The origin and history of Different Spokes SF is intimately connected with Tom Waddell’s Gay Olympics. With the announcement of the Gay Olympics to be held in SF in the summer of 1982, a meeting was held to find and organize gay cyclists to participate. Out of that early meeting came the founders of DSSF. Bob Krumm, one of the founders of Different Spokes, relates that his eyes glazed over when the racing mad meeting organizers started jawing about practicing pacelines, drafting, and intervals. The founders weren’t interested in racing or competition and decided to form a club focused on recreational cycling especially touring. The club formally opened in late November 1982 after about six months of informal riding together and planning. DSSF was the first gay cycling club in the US and probably the world.
The club formed at a time when there were gay social clubs and organizations forming beyond the bars and bathhouses. Gay political organizations in the US go much further back in time, to the 1950s with the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis. But sports-related social clubs came later and were especially given impetus because of the Gay Olympics.
Today there are LGBTQ clubs and organizations for just about every sport. There may be no gay luge or bobsledding club yet. But there is gay curling. (That’s a sport, darling, not your hair.) Different Spokes was by no means the first LGBTQ sports club. In prowling around online it seems that honor goes—surprisingly—to the Gay Rodeo, which first formed in Reno in 1976. You might have thought that it would be Frontrunners, which formed in 1980 and took its name from the novel, The Front Runner by Patrica Nell Warren, which was published in 1974.
Cycling is a solo sport mostly (although cycle racing is a team sport). Sports like tennis, tennis, raquetball, and handball require at least two people. Team sports such as baseball, football, or basketball would seem to be a natural for an early appearance in the LGBT community. Sure enough, the Gay Softball League arose in 1976 well in advance of SF Gay Flag Football (1998), Gay Basketball Association (1986), and SF Spikes (1982). The Gay Bowling Organization came into being in 1980. (Bowling like cycling is both solo and a team sport.)
After the Gay Rodeo and the Softball League the next club/organization to form that I could find online was SAGA, Skiers and Gay Athletes in 1977. I’m not sure which came first, Aspen Gay Ski Week or SAGA—both started in 1977. But Aspen Gay Ski Week had to have at least one group organize it, which suggests that a nascent LGBT ski group was in place before 1977.
Although we weren’t a Johnny-come-lately (er, “fashionably late”) we weren’t a groundbreaking organization either. Not surprisingly either, after the 1982 Gay Olympics LGBTQ sports clubs and organization experienced an efflorescence. Today just about any recreational activity has a LGBTQ counterpart.
The Chain Letter 