High praise for
DISASTERAMA!
by Alvin Orloff
NO ONE IS cooler than Alvin Orloff, and Disasterama! proves it. Orloff’s madeleine is Day-Glo, his Balbec the lost queer punk scene in San Francisco at the height of the AIDS crisis. This is memoir in the classic (or classic Hollywood) sense: a witty and glamorous raconteur who’s lived a wild life tells all.
ANDREA LAWLOR, author, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl
ALVIN ORLOFF’S MEMOIR of San Francisco queers facing the mounting AIDS crisis and freaking, caring, denying, performing, and carrying on is a witty remembrance that avoids cheap sentiment or easy responses. Tackling a mass of contradictions with unflinching realness, this book both entertains and inspires.
MICHAEL MUSTO, columnist, author, Fork on the Left, Knife in the Back
DISASTERAMA! TAKES US deep into the 80s and the daily creative resistance that saved the culture’s soul during the plague years. With wit and flair Alvin Orloff gives us a guided tour of the era’s vibrant subcultures; glittering, pointed reactions to a cold-hearted status quo. Heartbreaking and hilarious, sexed-up and political, Disasterama! is a deeply personal coming-of-age story.
MICHELLE TEA, author, Against Memoir and Modern Tarot
ALVIN ORLOFF’S DISASTERAMA! is a darkly funny memoir depicting SF’s Queer Underground during the height of the AIDS Crisis when we were young, angry and horny as hell! This is a remarkable evocation of a heroic time. Long live the queens!!!
JUSTIN VIVIAN BOND, author, Tango: My Childhood, Backwards and in High Heels
ALVIN ORLOFF’S WONDERFULLY detailed elegy to San Francisco’s streets and clubs of the 1980s is not your typical AIDS memoir. Orloff and his friends dance, get high, create outrageous art and hustle while their world hovers briefly at the precipice, and then is gone. It is a beautiful remembrance.
CLEVE JONES, LGBTQ and Labor Activist; author, When We Rise: My Life in the Movement
A BOOK THAT all at once reads as a memoir, a eulogy and a love letter to San Francisco—set in those critical years between the death of disco and the first tech boom—Disasterama! offers up a chronicle of fags, dykes, punks, freaks, and club kids partying on the Best Coast and the impact of AIDS, art, and activism on the post Baby Boomer/pre-Millennial van garde. SPOILER ALERT: the last three chapters will completely rip yr heart out.
BRONTEZ PURNELL, author, The Cruising Diaries
AN IRRESISTIBLE AND seminal work that gives us a glimpse into an explosive era of outspoken and unprecedented art, breathless interpersonal discourse and dysfunction, dug-in protest culture, and mind-bending fashion that put the word “flamboyant” to shame.
RICHARD LORANGER, author, Sudden Windows
I’VE NEVER READ a better story of the true love of friendship. Alvin tells the story of the San Francisco I lived in when I first arrived, when all kinds of social misfits and cultural weirdos could call it home. No matter who you were, you could come here and find a place to not only fit in, but to shine.
BUCKY SINISTER, author, Black Hole
FILLED WITH SUCH poignant and vivid detail you felt like you lived through it . . . oh wait, I did!
LEIGH CROW, aka Elvis Herselvis
WOW, JUST WOW. Disasterama! is the first book and situation that gently explains the life and sociology of a boy and his debating partner, in the grand form of Diet Popstitute, living before the woefully unexplored and common experience of friends, lovers, former lovers, and frenemies dying frequently and fast from the Virus, which took up roughly a decade. I think it was just too hard, fast, and inconceivable, plus a lot of the social talkers were the first to disappear. Do nightclubs change culture? is high culture elitism? glum vs chipper? and how do we talk to the bedridden?—all in this witty saucepan boiler of a book. Stay smart, read Disasterama!
—JENNIFER BLOWDRYER, author, Good Advice for Young Trendy People of All Ages
Disasterama! Adventures in the Queer Underground 1977–1997 BY Alvin Orloff
© 2019 by Alvin Orloff
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
Chapters from Disasterama! have been previously published in slightly different form, as follows: “The Doomed Glamor of Polk Street” appeared in Instant City #6, Fall 2008; “Nightmare in Hell House” appeared in Chills, Pills, Thrills, and Heartache edited by Clint Catalyst and Michelle Tea (Alyson 2004); “Toaster” appeared in 10th & Mission, Vol. 5; “Anarchy for the USA” appeared in Specious Species, Issue # 7; “The Daily Bump ’n’ Grind” appeared in Hos, Hookers, Call Girls and Rent Boys, Professionals writing on Life, Love, Money, and Sex edited by David Henry Sterry and R. J. Martin Jr. (Soft Skull 2009); “Last Dance” appeared in Johns, Marks, Tricks and Chickenhawks: Professionals & their Clients Writing about Each Other, edited by David Henry Sterry and R. J. Martin Jr. (Soft Skull 2013); “Porn Moguls” appeared in Tricks and Treats: Sex Workers Write About Their Clients, edited by Matt Bernstein Sycamore (Haworth 2000).
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. For permissions, please write to address below or email [email protected]. Any members of education institutions wishing to photocopy or electronically reproduce part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Three Rooms Press, 561 Hudson Street, #33, New York, NY 10014.
This is a work of creative nonfiction. The events are portrayed to the best of author Alvin Orloff’s memory. Some parts of this book, including dialog, characters and their characteristics, locations and time, may not be entirely factual.
ISBN 978-1-941110-82-9 (trade paperback original)
ISBN 978-1-941110-83-6 (ebook)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019938298
TRP-078
Publication Date: October 8, 2019
BISAC category code
BIO031000 Biography & Autobiography / LGBT
BIO005000 Biography & Autobiography / Entertainment & Performing Arts
BIO026000 Biography & Autobiography / Personal Memoirs
BIO024000 Biography & Autobiography / Criminals & Outlaws
FRONT COVER:
Photo of Alvin Orloff © Daniel Nicoletta: www.dannynicoletta.com
COVER AND BOOK DESIGN:
KG Design International: www.katgeorges.com
DISTRIBUTED BY:
PGW/Ingram: www.pgw.com
Three Rooms Press
New York, NY
www.threeroomspress.com [email protected]
Dedicated to my wonderful siblings, Bo and Ann,who could save me a lot of embarrassmentif they were to forgo reading thisscandalous memoir of my lunatic youth.