BijouBlog

posted by guest blogger Miriam Webster Image Credit: Tom DeSimone This is the follow up to our previous blog about Tom DeSimone, a major figure in the formation of the adult industry in the 1970s and one of the earliest directors of gay hardcore films during the establishment of the genre. He directed many well-produced and influential gay porn cl

posted by Madame Bubby By the 1970s, the golden age of gay porn in the heady days in the aftermath of Stonewall, already Joe Tiffenbach was achieving a type of iconic status as “grandaddy of gay porn.” Who was this person who encompassed in his life many different roles in the LGBTQ community? In many ways, his life and work is a microcosm of the

posted by Madame Bubby When I was in sixth grade (I didn’t go to a middle school or a junior high), the tougher boys were joking about rubbers. I did not make the connection to condoms until high school, climaxing in the time when, believe it or not, my dad gave me one to put in my wallet. He thought I needed one because I was hanging out with som

posted by Madame Bubby I've written about “this day” in a couple of past blogs, including this one on our website. Sigh. I even posted a tweet on my personal account that I “had no plans,” passive-aggressively playing for sympathy (or maybe a date?). An article I came across in a student publication called the Miami Hurricane makes a strong point,

posted by Madame Bubby “There's one lady barber that made good,” croons Mae West, singing Delilah in the opera Samson et Dalila by Saint-Saens in an attempt to be a high-class dame.   Since my regular haircut lady retired and moved to Florida, I've been searching for a haircut place. After a few unsatisfactory visits to a salonesque male hair

posted by Madame Bubby I was going through the files at the Bijouworld office, and I happened across a packed file for one porn star who does not appear in any of our titles. But the contents of the folder were certainly both enticing (lots of pics from the gay magazines he appeared in) and disturbing. Tim Lowe, a prolific porn star from the 1980s

posted by Madame Bubby Source: Playguy, December, 1986 This prolific “blond jock American bottom” appeared in more than 100 moves from about 1982-2001, also performing as Sandy Shaw, Rob Monroe, and Kurt Reikert. According to Gay Hot Movies, “Cory is part of that pre-condom vintage era of porn that churned out countless stars and even more hot vid

posted by guest blogger Miriam Webster   Bijou Theater exterior and upstairs map I first went to the Bijou Theater in 2008. It was a snowy day that March. I was in my last month of being 21 – quite an eventful year. It was weeks after I met my first real girlfriend, who I would wind up being with five and a half years. At the beginning of my

Posted by Madam Bubby   I just consulted the office's copy of the 1960s chapbook, The Guild Dictionary of Homosexual Terms. These are a few of euphemisms for something you can always do if you are in self-isolation; as Helen Reddy sang, "My best friend is myself," and adding to that, your right or left hand or whatever you use for maximum ple

Posted by Madam Bubby   We’ve been seeing the word pandemic as we encounter at varying levels one throughout the world. A Greek root in the word, “pan,” means all. It’s interesting how we have created many words with this root. The most famous example is pandemonium, a word the poet John Milton created in his epic Paradise Lost

Posted by guest blogger Miriam Webster   This is a follow up on last Sunday’s blog on some of the simpler remastering processes we go through when preparing classic gay porn films for DVD and streaming release. Many of the movies that wind up more straight-forward to work on turn out beautifully (best illustrated in last week’s example, Hot T

  Greetings P(r)icksters! Hopefully this finds you hunkered down until this Covid-19 virus crisis is over. The state shut down the bars in Illinois on March 16th and just today extended the closure order thru April 30th. So much for the Bloody Mary and Rusty Nail drink specials for Easter weekend. It’s kind of hard to talk about what’s going

Posted by Madam Bubby   I was born into a world where baby boys were routinely circumcised, whether they were Jewish or not. Hygienic purposes. (These were also the days when nurses wore caps, which were later deemed to be unhygienic. Go figure.) These were also the days when women at least in middle class white America were knocked out in or

Posted by Madam Bubby   According to the holy haters, the coronavirus lockdown is turning an already sinful nation (its sins are reproductive rights and the fact that LGBTQ persons are allowed to exist, not robbing and cheating the widow and the orphan) in Masturbation Nation (and in their “minds,” that means Pornography Nation). According to

    Greetings P(r)icksters, You’d think since Touché is closed due to the Covid-19 virus, I would have lots of free time and be on top of things. But it’s just the opposite. I have no set schedule – don’t have to be at work at any set time, don’t have to work so many hours. Just meandering through my days here. Oh, I have been busy. Take

Posted by Madam Bubby   The word posing can evoke images of runway models and persons on instagram (including celebrities famous for simply being famous). But there's more to posing than duck lips and giving the finger. Posing has been an integral part of the bodybuilding world, a specific part of contests, and I might add, one can view many

Posted by David Boyer   We still relive the past. I read Time magazine. Last month they put out a special issue honoring 100 women of the past century to mark the anniversary of women's suffrage in the US. (I could go on about having to allow women, minorities the right to vote but I'll leave that for another time.) Sometimes, I get

Posted by Madam Bubby   When I journeyed to New York for the first time in 1994 for the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, I ended up the night before the parade at a wild sex/play party with a hot leather BDSM top I had just met at a dance in the Armory. The location of the party was in some area of the East Village, I think. When I sa

Posted by Madam Bubby   Usually a “mad scene” specifically refers to a particular scene from an opera written by bel canto composers of the early 19th century, such as Donizetti and Bellini. A soprano, usually suffering from a romantic love crisis, goes insane, and expresses her insanity, paradoxically, in difficult, complicated coloratura pa

  Greetings P(r)icksters! Really in a weird space this week. We should be gearing up for 6 big crazy nights for the coming Memorial Day weekend. But we are still shuttered here in Chicago. For the past 40 years, the International Mr Leather Contest took over our Memorial Day weekend bringing 1,000s of visitors to town. Which made us very busy