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Christa Hillhouse's avatar

I moved to San Francisco in 1981 when I was nineteen. I brought along my girlfriend (I say this because the whole thing was my idea, I wanted to move to the Bay Area to play music) and her young son. We were escaping Oklahoma in a dramatic fashion, because her psycho fundamentalist parents were looking into taking her son from her because of her sexuality, and in Oklahoma at that time, they would have succeeded. Anyway, I didn’t know jack shit about San Francisco, except for stories I’d read about Janis Joplin in “Going Down With Janis”, a few tidbits about the Summer of Love, and that all the coolest underground comics were made there, because I’d worked at a head shop when I was seventeen and read them all the way down to the fine print.

Anyway, I moved us smack dab into the Castro, having had no clue it was the gayest place on the planet. We moved into a third floor apartment right next to the Jaguar bookstore. When I’d checked the place out I hadn’t noticed all the men cruising out front. Within days my girlfriend and I were exploring Valencia Street and quickly discovered Old Wives Tales, where we walked around like starving kids in a pastry shop. On the way back to the Castro, we stumbled into the Artemis Cafe, where my singer songwriter girlfriend thought she might get a gig. The walls were adorned with huge landscapes, and, upon further inspection, I noticed the labia. As I scanned each image, the folds of female flesh exposed themselves to me. Whoa! My eyes almost popped out of my head. It was one of Tee Corinne’s images. Her art was part of my introduction to the city, images I’d not only never seen before but never imagined were possible. It was definitely a “Dorothy, we’re not in Kansas, anymore!” moment, one of many I had during those first few months.

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Neko Case's avatar

I love this so much. The wheelchair image especially. It seems so bananas that anyone could find that image offensive. I knew nothing of Tee's work. Thank you so much for sharing.

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