Business Briefing: With a wink, SF retail brand honors cruising culture

At first glance, the artworks representing San Francisco outdoor spaces appear to simply be paying tribute to the beloved vintage style of National Park Service posters produced by the federal Works Progress Administration in the 1930s. Among the local illustrated sites are Mission Dolores Park, Lands End, Lafayette Park, and Buena Vista Park.

They are the creation of Jim Gibson, the founder of retail brand Scenic Cruising. The name pays homage to San Francisco’s famed 49 Mile Scenic Drive that routes through and nearby the “dirty dozen” of public parks that Gibson chose to depict in his inaugural “San Francisco Collection” he debuted this summer. 

It also winks to the plein air sexual pursuits male visitors to the city greenspaces frequently engaged in over the decades. While less the norm in today’s digital hook-up environment, cruising is still fairly common at several sites Gibson selected, such as Marshall’s Beach and The Windmills at Golden Gate Park.

“Bringing cruising out of the shadows and into the light – starting with our San Francisco collection!” Gibson declares on his “online trailhead” i.e. marketplace at sceniccruising.carrd.co . The local park images adorn tank tops ($24.99), tees ($29.99), and a 2026 calendar ($25), or can be purchased as 5x7-inch posters ($20).

Speaking to the Bay Area Reporter from the cabin he co-owns with his husband, Joseph LaVilla, Ph.D., in the LGBTQ resort town of Guerneville, about two hours north of San Francisco where they also have a place in the Diamond Heights neighborhood, Gibson acknowledged the tongue-and-cheek word play and the if-you-know-you-know inspiration for his merchandising brand.

“At the core of the brand and what I do is I try to do things with a bit of humor and an inside, double-entendre joke,” said Gibson, 53, who five years ago launched the tech-focused Galad Consulting that largely worked with nonprofit clients. “It is the Elvish word for light – I am a Tolkien geek – and the concept of light is an important part of my life.”

After last year’s election, which saw Republican Donald Trump secure a second term as president, Gibson began to see his client base “hunker down” as the organizations braced for a backlash against them and their programs. Such fears came to be, as the Trump administration since January has waged a concerted effort to strip federal funding from LGBTQ nonprofits and providers of services to people of color.

The drop off in his business forced Gibson to pivot. With a lifelong love for the outdoors, art, and travel, he found a way to combine the trio into one pursuit.

“I’ve always been drawn to really beautiful things,” said Gibson, who first photographs the sites he wants to artistically represent and then, using an AI tool, makes a collage of the images he likes best to create “beautiful images of San Francisco locations that can hide in plain sight but have that extra layer of meaning for people who know.”

His depiction of the sandy shores at Marshall’s Beach with the Golden Gate Bridge hovering in the background has been the bestseller to date. The foggy shoreline expanse below the city’s coastal bluffs have long attracted male sunbathers who carnally frolic among the boulders lining the beach or inside structures made from drift wood.

“It encapsulates a lot of what people buy in San Francisco tourism merchandise. I think that is why,” Gibson surmised for why that poster has sold so well. “My mom has a Marshall’s Beach T-shirt she wears proudly.”

LaVilla, 62, who oversees the food service for John Muir Health’s medical centers in the East Bay, co-owns the brand with Gibson, his partner of 13 years. He assisted with setting up and running their merchandise booths at various LGBTQ street fairs over the summer, with their first one being at the Up Your Alley Fair in July.

“He introduced the idea by showing me one of his drawings at the same time, and I thought it was a great idea,” LaVilla recalled about Gibson first broaching Scenic Cruising with him. “The way the idea is a type of ‘if you know you know’ I thought was really clever, and we both love the style of the art. I am a little more reserved than he is, but I wouldn’t expect him to do anything less than something cheeky like this.”

Gibson told the B.A.R. he’s been “completely overwhelmed” by the positive reception his concept has received.

“I think people love that it does celebrate something that seems to be kept in the shadows or not talked about,” he said.

The men have been struck by how so many attendees of the street fairs not only purchased their shirts and prints but also shared their memories and stories about the various locales included in the collection, LaVilla told the B.A.R.

