How bad was it? Well, local sailors cast women aside and turned to “fairy dives” full of “prancing misfits in peekaboo blouses, with marcelled hair and rouged faces.”
“The fairy fleet has landed and taken over the nation’s most important naval base,” they warned, adding that “what we saw in San Diego frightened us.” San Diego, a Navy town on the rise, sent their gaydar into overdrive.
In 1952, the authors of an overheated bestseller called “USA Confidential” promised to blow the lid off the nation’s depraved triumvirate of Communists, labor unions and gays. SD Confidential: Inside a Lost Gay Past of ‘Fairy Dives,’ Raids and a Fallen Admiral | Voice of San Diego Close
