One of my Facebook acquaintances, Eldon Daetweiler, has put me in mind of my salad days in Fresno. Eldon has flourished there, with his business, Fresno Modern, functioning as a virtual clearing house of all things in the Eichler/Neutra/Schindler mode. Or should I more accurately say, to give credit to extraordinary Fresno based talent, the Robert Stevens/Gay McCline/Walter Wagner mode. My hat’s off to Eldon. Some of the rest of us have flown, and sad that this has happened, for in my own case specious reasoning resulted in my rushing to the connoisseurship I felt could only be garnered with education and rubbing elbows in a more sophisticated environment. Quite a lot of what I turned my back on was, on reflection, manifestly as good as anything I ran towards.
Central to all this was my good fortune to enjoy a time of significant, albeit brief renaissance in Fresno’s Tower District, a commercial strip that takes its name from the exquisite art moderne masterpiece that is the Tower Theater. Plenty has been written about it, but it is nonetheless worthwhile for my blogophiles to peruse the theater’s website. Moreover, it anchors an area of satellite buildings from the late 1920’s through the early 1960’s, rather underutilized just at the moment. For a brief bit in the early 1980’s, following the restoration of the theater, the neighborhood enjoyed a flurry of activity- shops, restaurants, and services- and with that flurry the ad hoc designation of Fresno’s gay ghetto. Sounds trite now, but at the time, it was the center of a wonderful experience, with many establishments along Olive Avenue, the district’s main commercial thoroughfare, though not manifestly gay, all gay friendly. What no one saw on the horizon to affect this was the specter of HIV which eventually decimated the local gay community as it had everywhere else. That, and the waxing and waning of fashion, the vicissitudes of commercial enterprise, and real estate values have taken a toll on the Tower District.
It’s interesting to consider, much as I enjoyed living and recreating in the neighborhood in the 80’s, one other factor might also be influential. That is, the gay community, arguably, no longer feels quite the same imperative to maintain its own turf. While that’s not such a good thing for the Tower District, such a phenomenon is certainly a better thing for society at large. Mind you, I am hardly suggesting that Fresno is a bastion of liberalism, and has a ways to go to fully embrace the diversity that includes its gay population. But, then, the same can be said about most communities. It is nice to know, however, that the past is hardly forgotten, with the city’s gay pride parade still annually traversing Olive Avenue.
It is also nice to know that the welter of mid century architecture in Fresno, including notable buildings that survive in the Tower District, are recognized and, possibly, more broadly celebrated now than they have been in the recent past. I applaud urban pioneers like well-known landscape designer Robert Boro, whose new offices are now on Van Ness just south of Olive in a newly rehabbed vintage building, whose other occupant is interior designer Michael Weil. 
Is there a re-renaissance on the horizon? I can hope, of course, and say- paraphrasing the poet- Eldon Daetweiler, Michael Weil, and Robert Boro, may your tribe increase.