The Beginning of the End

Practically overnight, everything changed when a mysterious illness popped up in the gay ghettos of San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles in the summer of 1981. 

On this episode of Revisiting The Gay Life, we relive the early and uncertain days of what would later be named AIDS.

We'll listen back to a 1981 interview with two pioneering doctors researching and treating what was then called gay cancer: PAUL VOLBERDING and MARCUS CONANT

And we hear RANDY ALFRED's interview with their patient BOBBI CAMPBELL, who was one of the first people to come out publicly as having what was then called Gay Cancer. He became a fierce advocate for people living with AIDS and the "AIDS Poster Boy."

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Revisiting The Gay Life is a limited series from KALW’s Queer Power Hour. It explores a pivotal moment in SF’s LGBTQ history — from the rise of Harvey Milk to the early days of what would later be called AIDS.

We reconsider this time through a perhaps unexpected lens: a radio show called The Gay Life that aired on KSAN, a commercial radio station in the Bay Area in the late 1970s and early 1980s. 

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Revisiting The Gay Life is produced by KALW Public Media in collaboration with the GLBT Historical Societyand The Gay Life's longtime host Randy Alfred.

Show Credits:
Executive Producer / Host: David Boyer
Producer / Engineer / Life Saver: David Kwan