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Hugh Ryan is an absolute superstar of queer history. His first two books, “When Brooklyn Was Queer” and “The Women’s House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison,” were magnets for awards and accolades. After spending recent years immersed in cultural stories, he’s turned his investigative eye on his own coming of age with the rollicking, raw, funny and sharp memoir “My Bad: A Personal History of the Queer Nineties and Beyond.” Pivoting from scholar of history to student of life, Ryan shares lessons learned from beloved but homophobic middle school teachers (“The nicest mother— I knew could accidentally curb-stomp my heart at any moment”) to ones acquired on the dance floor (“Dancing is sex on a communal level: an embodied ecstatic ritual of union”).

Ryan swung through L.A. on his book tour, and what better place to host a paean to the ’90s than the ASU FIDM Museum, where the exhibit “Obsessed: Fashion and Nostalgia in the ’90s” is serving Westwood plaids, Calvin Klein’s minimalist silk parachute sheath and Donatella’s zipper-slashed, leather mourning dress. A fellow survivor of the era, I interviewed Ryan and the evening was introduced by the exhibition’s sparkling curator, Christina Frank, who cheekily shared period photos of the author alongside images from the museum’s ’90s archives, asking: Who wore it best? Whether it was Ryan channeling designer inspo or fashion-snatching looks from the streets, the display — like the book that inspired it — was colorful and daring, inspired and eccentric and wholly unique. At a time when nostalgia for the ’90s is seemingly everywhere, “My Bad” places the decade into context, including its paradoxical freedoms and oppressions, with the intimate, funny rough language of your freakiest, funnest bestie.

Michelle Tea: Your previous books are this amazing, accessible scholarship. In “My Bad,” your language is so different — you’re cussing! The academic gloves are off — which isn’t to say that it’s not brainy. Was this just the voice that the book wanted? It’s like, “Oh, so we’re just like sitting on the curb having a cigarette together.”

Hugh Ryan: I actually wanted to buy a box of clove cigarettes while I was doing the research, but apparently they’re illegal now because they’re deadly and full of fiberglass.

So much of it is about writing it for people today who are younger, who look up to my books and are like, “I’m going to get my PhD and be just like you!,” and I was like, I didn’t do that, I’ve misrepresented myself somehow, and I want to be really real. Also, I had this job for four or five years where I ghost wrote a kids’ books series, and I was eventually fired, because I took a beloved character — who I am not allowed to name — and made her curse, which she had apparently never done in her 100-year history. When I made her say ‘hell’ and ‘damn’ while solving a mystery, the internet went wild, and you can find the Amazon page where I am ruined. So, the ability to curse in my work and have a real voice was something that, from very early on in my career, I was like, “Oh no, I got to be real careful about being too much myself on the page.”

Ryan in ‘90s Calvin Klein; Dave Navarro walks the Anna Sui Spring/Summer 1997 runway. (Hugh Ryan; Michel Arnaud; Gift of Arnaud Associates, 2000; From ASU FIDM Museum Collection)

MT: You needed to break that pattern of self-censoring. What was it like to shift the focus of your intellectual investigation onto yourself?

HR: Excruciating. At first I really enjoyed it, when it was just this idea. I’ve never really told these stories. In the early versions of it, everything I wrote was jokey, silly, overly stylized, not honest. I wasn’t ready to really dig in. I think that I had a lot of layers of defensiveness that I didn’t even understand I had until I had to write things down. My agent kept being, “No, no, this isn’t real, stop with these jokes, it is funny, but you have to get into the serious issues.” There was a large resistance inside me. Asking, “OK, how did my experiences relate to the ’90s as a whole?” actually let me talk about myself and the time period I emerged from. I needed that scaffolding to feel comfortable.

MT: How do you feel about Gen X’s legacy as basically the coolest generation?

HR: I mean, I kind of love it.

MT: We’re having the most sex, even though we’re so old now. And we’re tough, because we’ve survived so much queer trauma. You write in “My Bad” about having Snapple bottles thrown out windows at you.

HR: If you looked queer and you were out in the world, it was just accepted that at some point during the day someone was going to be violent towards you. Verbally, maybe physically. It just was what it was. Though I will say, having now, later in my life, thrown some Snapple bottles really hard just to feel it, it does feel very good. They’re heavy, they’re glass, they explode. If you can get your hands on some classic ’90s Snapple, just throw them, just try it.

