Jim Stewart

Jim Stewart, with both camera and pen, has recorded gay culture forged in San Francisco's South of Market district. "Folsom Street Blues: A Memoir of 1970s SoMa and Leatherfolk in Gay San Francisco" lets the reader experience gay life as Stewart experienced it.

Stewart grew up a farm boy. His 21st summer he hitch-hiked throughout Europe. Despite experiences with a Spanish man named Angel and a Frenchman named Michel, he was 26 and a grad student before he came out in 1969, the Summer of Stonewall.

After a nomadic life including a short teaching career, a stay in Europe, a failed marriage, jobs as dishwasher, waiter, landscaper, and carpenter, Stewart resigned as manager of a foreign and art-film theater and moved to San Francisco.

He roomed with Jack Fritscher, founding San Francisco editor of the legendary "Drummer" magazine. Stewart moved to a rundown flat off Folsom Street, set up his playroom, his darkroom, and started living and recording the San Francisco homomasculine lifestyle.

Stewart founded Keyhole Studios, specializing in mail-order homoerotic photos. He joined the South of Market Artists Association and participated in their Open Studio shows. His work hung in one-man shows at the Ambush Bar on Harrison Street. Fey Way Studios on Howard Street, established by Academy Awards streaker Robert Opel, included Jim Stewart's work in many of its shows.

His photography was recently represented at SF Camerawork in "An Autobiography of San Francisco Bay Area Part 2: The Future Lasts Forever," in 2010. His prose and poetry were included in "A Gay and Gray Anthology" published by NewTown Writers, Chicago, in 2011.

He lives in a restored 19th Century farmhouse near Lake Michigan and writes.