Going Back To School With After Dark

Before the interweb made hipness easy by spreading trends at the speed of "right click/save as", people had to figure out what was hot by reading magazines. And of the many rags crowding the newsstands, the hippest, hottest window onto downtown culture was easily After Dark. Covering art, fashion, music, and everything else the urbane urbanite needed to know, After Dark was especially popular among The Gays--not least because of its fondness for spreads of models, uh, spreading. If you've never had the pleasure, Flickr user HillyBlue has been uploading a motherlode of scans over the last year or so covering After Dark's heyday from the mid-60s to the 1980s. If nothing else, you'll learn that Tommy Lee Jones has always been old, Barry Manilow has always been funny looking, Robby Benson was a total babe, and that hot guy from "Boys in the Band" was even hotter out of costume.

• After Dark: Before 1973, 1974-1976, 1977-1979, and After 1980 (flickr.com - thanks Bob)