Venus Envy

"It's true that the aura of purity that once surrounded Miss Americas has been fading of late. But your crusade to distribute condoms to students has knocked Miss America off her pedestal for good. Maybe I'm being too hard on you. But I think the honor of all Miss Americas is at stake. Of course, I come from an era when condoms were rubbers, marijuana smokes were reefers, no one had AIDS, and those things were not discussed, especially by a Miss America. I also come from an era when we had a name for girls who hand out condoms, and it wasn't Miss America."

-- Letter to Miss America 1998 Kate Shindle from Miss America 1944 Venus Ramey, New York Post, December 21, 1997

... But Then Again

"Miss America Takes on Barebacking"

-- Cover of The Advocate, February 3, 1998

Keep 'Em Rolling

"We're staying open till the tanks come rolling in. It's going to be our Tiananmen Square."

-- San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club's Dennis Peron, Bay Area Reporter, January 8, 1998

Trick or Treat?

"I was in San Francisco this past Halloween. I was curious to see how it felt to be there now that the epidemic hangs in animated suspension above us."

-- "End of AIDS" prophet Andrew Sullivan, The Advocate, January 20, 1998