MT: We have to have a queer, Gen X ritual of throwing Snapple bottles, like a rage room.

Ryan in the ‘90s. In his new memoir “My Bad,” Ryan looks back on this time with the intimate, funny rough language of your freakiest, funnest bestie.

(Hugh Ryan)

HR: I do think that it’s easy to forget all of that, because I think we all wanted to forget it to a certain degree. We wanted to let go of our pain. Both the people who were hurt and the people who caused those hurts had some amount of evolution. This is something I think about a lot with my family. If you read the book, in the early chapters it’s rough with my folks. They were loving, but also had no idea what to do with me. I was not just gay, I was weird and trans and confused, and always making noise and acting out and being inappropriate. There’s all this tough stuff, and then we try to forgive each other and let it go, but without saying it. Writing the book was this moment of, “Oh no, am I making us talk about all the bad times again?” It took me sitting with that and realizing — that’s the only way to get to the other side. I’ve seen this change in my family, and it felt important to document how shitty it was, so we could see the change.

MT: What sign are you?

HR: Cancer.

MT: You’re Cancer?!

HR: Yeah, tell me about it. I know so little about astrology. It’s the straightest thing about me, how little I know about astrology.

MT: I don’t even know what to say, because I’m getting such Aquarius-Virgo-Gemini from you that Cancer is just blowing my mind.

HR: I do have a shell, I know that about myself. And that was my first two books. Now I’m trying to invite people in.

MT: Will you talk about the club kid scene in New York City in the ’90s?

HR: I just touched up on the edges of it. The club kid movement really stopped after effective retrovirals come in, in 1996. Suddenly club kids saw a future for themselves, and did not all imagine that they were going to die of AIDS imminently. The ones who I’ve interviewed have said, “That’s the moment at which suddenly, dressing for Friday night no longer felt like what you spend two weeks doing.” But when it was happening, it was amazing. There were these free magazines in New York City, HX and Next, little queer rags full of party promotions and photos of half-naked people in clubs, and ads for those awful viatical companies that would buy up your life insurance if you had AIDS. They were very weird, but they’re like style bibles for me. And then you would go to the clubs.

When you went to Limelight, there would be two entrances, one for straight people and one for gay people. The bouncer at the line for the straight entrance was a giant gay guy, who — this was abusive, and probably wrong, but it was very funny — he’d be like, “You two make out if you’re gonna tell me you’re gay, make out or you don’t come in.” You only got access to half the club if you went in the straight entrance — the other half was only for queer people, and so you would have these straight folks trying to get in. It was amazing, and it was a place where I came to really love my body, because up until then the only things I had been told my body were for were sports, and that was never going to be me. There, I could dance all night.

Limelight was the coolest, but I loved Tunnel. Tunnel was 80,000 square feet of nightclub in a former railway terminal. There was a room entirely designed by the artist Kenny Scharf, and it was covered in fake fur — in a club when smoking was still allowed! It was the worst smelling place I’ve ever been in my whole life. I would sneak down there wearing giant Jnco raver pants, and watch everyone. These giant pants had these huge pockets in them, and I would put a big, gallon Ziploc bag with a clean T-shirt and clean socks inside the pant pocket. When the night was done I would go out, get food, change my clothes, and put the dirty clothes inside the Ziploc bag. I still had to have the pants on. I carried like the smell of 1,000 humid homosexuals with me everywhere I went.

The club, Ryan says, “was a place where I came to really love my body, because up until then the only things I had been told my body were for were sports, and that was never going to be me.”

(Hugh Ryan)

MT: Speaking of being grimy — you were also really affected by Burning Man.

HR: I had met this guy, we totally fell in love. He was a high school dropout computer hacker who was the epitome of the bisexual ’90s — longhaired, androgynous, everything I wanted to be. You know, that very queer thing of: Do I want you, do I want to be you, should we go on a road trip or a killing spree? We were in love and I did not want to go back to school. I had had a terrible junior year, and I was looking to make new mistakes. He was like, “I’m gonna go to this thing called Burning Man, do you want to go? It’s out in the desert, there’s all this art, and it’s super cool,” and I was like, “When is it?” And it was the very first week of classes my senior year, and I was like, “Yeah, absolutely.”

It was amazing. We got adopted by these people who called themselves the Church of Mez, or Mezbians. They were extremely rich Microsoft engineers. We were completely unprepared, because we’d f—ing come in on the Greyhound bus. You’re supposed to bring a gallon of water per person per day, just to start with, and we had nothing. We had a tent and a sleeping bag, and these people thought we were somewhere between pets and aphrodisiacs.

