up citified suburbs close to work. There will
be the usual jokes about polyester and
breeders, but smart gay and lesbian business
persons will follow their clientele or make
their services available to them (newspaper
subscriptions, for example.)
Where we've
been, where we're
headed, what's
likely to happen
soon
Living quarters: small is
beautiful
N
o, we can’t predict the future — but we
can make some educated guesses about
what life in the 1990s will hold. Here are this
author’s best guesses and forecasts about your
daily life in the decade to come:
Architecture: retro/schmetro
I
n the 1970s, architects could design
anything they liked as long as it was
slablike, with floor-to-ceiling windows and
flat roofs. In the 1980s, they designed
anything but and strained to incorporate witty-
campy historical ornament in the name of
“post-modernism.” In the 1990s, every
American city with over 100,000 people will
have at least one pyramid-topped office
building and “postmodernism” as a design
phase will come to seem self-indulgent if not
downright decadent. Architects will start
inching back toward the form-follows-
function of the Bauhaus slab but will be
careful to avoid provoking the populace and
the critics by stressing “contextualism” — the
integration of the building’s ground level into
the overall life of the street Above the fifth
floor, though, efficiency will prevail.
Economic life: the vanishing
middle class
B
amount of advertising placed with gay papers
falls way off. Best positioned to withstand the
hard times will be those papers with strong
local advertising and broad-based circulation.
Subscriptions will become more common as
gay people move away from core “ghetto”
areas (see “Lifestyle,” following).
Gay literature will show a familiar boom-
and-bust pattern as the larger, mainstream
publishing houses shy away from publishing
gay- or lesbian-themed novels. However,
smaller presses and a few sympathetic
academic presses will make the new literature
of the 1990s available to gay and lesbian
readers. Eventually, by the mid-to-late 1990s,
gay- and lesbian-themed literature will start to
infiltrate the big publishers again.
acking for this one comes both from
economic forecasting and from the left.
Generations: the young and the
The World Future Society notes a “bimodal”
not-so-young
trend toward luxury and economy while the
middle gets squeezed out. Increasingly, it’s
he true “gay gray” revolution won’t
Hyatt or Red Roof, Bloomie’s or K-Mart,
come until after the turn of the century,
with the middle in decline. Barbara
when gay Baby Boomers retire in droves.
Ehrenreich’s provocative new book. Fear of
However, the strains of middle age will be
Falling (Pantheon, $18.95), offers a grim
much more apparent as the older Boomers
view of self-deluding “yuppies,” who fancy
reach
their 50s in the 1990s and the youngest
themselves an elite but who, in reality, have
turn 30. “Younger people” — who by 1995
more in common with the classes below them
will be anyone under 30 — will continue to
than the classes above. We note as well the
hold
themselves somewhat aloof from the
trend away from classic up-the-line middle
Boomer majority, in part due to differences in
management corporate jobs, as computeriza
style
(the “Boy” phenomenon observable in
tion renders obsolete the information
large cities), and of course health (pre-and
gathering functions of the dutiful white-collar
post-AIDS
gay men). What will happen to
yeomanry. Pessimists extrapolate a future
gay male role playing in an era of
social structure that resembles a lopsided
grandfatherly “daddies” and balding “sons”
figure-eight, with a few truly wealthy and
will be anyone’s guess. Intergenerational
powerful astride a huge nouvelle proletariat.
conflict among lesbians will not be quite so
pronounced, but still there will be a clash
Environment: permanent
between those who came out in the 1970s and
their younger, (perhaps) more career-oriented
pollution
counterparts.
n the 1990s, the EPA or local versions
Lifestyle: urban-suburban
thereof will be forced to intervene in our
daily lives to protect us from ourselves. In the
convergence
largest cities — particularly New York, Los
Angeles and Chicago — pollution monitoring
n the 1990s the cities will start to resemble
will become the norm, even of gasoline
suburbia a little more, as discos and revival
stations, dry cleaners and home furnaces. On
movie houses are tom down to be replaced
days when ozone and hydrocarbon levels are
with strip shopping centers and video stores.
way up, expect periodic bans on backyard
And suburbia — at least the older postwar
barbecuing and lawnmowing. Cleaning up
areas — will resemble cities more and more,
the environment will gradually cease to be the as
they add office complexes and day-long
goal; holding the line will be about all we can
traffic jams. Most important, this is where the
hope for.
—
new jobs will be.
like Chicago and San Francisco, it
Gay press/gay literature: best of will In be cities
practically impossible to maintain a
times/worst of times
visible gay “ghetto” as skyrocketing rents
brought about by gentrification make it hard
for the young to get a toehold in the Castro or
uch of the gay press will fall on hard
New
Town. Increasingly, gays will choose to
times in the 1990s as the “976-phone
sex” numbers cease to be a novelty and the live all over the place, even in the new built-
T
I
M
I
R
Three who core —
lesbian and gay
experts forecast
the 1990s
ents will skyrocket in inner-city areas as
Robin Tyler, events producer/activist
yuppies bump into unreedemable slums
and housing projects. Smaller lofts and
e can go one of two ways in the
condos and Japanese-style miniaturized living
’90s — we can struggle around the
will become increasingly the norm in such
scarcity
of resources in our community in
districts, at least for those of us who don’t
have a lot of money and live alone. The older, terms of a position of weakness, or we can
work together from a viewpoint of strength.
