Queer Places:
1337 Main St, Red Bluff, CA 96080
Charles Street Meeting House, 70 Charles St, Boston, MA 02114
David Stryker (April 24, 1918 - November 18, 1984) had worked many years as a typesetter at the reactionary Boston American Herald, but in the mid-1970s, seeing the need for typesetting in the gay community, he started a part-time business. Ken Sanchez, who worked for Stryker, was able to type out Fag Rag text (with some volunteer help) after hours; they paid a dollar an hour for using the machine. Stryker's business expanded and he bought a Compugraphic, a machine that used a computer linked to a camera, which produced typeset galleys. Stryker charged basically at cost per issue; still the typesetting costs quadrupled. He saw it as a sacrifice for the movement; others saw it as an inroad of capitalism. The Compugraphic was more expensive and more complicated; only a few Fag Rag'ers learned to use it. In one case, when they had typeset John Wieners' Behind the State Capitol (1975) on a movement Compugraphic, the entire text faded and had to be reset (because the developer had not been properly changed).
David McCauley Stryker was born in Los Molinos, CA, on April 24, 1918, the son of Charles Fremont Stryker (1855–1933) and Carrie Angeline Foster (1878–1930). In the 1940s he worked for the Red Bluff Daily News. He married Joyce Kirkpatrick in 1943 in Chico, CA.
He died in November 1984 at age 66. In An Army of Ex-Lovers, Amy Hoffman evokes Strykers, the first man she knew who died of AIDS. Among the nationally known activists who have come out of the Gay Community News (GCN) staff are journalists Chris Bull, Liz Galst, Michael Bronski, Chris Guilfoy; writers Neil Miller, Cindy Patton, Amy Hoffman, Warren Blumenfeld; activists Richard Burns, Kevin Cathcart, Sue Hyde, Eric Rofes, Wickie Stamps, Chris Witke, Jennie McNight, Harry Seng, and Urvashi Vaid. Many accomplished gay and lesbian writers, scholars, and artists contribute regularly to GCN: Sarah Schulman, Peg Byron, Peg Cruikshank, Barbara Smith, Stephen MacCauley, John Preston, Kate Rushin, Andrea Loewenstein, Bob Nelson, David France, John Zeh, Jennifer Camper, Dorothy Allison, Jewelle Gomez, Cheryl Clarke, John Mitzel, and Scott Tucker. And then there are the GCN-ers who died: Mel Home and David P. Brill were murdered; Ian Johnson killed himself; Bob Andrews, David Stryker, Mike Riegle, John Preston, Siong-Huat Chua, Craig Harris, Jim Ryan, Greg Howe, Tim Grant, Porter Mortell, Reg Taylor, Raymond Hopkins, died of AIDS-related illness.
My published books: