The next chapter in my series "Days of Hope" are paintings based on Polaroid images taken by Frank Melleno at the Fair Oaks Hotel in 1978. I am doing this series of paintings in collaboration with The Fair Oaks Project who restored and exhibit the Polaroids.
The Fair Oaks Hotel was a collectively run Gay Bathhouse in the Hayes Valley nieghborhood of San Francisco, located at the corner of Oak and Steiner streets in a converted victorian apartment building.
The historical backstory of the Fair Oaks from the Fair Oaks Project website:
During this late 1970's, there were numerous venues for gay men to congregate, such as bars, social clubs, political action groups and perhaps a half dozen bathhouses. Unique amongst these bathhouses was the Fairoaks Hotel which 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, and was promoted as a party location. This party atmosphere fostered a lenient climate for informal photography.
Fortunately, many of these photographs have survived through the years. These photographs were casual snapshots of the men at the bathhouse, engaged in typical activities. Most often these pictures were taken with subject's permission and displayed in the lobby on a bulletin board for the next week. 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.
Purpose of the Fairoaks Project
The Fairoaks Project is a remarkable collection of historically significant images made by Frank Melleno in the spring and summer of 1978. These photographs depict the celebratory life that defined the Fairoaks. This Project serves as a unique opportunity to share these rare images with wider public and place them in the historical context of the gay community and the era itself.
Why I am so inspired by the Fair Oaks and why I am making paintings based on the Polaroids:
I chanced upon an image of one of the polaroids scrolling through Instagram waiting at the airport to see my mom the day after my dad passed in November of 2023. It was a sad and stressful time for me, but I was so drawn in by the image that I wanted to find out more about it. I found the Fair Oaks Project website and contacted Gary, the curator, and asked if I could find out more about the Fair Oaks and Frank... and could I make paintings based on the images.
Gary agreed and he and his partner Nick have been wonderful, even coming up from Southern California and visiting my studio. The painting I made of Frank now resides in their collection... which words cannot express how big of an honor that is for me
The Fair Oaks has all of the special place magic for me and then some... Talking to Gary and Nick about Frank and the ethos of the seven person collective of whom Frank was a member (Gary had been a friend of Frank from before... he is also pictured in some of the Polaroids) has given me some perspective into the incredible optimism of that time... what a remarkable place the Fair Oaks was and what was possible to create.
I wanted to make paintings that told the story of that place and time, and how that story is part of the fabric of queer stories old and new.
This was a place were people could be themselves... figure out who they were and create community. In the paintings I sometimes add line drawings from cartoons about Molly Houses... The (extremely illegal) 18th and 19th century British places were homosexuals and non gender conforming people could congregate, because the Molly Houses and the Fair Oaks were really very much about the same thing... creating a place that was a total refuge from judgement, where you were free to explore your sexuality... and even more importantly express your queerness.
The element of playfulness really sets the Fair Oaks apart from just being a sex venue. It was a home... An actual home for the seven men in the collective, they lived in the basement... but they made it feel like home for the guests as well.
The members of the collective eventually decided to go their separate ways to persue their careers and live their lives, so the Fair Oaks was sold and converted back into Apartments... Fortunately Frank kept the Polaroids in a box and shortly before he passed in 2000 he left them with Gary and Nick who have been gracious stewards of the memory of this incredibly special place and time. Gary told me that what they wanted to do back then was to change the world... and they did. What I take away from meeting them is that optimism and creativity have done a lot to propel the LGBTQ+ community to make the world a more accepting and better place.
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