A superb KCET video about the Green Book “for negro travelers” and the early Damron Address Books for gay folks. S2 E5: Coded Geographies
“Friends of Dorothy, and Sappho, turned to The Address Book, which debuted in 1965, to map their pursuits. The baedeker advertised via mail order, in-the-know bars sold it, and the initiated flung their bedraggled copies into the hands of the desperate. Butterflies must’ve fluttered in many a hopeful reader’s stomach as they skimmed the guidebook’s list of restaurants, bars, and nightclubs: these addresses offered potential antidotes to sadness.”