I created a gallery entitled “DSI 1″ in the members’ section with 85 (mostly) nude images from the early 1960’s. The magazines were very well produced on quality paper and they took the effort to “design” the pages of the magazines. Although the graphic styles are fairly primitive compared to what modern eyes are used to, it’s interesting to see how graphic design evolved. Look at the page with three shots of the same guy. Without Photoshop, each of those images was cut out with scissors and pasted onto a matte board. Some of the shadows were hand-drawn, too. The craftmenship will be more apparent when you see the larger version in the VIP Room.

I also did a little research into the company, DSI, and found some fascinating information about these gay porn pioneers. 

In 1963 in Minneapolis, Lloyd Spinar and Conrad Germain founded Directory Services, Inc. (DSI), a mail order catalog company for gay male consumers. Over the next decade, they sold books, records, jewelry, clothing, greeting cards and other items to thousands of gay men around the United States and abroad. Their “Vagabond Club” provided its members with a penpal service, a credit card for making catalog purchases, and one of the first directories of gay bars throughout the U.S. By 1968 the club featured plans to open facilities in major cities, “where club members and their guests can enjoy fabulous stag shows, delightful dining, and other entertainment.” But the heart of the DSI enterprise was the publication of an extensive series of physique magazines featuring the first male frontal nudes.

With the intent of challenging American censorship laws, Spinar and Germain were arrested in 1967 and tried on numerous counts of obscenity. Their vindication by a federal district court was a landmark obsenity case that radically transformed the ability of gay men to consume homoerotic images.

Europe had put out nudist mags for years, but DSI (founded and run by Conrad Germain and Lloyd Spinar) were the first in the U.S. to do so. They were arrested, fought all the court battles, and in 1965-7 won (acquitted on all 29 counts brought by the U.S. government) the decision making male nudity legal in the U.S.

Hal Call of the Mattachine Society of San Francisco was instrument in connecting the defendants with key expert witnesses such as Wardell Pomeroy, who had been associated with Kinsey’s Institute for Sex Research and in developing their legal strategy. In July 1967, the court ruled these materials did “not exceed the limits of candor” and “the rights of minorities expressed individually in sexual groups or otherwise must be respected”. 

Soon afterward, Hal Call opened the Adonis Bookstore with partners Robert Trollop, Jack Tennyson, and Bob Damron. San Francisco’s first gay venue sold bold magazines such as “Golden Boys” (from Calafran Enterprises owned by Damron/Trollop) and homosexual literature. The storefront also was a good recruiting ground for male models as well as Mattachine activists.

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