5 sur 5

A fabulously trashy free gay monthly produced in Paris in 23 issues from 1983 to 1985, 5 sur 5 was published by con­troversial entrepreneur David Gi­rard (1959-1990), who launched a con­glo­merate of gay businesses in­clu­­ding bath­­houses and nightclubs, as well as periodicals that served to pro­mote those enterprises.

Girard cheerfully claimed that he had raised the capital to start his gay business empire by turning 20,000 tricks as a male prostitute. He also unabash­­edly defended gay consumer­ism at a time when French gay activists remained suspicious of the emerging gay mar­­ket, which they often characterized as a mindless and oppressive gay ghetto.

5 sur 5 focuses on celebrating that very ghetto, with coverage of the clubs, bars, bath­houses, rest­au­­­rants, shops and providers of services that were opening at an ever-in­creas­ing pace in Paris, no­ta­bly in the Marais, which at the time was becoming the city's first full-fledged gay neigh­borhood. Girard's own establishments were most prominently featured, of course.

By contrast, the magazine resolutely ignores the gay movement and gay associations — and makes lit­tle men­tion of AIDS, which reached epidemic proportions among gay men in France in the first half of the 1980s. The disease took David Girard's life in 1990 when he was just 31 years old.

OFFERED HERE: 1983: Nos. 2 (octobre); 4 (décembre). 1984: Nos. 5 (janvier); 12 (août); 15 (novembre). 1985: No. 18 (février). Total issues: 6.