It felt like such an amazing thing to get to touch. And I know that all of those people ended up being like fascist tech bros of today, I’m sure, and I worry about the environmental degradation that I did not know anything about. And it was so white, so many white people with dreadlocks and those terrible tribal tattoos. Like many things in the book, I have to write about it tenderly, even though I know there are so many problems. I don’t think I would be who I was if I didn’t show some tenderness towards those spaces that made me, or at least allowed me to see myself.

Michelle Tea is the author of more than 20 books for grown-ups, teenagers and children.

IF you’re looking for inspiration to entertain your kids during the half term, the UK’s biggest garden centre could be the solution.

The 25-acre site boasts numerous gardens, shops, a cafe and soft play area.

Bridgemere Garden Centre, in Nantwich, Cheshire, features more than enough to keep the family entertained the whole day.

Named Britain’s largest garden centre by The Guinness Book of Records, the massive space holds a restaurant and tearoom on site.

Visitors can feast on a range of deli goods and brunch specials, before retiring to the tearoom to indulge in a handmade patisserie – or two.

The area has more than six acres of gardens, including the Cottage Garden and Woodland Walk, where kids will have plenty of space to run around.

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When you tire out from visiting any of the 13 show gardens, an open-air café is situated right in the centre – ideal for a quick coffee and cake.

The site even has a Hobbycraft, which sells everything from clothing and books to gardening supplies.

For those with younger children, the centre’s soft play area is the perfect place to keep them busy.

The gardens also have a number of rotating events, including an upcoming food festival on June 27 and 28.

General admission is free, meaning a visit won’t be a burden on your budget.

Pets are also welcome, so you don’t need to leave your furry friend at home.

During the summer, the centre operates between 9am and 6pm on Monday to Saturday, and from 10.30am to 4.30pm on Sunday.

Nestled on the Norfolk coast, this village boasts a stunning dog-friendly beach, famous striped cliffs and the Old Town Beach Cafe serving afternoon tea by the sea

If a peaceful coastal retreat is on your wish list, this charming village delivers seaside serenity in spades, along with plenty of spots to grab a decent cuppa.

Nestled along the Norfolk coastline, this quiet gem boasts a breathtaking beach and dramatic clifftops, offering sweeping vistas and a welcome escape from the daily grind.

Old Hunstanton sits shoulder-to-shoulder with its bigger neighbour, the more well-known resort of Hunstanton – also called New Hunstanton – but it would be a mistake to overlook it. Its unhurried charm appeals to those who’d rather skip the hustle and bustle of a busy seaside town, with leisurely strolls and striking striped cliffs to admire.

The undisputed highlight of the village is Old Hunstanton Beach, a gorgeous sandy stretch that warmly welcomes families and four-legged friends alike, perfect for a paddle when the sun deigns to make an appearance.

Indeed, its dog-friendly reputation is a major draw for keen walkers and visitors eager to give their pooches a proper run around. One tripadvisor reviewer said: “Old Hunstanton Beach is a top pick for dog owners. Dogs are welcome year-round with no leash required on the spacious sands, offering true freedom.”

“This likely reflects the beach’s size and a culture of responsible dog ownership. Enjoy the beautiful cliffs and calm waters with your happy dog by your side!”

Forming part of this stunning landscape are the cliffs, famously banded with three distinct colour layers – red, brown and white. Their striking natural stripes make the beach particularly eye-catching and are believed to represent a geological site of special interest dating back to the Cretaceous Period.

Another notable feature of the area is the historic Old Hunstanton Lighthouse, originally constructed in 1844, perched atop the renowned cliffs. This provides a delightful walk on a pleasant day and delivers breathtaking views across the region.

Café on the beach

Located on picturesque Old Hunstanton Beach, directly opposite the RNLI, is Old Town Beach Cafe, which offers a diverse menu championing locally sourced produce. For those seeking a more traditional pit stop, they also happen to dish up a lovely afternoon tea.

An afternoon tea right beside the sea sounds idyllic, yet it’s entirely achievable, with diners choosing lunch and breakfast options too. You can settle outside in the sand and gaze out at the blue shades of the rolling waves while you sip away.

One diner commented on Tripadvisor: “I visited the old boathouse café twice this week, once for breakfast and again another day for afternoon tea. It’s in a great location just on Old Hunstanton Beach, and the food and service is excellent. A really great place to call into after a walk on the beach.”

