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A Million
Words
AWW.JUSTOUT.COM
Archivist’s vast collection speaks
volumes on Portland drag history
BY ERIN ROOK
Dusty Polaroids, faded posters, yellowed
newspaper clippings. To some, these items are
nothing hut clutter, better off recycled. To com
munity archivist Greg Pitts, their mere existence
is a miracle.
“I literally had to go to the back o f an apart
ment one time to pick up a couple of boxes of
photos that the garbage man was gonna throw
away,” Pitts (aka Port Bear) recalls. “The family
said, ‘We don’t want that gay crap, get it out of
here.’ I got a call saying, ‘We heard you might
want this, hut if you don’t come get it in 30 min
utes it will be gone.”’
Pitts, 55, is a self-described pack rat, so it
seems only natural that he would inherit his
friends’ old photos. His vast collection—which
includes about 25,000 photos, posters, event fli
ers, coronation programs and newspaper clip
pings— started some 15 years ago with “closets
full of gay memorabilia ” inherited from his close
friend Randy “Radar” Burdick after he died of
AIDS.
Burdick was one of those with “the money
and the wherewithal” to take photos at various
bar functions. Pitts later inherited other relics
from the Portland drag community, including
video, from two other friends—Sandford “San
dra Dee” Director and Lance “Blanche de Port
land” Cartwright.
Pitts began digitizing and archiving the items
in an effort to keep busy during his recovery
from an auto accident, but soon found himself
immersed in a decade-long project.
“I didn’t have anything to do for therapy. The
doctor said, ‘Well, you have this photo collec
tion, why don’t you archive it?”’ Pitts recalls. “So
that kinda kept me from going crazy for a while.
That was 10 years ago and I’ve been doing it ever
since.”
The former bartender and retired U.S. Postal
Service worker is, perhaps, perfectly suited to
the task. In addition to having the time and re
sources to process the photos, he was often at
the events they document. Pitts is a Portland
native who came out in the city in 1971. He
quickly made a name for himself as someone
with connections, he says, because he bartended
not only at many of the gay bars, hut also for the
other gay bartenders once they closed up shop.
“I used to he the welcoming committee for
out-of-towners,” Pitts says. W hen members of
San Francisco’s court system came to town, Pitts
could expect calls from bar owners asking him
to show people around and make sure they had
a good time. As a result, he can look at old pho
tographs and often identify the people, places
and events, allowing him to categorize them
properly.
Pitts now spends four to eight hours a day
scanning, categorizing and tagging photos. He
IMAGES COURTESY OF THE GREG PITTS ARCHIVE
Ä L J8
“The hardest thing about this whole
collection is yes, it’s wonderful to
relive all this but it’s also horrible. A
lot of the people who are in these
photos from the early ’70s and ’80s
are gone because of AIDS. So it’s
very hard to look at some of them .”
—GREG PITTS
has started uploading many of them to Face-
book, though he would ultimately like to create
a website and perhaps host a show.
“It’s a learning process of how to do all this,”
Pitts explains. H e’s taught himself everything
he knows about the digital archiving process by
“hunt and peck,” trial and error. Pitts has no
formal training in the technology he uses hut
says he plans to start taking web design classes
with a friend soon.
In some ways, the archiving project allows
him to reprise his role as a gay in the know.
W hen people come through town for corona
tion ceremonies and other drag community
functions, he often gets requests for old photos.
He does his best to oblige, sharing photographs
when he has them and can find them.
It’s that connection to a personal past and
shared history that motivates Pitts to continue
with the project, as daunting and emotionally
charged as it can sometimes be.
“It’s just saving some of the history. I’m real
izing as I’m getting older that the younger gen
eration is wonderful but they take everything so
for granted because everything is so accessible,”
Pitts explains. “Back in the day it was a big issue
if you wanted to be a drag queen and rent an
apartment. You were kicked out because, you
TOP: A gaggle of queens cooling
their heels at Gay Pride 1988
ABOVE: Gracie Hansen performs at
the Hoyt Hotel, September 1970
know, ‘We don’t want your kind here.m
Pitts feels compelled to share this history in
part because many of those who lived it are no
longer around to tell their stories. He estimates
that about 65 percent of the people in his pho
tographs are no longer living.
“The hardest thing about this whole collec
tion is yes, it’s wonderful to relive all this but it’s
also horrible,” Pitts says. “A lot of the people
who are in these photos from the early 70s and
’80s are gone because of AIDS. So it’s very hard
to look at some of them.”
But Pitts isn’t one to shy away from a difficult
subject. In addition to the archiving project, he’s
working on a documentary called AKA “Bobbi”
about a female impersonator’s journey from
surviving rape in Vietnam to be invited to Syd
ney’s 2011 Gay Pride (see “Give It Up,”p. 21).
It’s all about keeping the history alive for an
other generation.
“A lot of this stuff that I’m doing harks back
to ‘this is the way that it was,”’ Pitts says. “I think
some of you [young] people ought to appreciate
this.” J#]
To Pitts' collection, searchfor “Port Bear" on Facehook
or emailportbear@yahoo.com.