This forgotten queer artifact was the key to old-school cruising

Long before the queer community had apps like Grindr and Sniffies to facilitate low-key hookups, gay men were keeping track of eligible partners the analog way. In unmarked bars, under the glow of swag lamps and the constant smog of cigarette smoke, they traded numbers inside the covers of collectible matchbooks—the same matchbooks that doubled as a form of social lubricant as couples danced, swayed, and lit up into the wee hours of the night. 

Those matchbooks, which were a feature of gay bars throughout the mid-20th century, are now the subject of two dedicated books by the designer and editor Darian Newman. The first edition, titled Cruising: Gay Matchbooks, debuted in spring 2025 and sold out multiple times. Its success drove Newman to create a second book of the same name, this time featuring 200 new matchbook designs and 12 curated essays.

Newman says the matchbooks reflect a time when queer spaces had their own distinct visual identities designed with their local communities in mind. They’re also a form of ephemera that offers a rare window into moments of queer joy in an era that’s most often documented through stories of struggle and grief. 

“Design for marginalized communities is so often focused on protest,” Newman writes in the book’s introduction, “but the matchbooks exude pleasure. The pleasure of being out and going out, the pleasure of lighting a cigarette, the pleasure of getting a stranger’s number with the promise of fun.”

Before Grindr and Sniffies, there was the matchbook

“Manhole.” “Dude City.” “Mother Lode.” “The Mind Shaft.”

Each of these are names of clubs that Newman found embossed on vintage matchbooks, often in custom typography and accompanied by hand-drawn illustrations and photography. In an era when gay bars were often targeted by the police and patrons frequently relied on a level of discretion to go about their personal lives safely, matchbooks served as a form of queer bar and club advertising for those in the know. Their designs were a perfected art; each matchbook, despite its diminutive size, needed to clue prospective patrons into the establishment’s unique vibe and atmosphere. 

“Many bars lacked signage on their exteriors for discretion,” writes Lucas Hilderbrand, a professor of film and media studies at University of California, Irvine, in his contributed essay. Instead, he continues, they “fabulated vivid queer worlds” with double-entendre names, phallic logos, and graphics on matchbooks and event flyers. “Matchbooks and ads rarely visually represented the actuality of brick-and-mortar venues; instead, they produced an idea of each,” he writes. “The design of some matchbooks may be more striking, retrospectively, than their venues, which may be all but forgotten.”

To track down the paper ephemera from these forgotten brick-and-mortars, Newman scoured eBay and other secondhand sites, searched through hashtags on Instagram, and struck up a rapport with collectors in the San Francisco area. He’d often ask to purchase one matchbook, only to be offered 30 more, a box of DVDs, and a collection of posters.

“It was so cool, as an outsider to that period of time, to see these people who have archives of their own lived experience that people aren’t necessarily getting to see,” Newman says.

One of the matchbooks featured in this second collection is entirely covered in silver foil (Circle J, San Francisco); another shows a full-frontal nude on the inside cover (The Zone, Hollywood); and a third highlights an illustration of a ripped swimmer hoisting a giant swordfish above his head (Marlin Beach Hotel, Fort Lauderdale, Florida). Each aimed to entice curious onlookers to learn more in an era when the only way to do so was to show up and find out.

For older members of the gay community, Newman says, seeing these matchbooks often sparks memories that haven’t been revisited in years. And for those in younger generations, like himself, these tokens offer a physical window into a bygone era when, as the essayist David Kennerly puts it, “you had to get your ass off the couch to go out to seek companionship.”