Another hailed the venue as an “outstanding little café Hunstanton” while someone else highlighted the spotlessness of the establishment.

One customer gushed: “Spotlessly clean throughout, lovely friendly staff, excellent quality, cater for gluten-free, freshly cooked, served piping hot, mega breakfast excellent as were homemade sweet potato patties gluten-free. Would definitely recommend.”

One of the things journalism teaches you over and over again is that nothing ruins a good story quite like the facts.

Consider, for example, this week’s renewal of the chattering classes’ infatuation with the “tea party” movement, timed to coincide with the deadline to file federal income tax returns. The group is conventionally portrayed as a burgeoning populist expression of discontent that sprouted spontaneously from the grass-roots and cuts in new ways across sectional, class and gender lines.

Reams of analysis have proceeded from those assumptions, but like a great deal that’s based on anecdotal reporting, it turns out to be wrong. To their great credit, the New York Times and CBS undertook extensive, and expensive, polling that provides the first reliable look at the tea party supporters. Little that has been generally assumed survived the scrutiny.

As it turns out, fewer than 1 in 5 Americans “supports” the tea party movement in any respect, and just 4% of all adult Americans have contributed to it or attended one of its events or both. (On any given day, you probably could drum up twice as many people who think the Pentagon is hiding dead aliens in Area 51.)

Of the 18% of all adults who expressed support for the tea party, the overwhelming majority were white (89%), male (59%) Republicans over age 45 (75%) and significantly more affluent and better educated than the majority of Americans. One in five has an annual income greater than $100,000, and 37% have advanced degrees. More than 9 out of 10 think President Obama is pushing the country into “socialism.”

The survey also found that more than half of the tea party supporters say “the policies of the administration favor the poor, and 25% think that the administration favors blacks over whites — compared with 11% of the general public.”

If all this is beginning to have a familiar ring, it’s because you’ve met these guys before: They’re the “angry white males” we’ve been reading about since political strategist-turned-analyst Kevin Phillips first identified them as an electoral presence during Richard Nixon’s successful presidential campaign in 1968.

They share many qualities with other Americans. For example, while 96% of tea party supporters say they disapprove of the current Congress, 40% think their own representative does a good job, a sentiment shared by 46% of all adults, 73% of whom disapprove of the performance of Congress as a whole.

They aren’t, however, implacable foes of “big government” or even of taxes. More than half (52%) told the pollsters they think their own “income taxes this year are fair,” just 10% less than all American adults. Moreover, a majority told follow-up interviewers that, though they wanted “smaller government,” they didn’t want cuts in our largest social programs, Social Security and Medicare.

So much for the surge of a new anti-government populism.

What the movement really amounts to is old wine in new skins, a re-branding of the old-fashioned angry white male in a camera-ready package tailored to the demands of the 24-hour cable news cycle.

Let’s return to this week, for example: There’s nothing harder for TV to cover than a tax-filing deadline — no conflict, no action pictures. By staging rallies on April 15, and particularly in Washington, the tea party’s strategists made themselves and their speakers the center of cable news coverage. This was true despite the fact that, as the poll demonstrates, a majority of the movement’s supporters think their taxes are fair.

As regular readers of this column will recall, the public packaging of the tea party movement — and particularly events that win it TV airtime, like cross-country bus tours, rallies and ads — is mainly the product of California Republican political consultants, foremost among them the Sacramento-based firm of Russo Marsh and Rogers. That company has not only promoted the movement but also used it to raise money for a political action committee, Our Country Deserves Better, founded to oppose Obama during the general election. This week, Politico reported that, according to federal filings, the Our Country PAC has raised $2.7 million since launching the Tea Party Express bus tours.

“That fundraising success,” Politico wrote, “has also meant a brisk business for Russo Marsh.” The website found that Russo Marsh and a sister firm received $1.9 million of the $4.1 million in payments made by the PAC; some of those funds would have gone for TV airtime and to vendors.

It’s good to see that all the creeping socialism in the nation hasn’t silenced traditional voices, like those of the angry white male, nor wrung the profit motive from our politics.

timothy.rutten@latimes.com

SUNDAY may be a day of rest in Europe, but that’s not the case for Puerto Rico. 

The shops were shut, but the city of Ponce was very much awake.  

As I wandered the streets, locals cruised past in their vintage cars, music blasted from lively bars and groups of youngsters burst into spontaneous dance on the streets. 

