Good Vibrations/Antique Vibrator Museum, Part 1 (S5E11)

Happy Valentine's Day! This episode is all about San Francisco's Good Vibrations because, well, duh. It's also about Good Vibes' Antique Vibrator Museum. To guide us, we meet Carol Queen. Carol is the staff sexologist, a title she earned with her PhD in the subject. Carol grew up in small-town Oregon, just south of Eugene. She says she was interested in sex as long as she can remember, despite what those in her community might have thought about that. Childhood and early adult visits she made to the "big city" of Eugene helped her find community and solidify her outsider, activist status. Eventually, she went to college there, although she had graduated high school early and arrived in Eugene at 16 years, far too young to go to bars. Despite that prohibition, Carol found her people, though it wasn't always easy. She considered herself queer, but folks in LGBTQ circles cast her out, claiming her bisexuality meant she didn't belong. It was another hurdle to work hard to overcome. Eventually, she met likeminded folks who slowly branched out into different areas of study. But they all had one thing in common—a desire, through whatever avenues, to change minds and laws and bring about more acceptance and equality for their fellow LGBTQ folks. She credits the backlash to Anita Bryant as well as eventual mainstream acceptance of AIDS as a real threat to everyone with helping her and her friends win some early victories. Carol and I do a short sidebar on some of the more recent efforts by the right in this country to ban books and legislate language, including so-called "don't say gay" laws in places like Florida. We return to the conversation to hear that enrolling at Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality is what brought Carol to San Francisco. And we end Part 1 with Carol's impressions of San Francisco, first upon visiting, and then later, when she went to IASHS, moving here. We recorded this episode at the Good Vibrations/Vibrator Museum on Polk Street in January 2023. Photography by Michelle Kilfeather