After Dark magazine on Fire Island Circa 1972
After Dark 1968-1983
was an entertainment magazine that covered theater , cinema, stage plays, ballet, performance art, and various artists, including singers, actors and actresses, and dancers, among others. First published in May 1968, the magazine succeeded Ballroom Dance Magazine. In the late 1970s Patrick Pacheco took over the editorship from William Como and strived for a time to make the magazine a more serious critical monthly with a greater emphasis on quality writing, doing away with color printing inside and reducing photos to a few inches square.
Cover: Richard Gere
This was a clear reaction to Como’s “eye-candy” thrust, but evidently that is not what the readership was looking for as sales were low, so in 1981 Louis Miele replaced him at the helm and returned to the full-color format with plenty of skin on show. It seemed however that the day was done for After Dark, perhaps because several newer magazines were now doing a better (and more explicitly targeted) job of appealing to the magazine’s original readership, for Miels’s incarnation of After Dark folded after only a couple of years, this time for good.
The magazine, intentionally or not, provided a level of homoeroticism by regularly using images of nude or partially nude men for its cover and article illustrations. Although some illustrations of partially clad or nude women were included at times, males comprised the majority of the subjects. Some of the illustrations related directly to the subject of the article, but others seemed to be used just for their nudity or partial nudity.
As Fire Island became a destination in the 1970’s it was the perfect backdrop to fashion and more for the magazine. Famous porn star Cal Culver- Casey Donovan who shot ” Boys in the Sand” here was featured in many of the shoots.
The magazine featured many well known celebrities on its covers. It covered every aspect of the arts, fashion, movies, music.
And then the men…
