.jpg)
​The Fairoaks Hotel
The late 1970's was a dynamic era for the gay community in San Francisco. California had repealed its Sodomy laws in 1976. Anita Bryant's crusade (Save Our Children) found an expression in California in the Briggs' Initiative (Prop 6) in 1978, which would have disallowed homosexuals to teach in schools. It failed to pass. Harvey Milk, the first openly gay politician in modern history, was elected to the Board of Supervisors in 1977 and assassinated in 1978. Large Gay Day Parades were being celebrated annually and the gay community in San Francisco was thriving. The increased awareness brought significant migration, vibrant and sensual.
During this era there were numerous venues for gay men to congregate - bars, social clubs, political action groups and perhaps a half dozen bathhouses. Unique amongst these bathhouses was the Fairoaks Hotel. It was located at the corner of Oak and Steiner in the Hayes Valley district. The hotel was a converted apartment building owned and operated from 1977 to 1979 by a group of men who had formerly lived together in a commune. These men infused the Fairoaks with a different atmosphere than was evident at other bathhouses at the time. For example, all the rooms were normal scale (no cubicles), there were non-institutional furnishings, artists had been commissioned or allowed to decorate and paint the rooms, and it was generally lighter than a normal bathhouse. Most significantly, the Fairoaks was racially inclusive. The Hotel was promoted as a party location, and this party atmosphere fostered the lenient climate for informal photography.
A Photographic Record
The historically significant images that make up The Fairoaks Project, over 300 total, are the personal collection of Frank Melleno. Frank was partial owner of The Fairoaks and night manager. Taken in the Spring and Summer 1978, he set out to photograph the celebratory life that defined the Hotel. Most often these pictures were with the subject's permission and displayed in the lobby on a bulletin board. They were casual snapshots of the men at the bathhouse engaged in typical activities. The subject matter includes parties, some of them in costume. These photographs capture an aspect of the gay community rarely seen in snapshot photography: a sexually playful, spontaneous, and often-affectionate gathering that was partially a product of the sexual and gay liberation movement in full swing at the time. The storm clouds of drug abuse and disease that will soon overtake the community are not at all evident in these images.
Frank’s collection was assumed by fellow Fairoaks patron Gary Freeman in 2008. Gary immediately set out to digitize and preserve the collection, and they were first shown in 2010, the same year Frank died. Thus began the Project
Purpose of the Fairoaks Project
Fairoaks Project has two purposes.
-
It offers a unique opportunity to share these rare images with the wider public and place them in the historical context of the gay community and the era itself.
-
Many of these Polaroids have suffered the ravages of time and contain dust, scratches, cracks and other defects. Efforts are ongoing to reconstruct these photographs to the greatest extent possible.
Our continued Project is a preserved and complete archive of this era, this hotel, this story in it, and the people who made up that community.