The oldest established permanent floating gay men's activity on the continental side of the Bay is the East Bay Gay Men's Raps, which meet every Friday night starting at 7 pm in the First Baptist Church on the corner of Haste and Dana Streets in Berkeley,

On any given Friday night as many as fifty to seventy men (from Berkeley, Oakland, and the farther reaches of Alameda and Contra Costa counties) gather for a community meeting and various kinds of small groups. The raps have been going on for almost three years now, facilitated by the Raps'

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GAY MEN'S RAP

Collective, a body of nine men who function as an ongoing encounter and training group. Besides leafletting extensively and providing refreshments, collective members draw together encounter, discussion, nonverbal communication, and ongoing problem-solving groups every week.

About half the men who attend are regulars, many of whom take some responsibility for the raps' continued success and growth. But as many as a third of those present on a particular Friday will be there for the first time. A small orientation group usually is held before the community meeting in order to acquaint newcomers with the over-all format and to get a sense of people's needs and expectations,

Periodically special events occur at the raps: massage groups, demonstrations of postural integration, or showand-tell groups in which people share their poetry, music and other creative efforts. There have been film and video showings on topics as diverse as Chilean resistance to fascism and the Ohio Gay Pride Week. Projects initiated by the raps range from picnics to a conference on gay male sexuality, to a gay rights platform that was adopted by Bobby Seale and Elaine Brown for the Black Panther Party in their Oakland campaign two years ago, then approved in part by the Berkeley City Council. There have been discussions on youth, age, bodies, jobs, cruising, cooking, and every other interest gay men know. One night people role-played "gay bar."

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But the main focus at the raps continues to be on the "here and now" of people's feelings about themselves, their lives, and one another; on the interactions that take place between individuals. The groups are meant to be supportive in an atmosphere for you to take some risks if you want to, in order to grow

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