Chloe, who's been taking
photographs since she was young, was born in New York City. Her mom
and her mom's mom were both New Yorkers, and her dad was from
Chicago, with his family going back generations there. When she in
was grade school, the family moved to Chicago, where Chloe was
raised by aunts and grandparents as well as her parents, just like
she had been in NYC.
It was the Seventies and her
parents were hippies. They soon headed west, taking their family to
Portland, Oregon, where Chloe spent the rest of her grade school
days.
Chloe says the move was fine,
but that she felt like more of a city kid, and so it took some
adjusting. She and her brother visited back east a lot. He ended up
going to college there, and Chloe started school in Connecticut and
then Boston before realizing that she'd become a West
Coaster.
We talk about life in Portland,
how it's easier to be collective-minded and communal because it's
more affordable than bigger cities. This of course has an effect on
who's drawn to cities like Portland. With an abundance of young
people, folks tend to band together.
Chloe ended up going to
Portland State. One weekend, she took a trip to San Francisco after
reading about our city in a zine she got at Powell's Books in her hometown. We take a
conversational detour at this point to talk about zine culture back
in the late-Eighties and early Nineties.
In high school, she had dabbled
in dance and music, but knew she didn't want to pursue either
performing art. She says she loved art and did some
photography, but got more serious about that after high
school.
In those aforementioned zines,
she learned all about the bike messenger culture here in The City
and was captivated by it. On that weekend trip down from Portland,
she visited Lickety Split Couriers, which was Lynn Breedlove's bike
messenger company. Chloe ended up working at another messenger for
two weeks, but soon gave that up entirely. "San Francisco is
instant death if you're not a pro," she says. We talk a bit about
bike messenger culture in SF back in the Nineties. The service was
essential to downtown during dotcom, but you'd hardly know it these
days.
Breedlove told Chloe, "Go to
the Bearded Lady Cafe," which she did. And it changed her life
forever. It was there that she found her community. Chloe moved to
San Francisco right after that visit to the cafe on 14th Street in
the Mission.
She lived with friends until
she finally got her own place in Lower Haight. After Chloe was
established here, friends from Portland followed her to The City.
Her world was expanding around her. She says that she looks at
photos now from back then and sees concentric circles of
friends.
The SF Dyke scene flourished
through the Nineties. But then people grew up, got priced out, and
The City changed. Many businesses closed with those
changes.
Check back next week for Part 2
to hear more about that thriving, bustling, Mission lesbian scene
that Chloe captures so well and so
prolifically in her photography.
Photography by Jeff
Hunt