Every issue of the San Francisco Bay Times, from its founding in the 1970s until the present, may now be viewed in their entirety online at Digital SF (historic issues) and at the Bay Times website via ISSUU (https://sfbaytimes.com/).
The complete digitization of the Bay Times was a multi-year effort made possible by the San Francisco Public Library (SFPL), Cristina Mitra and Dee Dee Kramer of The Hormel LGBTQIA Center, California Revealed, and the publishers of the Bay Times. It has been a longstanding goal of the publishers to preserve the paper, especially its earliest issues, for present and future generations.
The digitization process is laborious, at times involving high-resolution cameras and page-by-page scans of fragile existing rare hard copies. Some of these rare issues are archived at the Marjorie G. and Carl W. Stern Book Arts & Special Collections Center of the SFPL.
It has therefore taken several years to complete the digitization of the San Francisco Bay Times. Progress concerning the work has been shared in previous issues, including in last year’s Pride Week issue. We are grateful that, for Pride 2026, we can announce the project’s completion.
Support From Local and National Leaders
Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, a longtime reader and supporter of the Bay Times, said: “LGBTQ+ history is American history, and the preservation of the San Francisco Bay Times archives is an invaluable contribution to that shared history. For decades, the Bay Times has chronicled the voices, struggles, and triumphs of the LGBTQ+ community in San Francisco and beyond—often when those stories were neglected and devalued. This record of mobilization is evidence of the deep patriotism of the LGBTQ+ community, and, by digitizing it, we ensure that future generations can learn from the courage, resilience, and advocacy that helped move our nation closer to equality.”
Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and a former Bay Times columnist, added: “From the AIDS crisis to marriage equality, the San Francisco Bay Times has chronicled some of the most defining moments in our city’s LGBTQ+ history. Digitizing this archive ensures those stories are preserved, accessible, and available to future generations who deserve to understand both how far we’ve come and
State Senator Scott Wiener echoed that sentiment, and congratulated the Bay Times. He and his team have worked extensively with organizations like the GLBT Historical Society and other queer advocates in San Francisco to secure spaces and funding for preserving LGBTQ+ history and culture.
Key Contributors Then, and Now
To mark the completion of the Bay Times digitization, the publishers additionally reached out to Bay Times Founding News Editor Randy Alfred, who is now in his 80s and still going strong. Alfred said, “When my co-founders and I started the Bay Times in 1978, we established a new communication resource for our overall community and our varied communities. The publication has been providing that service for almost five decades now. I am delighted to learn that the online archive will now make the Bay Times a resource for LGBTQ people worldwide and for historians here and everywhere.
Columnist Ann Rostow, who still regularly writes for the Bay Times, joined the team over three decades ago. News of the digitization got her reminiscing about those years in the paper’s history:
“I joined the Bay Times as the business manager over 30 years ago, when the paper had just moved into their 7th Street offices, and when I was very cute, if I say so myself. After a few years of doing anything and everything at the behest of my friend, the tyrannical Kim Corsaro, I added writing to my many assignments, taking over the news column and starting the satiric ‘Straight Talk’ column that featured a fictional Marin housewife trying hard to understand the homosexual ‘community,’ I guess you’d call it, even though I’m not sure why it’s really a ‘community’ because you don’t have ‘straight communities,’ and, as far as I can see, all you homosexuals are very different! Anyway!
I was also given responsibility for most of the paper’s political endorsements, an incredibly time-consuming task that required in-depth research on, let’s say, arcane insurance regulations, bond specifications, and all sorts of special interests that had nothing to do with GLBT issues. Kim would interview and write up the top candidates, but I was in charge of the dozens of random propositions and ballot measures. It was a period of time, however, when the Bay Times endorsements were given weight and taken seriously. Let’s not forget that Kim Corsaro was, in many ways, responsible for the election of Nancy Pelosi to Congress in the special election of 1987. Pelosi, with her history of Democratic Party activism, ran against Harry Britt, a gay man with limited legislative experience and (to simplify) Kim’s two lengthy pre-election articles, gave Pelosi half the gay and lesbian vote in a primary that she won by four points.
Our location was around the corner from a seafood restaurant, which paid for its advertising with steamed lobsters, served with corn and bread in a lovely alley. My labors were partly compensated by fabulous lobster lunches, and, once, Kim somehow traded ad space for a trip to France. She carried with her a giant prescription for Xanax, and took too many, rendering herself belligerent and loopy, at one point lighting a cigarette, forgetting it, and dropping it on the floor of the plane while I was in the john. On our way back, we broke several bottles of wine in our flimsy luggage, Kim required a wheelchair, and I wheeled her around LAX while she muttered and yelled at me, reeking of stale alcohol. She refused to believe these stories whenever I brought them up.
I loved 7th Street back in the day, particularly the Folsom Street Fair right next door, with its crazy lascivious and sweet atmosphere. Pride Day was another highlight, although Kim was raising twins at the time, a boy and a girl, and the scene wasn’t always appropriate. I was taking them to get ice cream one year when we passed a bunch of guys having sex on top of a van, and both kids, maybe 8 or 9 at that point, asked me repeatedly what the men were up to. Nothing would distract them from the intriguing spectacle, and I had a brief sympathy for the church ladies whom I loved to condemn for their delicate sensibilities.
The lesbians in our group were also determined to give the kids gender-bending gifts for birthdays and Christmas—Easy Bake Oven for Chris and tool kit for Camille … you get the picture. After a year or so, Chris wanted guns and Camille wanted dolls, and we all abandoned our politics to please these adorable and much-loved children.
That was one of the best things about the San Francisco Bay Times. It was not politically correct as the term was used in the 1990s. It placed our community in the context of larger issues, and it made no effort to twist news or opinion into the expected framework. Just because someone is gay doesn’t mean they’d be the best representative in Congress. Just because a gay person is fired doesn’t mean they have a Title VII case for wrongful termination. They might be bad at their job.
And, we had a sense of humor. I remember late nights putting the paper to bed, writing photo captions, and positioning them by hand. I wrote the captions, and, at times, made everyone laugh so hard their hands would shake as they tried to place the line of text. On one shot of a dismal-sounding feminist art project I wrote, ‘it’s the waiting that’s the hardest part,’ which held up production for a good 15 minutes of hilarity. We were bad.
Kim Corsaro died of kidney failure in February 2022, but, well before that, she entrusted the paper to the present publishers. From the late 1970s, through AIDS, into the 21st Century, and through the Supreme Court decisions that gave us marriage equality, the Bay Times has witnessed and reported our progress and setbacks, creating a reflection of our civil rights movement, our heroics, and our failures. Its archives contain an essential part of GLBT history and they tell that history in a remarkable way.”
San Francisco Bay Times at Digital SF
https://bit.ly/4w1UHm9
San Francisco Bay Times Website
https://sfbaytimes.com/
Bay Times Archive at ISSUU
https://issuu.com/sfbt
Celebrating Pride 2026
Published on June 25, 2026
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