 Daniel Harris describes the founding of "After Dark" as

One of the strangest reincarnations in journalistic history.Catering to musically inclined blue-haired old ladies and golfers in Hush Puppies, "Ballroom Dance Magazine" was a recreational journal for the geriatric set.It was out of the ashes of a periodical devoted to such topics as waltzes, rumbas, and turkey trots that "After Dark", an audacious mass-market experiment in gay eroticism, arose like a phoenix in all of its subversive splendor.