GayCom BBSs
Below is a map of the bulletin board systems that made up the GayCom BBS network from roughly 1988 to 1993. Started by Arthur “Artie” Kohn in 1987, GayCom was a foundational means of connecting geographically dispersed bulletin board systems for LGBTQ+ people in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Permanent link to the map is here.
Information represented in this map is drawn from the BACKROOM Subscribers’ Handbook, The BACKROOM Subscriber Newsletter (both available at the Gay Center Archives) and Norman Brown’s Consolidated List of hiv aids Bulletin Board Systems (1993).
Kohn’s work establishing GayCom as a means for LGBTQ+ people to connect during a “time of multiple crises,” was integral to his ethos of liveware — an approach that valued the people who maintained systems just as much as their hardware or software.