In the main square, families strolled past colourful murals and beautiful yet crumbling Art Deco buildings, while old men put the world to rights over a leisurely game of dominoes in the main square. 

Ponce (pronounced Pon-say) was the last stop on my Tropical Isles cruise onboard the recently refurbished Marella Discovery. 

It’s a new port for Marella so, like ­Christopher Columbus — who discovered the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico back in 1493 — I was excited to be one of the first people to explore. 

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Week-long sailings start and finish in La Romana, in the Dominican Republic, calling at the nearby nature reserve of Isla Catalina, the Puerto Rican capital of San Juan and the US Virgin Islands of St Thomas and St Croix. 

Now I’ve been lucky enough to visit the Caribbean a few times before, but I was still surprised by how green these islands were.  

And while this itinerary gave me plenty of opportunity to sunbathe on white-sand beaches and sample local rum (I recommend Ron del Barrilito), I was still able to go hiking in the rainforest and kayak through beautiful coves. 

Staying active is something I would definitely recommend on a Marella cruise — not just because you’ll miss out on amazing experiences if you don’t, but because you’ll need to burn off all the extra calories you’re bound to consume on board. 

With nine restaurants and seven bars spread over 11 decks, you certainly won’t go hungry or thirsty — especially as Marella cruises are all-inclusive as standard.  

This means your flights, cabin, transfers to and from the ship, drinks, food and entertainment are all included in the price. 

Even your bags go straight from your home airport to your cabin door so you don’t have to worry about collecting them from a carousel or lugging them around. 

Compared to other cruise ships, Marella Discovery is quite small, accommodating up to 1,800 passengers.  

It’s really set up for British tourists, though, with Yorkshire Tea on tap and dishes such as steak and ale pie readily available in the excellent Islands buffet. 

Entertainment-wise, passengers can find their way out of an escape room, play a round of mini-golf or enjoy a musical afternoon tea. Plus there are West End-style shows, quizzes and gameshows galore. 

For better-quality booze and speciality ­coffees, you can upgrade to a Premium All Inclusive package, while speciality restaurants, including the Surf & Turf Steakhouse and Sushi Bar, come at an extra charge. 

But be sure to leave room for some traditional Caribbean delicacies when you leave the ship. At Café Manolin, in San Juan, I joined locals queuing to tuck into giant plates of mofongo, a much-loved Puerto Rican dish of fried green plantain stuffed with meat or veggies. 

Coffee is also big business here — and almost as popular as rapper Bad Bunny, who hails from the island.  

Many coffee plantations welcome visitors to sample their wares but I got my caffeine fix at Hacienda Jacana, in the mountainous region of Adjuntas, where owner Jonathan and his ex-cop father proudly showed off their farm while explaining details of the coffee-making process. 

I was buzzing after a few cups of their delicious Latitude 18° coffee — but it couldn’t possibly compare to the buzz I got in St Thomas after snorkelling with a group of green turtles in the crystal-clear water of Magens Bay. 

Granted, I had to keep reminding myself that I wouldn’t die if I tried to breathe ­normally underwater, but I forgot all about breathing when a metre-long turtle paddled right past my face. Just wow. 

As an animal lover, and a keen traveller missing my two dogs back home, I was also thrilled to stumble across the Ruff Night — Hair Of The Dog Bar in St Croix (pronounced Croy), just steps from where Marella Discovery docked in Frederiksted.

The lively bar, in the courtyard of the Victoria House Inn, is run by volunteers from the Ruff Start STX animal charity who love nothing more than mixing super-strong cocktails and bringing in puppies for punters to cuddle.  

And if that’s not reason enough to visit, all money raised from the bar goes directly to local dogs in need, so go armed with plenty of cash in your pocket! 

I’d certainly worked up a thirst after a morning kayaking in the nearby Salt River Bay, and I enjoyed getting back to nature there almost as much as I did at El Yunque National Forest — the jewel in the crown of Puerto Rico. 

The 28,000-acre site is the only tropical rainforest in the US and it has more than 100 miles of walking trails just waiting to be explored. With enormous trees providing canopies of greenery and exotic birds and frogs creating a cacophony of noise, it was just how I imagined a rainforest to be. 

While mosquitoes are rife here after dark, I managed to avoid being savaged by the pesky wee beasties during the daytime. 

One thing was for sure, though — I had definitely been bitten by the Caribbean cruise bug.