“And not just cruising stories. One woman bought a Marshall’s Beach shirt for her fiancé because that’s where they got engaged (on a foggy day) and she never realized it was a nude gay beach,” he recalled. “We have had gentlemen of a certain age bracket come and reminisce about where they used to go cruising back in the day. Folks were buying Kite Hill merch because that was their neighborhood. People want something they have a connection to, not just another piece that is cute work.”

They displayed at their booth their version of an interpretative sign common in parks to explain the concept and meaning behind Scenic Cruising. It also showed off Gibson’s cheekiness, featuring a picture of him beside the Morning Glory spillway at Napa’s Lake Berryessa, also referred to as “the gloryhole” that appears during wet winter seasons, with the note: “Jim knows a good gloryhole when he sees one.”

As he explains on the sign, his brand honors the “quiet rebellion” and “reclamation of the ephemeral” that cruising is. His artworks are “a love letter” to existing “unapologetically,” it declares.

“The imagery, at first glance, evokes the nostalgia of tourism, designed to adorn a T-shirt or poster with the charm of an iconic vista. To the uninitiated, these are mere celebrations of The City's sometimes unlikely landmarks captured beautifully. Yet, for those who know, the subtext hums beneath the surface, a knowing wink hidden in plain sight,” states the sign.

Gibson is scheduled to leave Saturday, November 15, for a research and image-taking trip of cruising spots in and near Los Angeles. It will inspire his second collection he expects to release in the spring and provide content for a later Scenic Cruising California collection that will incorporate the brands’ “greatest hits” from the two cities along with sites that don’t fit into those two sub-categories.

He first learned about the Golden State’s scenic cruising spots in the mid-1990s when he was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, from which he graduated with a degree in economics. Both Gibson and LaVilla grew up on the East Coast, with LaVilla moving to the Bay Area 13 years ago from Phoenix. After earning a doctorate in organic chemistry from the University of Rochester in 1991, he ended up being hired as an instructor and later promoted to academic director for the International Culinary School at the Art Institute of Phoenix.

The men were introduced by a mutual friend and first met the day of a cruise on San Francisco Bay for bears, or hirsute queer men, when LaVilla was disembarking from it.

“I met him right off the boat,” joked Gibson, who uses his husband as his “sounding board on decisions when I am stuck or need an extra set of eyes or a second thought on things” when it comes to the Scenic Cruising brand.

It started as a way for Gibson to keep busy and bring in some revenue but quickly morphed into a pursuit with more meaning behind it than he had anticipated and now hopes to grow into the future. He told the B.A.R. he is “open to” seeing brick-and-mortar stores carry his merchandise if he feels they have the “right synchronicity” with his brand but is happy, for the time being, selling online and at street fairs or other pop-up events.

“I think, in this time we find ourselves in, the act of creating a space for joy is something that is really special and something I wasn’t expecting to hit me as hard as it does,” said Gibson. “To see someone see my art for the first time, and get the joke or layers of meaning behind it, and see the expression of joy that comes across their face, it is really priceless to me. There is nothing to compare it to.”

He already has signed up to have a booth at the Castro Art Mart being held from noon to 5 p.m. Sunday, December 7, on Noe Street between Market and Beaver streets in the LGBTQ neighborhood. And despite the turmoil merchandisers have had to deal with due to Trump’s tariffs on overseas goods and other disruptions to the global supply chain, Gibson doesn’t expect there to be any issues for people purchasing his products via his website this holiday season.

But he did offer some advice for those worried about their packages arriving in time.

“The best bet is order early, though, I will do my best to guarantee and make sure things are available by a Christmas delivery date,” said Gibson. “I work with different vendors and different countries where those vendors are, so it is hard to say a definitive buy-by date. It is the landscape we find ourselves in now.”

Holiday fair at Castro rec center
A city rec and park facility in San Francisco’s Duboce Triangle neighborhood will once again be hosting its annual holiday craft fair early next month. It is set to take place from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, December 14.

The market features local artists who bring their unique handmade holiday gifts for sale. It is a yearly tradition for the Harvey Milk Center for the Arts, located at 50 Scott Street and situated at one end of Duboce Park.

For more information, click here.

Got a tip on LGBTQ business news? Call Matthew S. Bajko at (415) 829-8836 or email [email protected].