1950s suburbs like Oak Brook, Illinois and
Tyson’s Comer, Virginia, will continue to add It’s not just a question of leadership but of
linking leadership among us all — lesbians,
new apartments and condos and many of us
gay men, minorities — crossing class and
will find it more practical to live there (see
color lines.
“Lifestyle,” above). By the late 1990s, the
“Among the so-called free nations, only
“Beaver Cleaver” belt of single-detached
homes for families will have shifted to
the USA and South Africa lack a national
health-care
policy. Working toward such a
exurban areas like Ventura County, California
and Kane County, Illinois. Such areas will be
policy is a good idea toward focusing our
within driving range of the older suburbs but
energy on a common goal and not fighting
each other. That issue is the common thread
far, far removed from the original cities. If
the Democrats ever regain the White House,
linking us all together...the feminization of
poverty for women with AIDS for men.”
look for something like a “housing IRA” to
enable younger people to amass the
(considerable) amount of money necessary for
a down payment.
Barbara Smith, black feminist writer/
activist
Great (and not-so-
r I ’o me, the political situation is more
JL important than anything cultural by
great) moments in itself.
I think we will see increased leadership
of lesbians and gay men of color, who in
future forecasting
many ways are politically positioned to be
leaders now but who have not been
recognized as such. There will be more
1939 — Designer Norman Bel Geddes’
acknowledgement that our movement will
enormous “Futurama” exhibit debuts at the
benefit from that kind of politics.
New York World’s Fair. Centerpiece of the
“It has been really hard up until now for
exhibit is a scale model of the city of the
“out,” politicized lesbians of color to get the
future — 1960 — with 16-lane freeways
funding, through grants and so on, to get us
surrounded by identical-looking 80-story
started writing novels. [In the ’90s] there will
skyscrapers. Corporate sponsor General
be more novels by lesbians of color, as some
Motors’ input is evident in predictions of
of us get the financial resources that would
$200 cars-of-the-future (cheap even by
give us space and time to work. It think that
Depression standards) that are “probably
AIDS will continue to bring various
refinements of the diesel engine.” Exhibit
communities together such as gay men,
routinely drew two-hour-long lines. Visitors
lesbians and the third world. For instance,
who made it through received a button saying,
third world communities are beginning to
“I have seen the future.”
confront
issues of sexual identity and lesbians
1960 — Clark Kerr, then Chancellor of the
and gay men of color are learning to deal with
University of California system (including,
issues of race. I pretty well expect — and
among other campuses, Berkeley) goes on
certainly hope for — a Democratic
record regarding 1960s youth, saying
presidential administration at some point in
“employers are going to love” them, and
the 1990s. I don’t know how much more of
“there won’t be any riots.”
this we can take.”
1971 — Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock is
published and a new phrase enters the
American vocabulary. Toffler’s thesis — that
Jeff Zurlinden, syndicated AIDS columnist
the pace of technical and social change in
contemporary America alienated citizens from u < « r
I nfection rates for AIDS have probably
their own society — is still being debated. He
Xreached their peak in New York, San
was undoubtedly right, though, in using s
Francisco and possibly Los Angeles. The
California as a predictor of nationwide
‘second tier’ of large American cities such as
change, and in viewing the rise of special
interest groups. In the chapter “A Surfeit of
Chicago, Philadelphia and Houston will
Subcults” he mentions, among other groups,
probably top out in the early 1990s. People
gay motorcycle gangs.
who live in these cities who have been spared
1974 — Publication of The Front Runner
the plague up until now may come to regret
their 1980s optimism.
by Patricia Nell Warren, a heartfelt but
sociologically naive novel set among gays in
“Much of the health care establishment
the near future. Warren viewed gay rights as
will continue to view AIDS as someone else’s
the logical culmination of civil rights and
problem: in smaller cities and affluent areas,
detailed the sweeping changes brought on by
a gay men’s problem; in larger cities and
the U.S. Supreme Court’s striking down of all
poorer areas, an I.V. drug users’ problem.
antisodomy statutes in the mid-1970s (an
Those at greatest risk will continue to be the
event that has, regretfully, never come to
young, the ill-educated and the poorly
pass). Drag queens feature prominently in
informed, and their infants.
Warren’s coalition of gaydom, even receiving
“There probably won’t be a single
special seating at track-and-field events.
dramatic solution for AIDS like the Salk polio
1982 — Movie Blade Runner establishes a
vaccine, but many new drugs and new courses
gritty new look in science-fiction movies. Set
of therapy will emerge in the 1990s. By the
in the early 21st century in an impoverished,
late 1990s, AIDS will be viewed not as an
abysmally polluted Los Angeles, Blade
always-fatal disease but as a treatable
Runner is the pessimistic flip side of
affliction, controllable like leukemia or even
“Futurama” optimism.
diabetes.”
^
W
it O T V «
just out T 1 7 V January 1990