Remember when the Spartacus guide was in every magazine rack at every gay bookstore? And you could even get it at major newsstands in big cities?

That’s how we found gay venues back then before the internet existed!

I know it wasn’t quite as universal in the United States as in Europe, because we had some of our own US-specific guides, but it was still everywhere.

It’s funny that Spartacus has gone the way of the dinosaurs, but then gay bars and clubs aren’t the universal force that they used to be either. That little gay bar that I went to that night in Berlin was kind of a neighborhood place, one of dozens of gay bars around the city that catered to locals.

You just don’t see that anymore, not even in Berlin.