For over five decades, Alan Beck has been making maps and for the last 4 decades for LGBTQ travelers throughout the United States and Canada. He is the founder of FunMaps®, for generations of queer travelers, was a lifeline as much as a map. His story begins not in publishing, but in a high school newsroom in New Jersey, and the thread runs unbroken from there to the present day.
Alan's editorial instincts were shaped early. As a student at Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey, he served as editor of the school newspaper, an experience that left a deep enough impression that when he later founded his company, he named it Columbia Marketing Corporation, in part to honor his school newspaper and as it represents a symbol of the United States. He continued honing those skills at Lehigh University, where he wrote and edited for the college's Brown and White newspaper while earning a degree in finance and marketing. He also served in ROTC in college, and the Army Reserves, leaving with an honorable discharge, as a First Lieutenant.
After graduating, Alan turned those combined skills, editorial precision, financial acuity, and a knack for cartography into a business. Starting in 1973, he launched Columbia Marketing Corporation and began producing cartographic maps for the New York City area, serving Chambers of Commerce, Commerce and Industry, associations, with a niche in the real estate market. What started as a regional publishing operation grew steadily and purposefully. By the time Alan turned his attention to the LGBTQ+ community in the early 1990s, he had already spent two decades building a million- dollar plus enterprise producing map guides for businesses across the region, a body of work that gave him both the infrastructure and the credibility to take on something more personal.
A sampling of the tourism and regional maps produced by Beck's Columbia Marketing Corporation — examples of the cartographic work that built his company into a million-dollar enterprise before FunMaps ever entered the picture.
The maps that would define his public legacy grew out of an unlikely friendship. In 1989, Alan met Jeffrey Goodman, a Publisher producing gay and lesbian maps, called The David James Press LTD. maps. Alan and Goodman hit it off immediately, and what began as a professional acquaintance deepened into a close friendship.
An example of the cartoon-style, sponsor-supported maps that made Columbia Marketing's reputation — lively, illustrated guides placing clients at the center of their communities. This real estate map for Van Riper Realtors in Queens is typical of Beck's early commercial cartography.
A Friendship That Changed Everything
Alan was already producing 250,000 Long Island Fun Map’s for the Long Island Tourism Commission. Shortly after they met, Jeff Goodman saw a copy of these maps at a tourism information center in Valley Stream Long Island and realized that using the name Fun Map, as part of the David James Map, would enhance the appeal of his product and he approached Alan for permission to use the name Fun Map.
As the two men's working relationship evolved, Alan licensed the Fun Maps name to Goodman. In the beginning of the dot com era, Goodman combined the name Fun Map to Funmaps®, hence beginning the brand Funmaps®.
The Long Island Fun Map on display at the Greiner-Maltz Map Club — a Map Club Newsletter clipping documenting an early public appearance of the Fun Map brand. Columbia Marketing Corporation's Long Island Fun Map was distributing 250,000 copies across the region.
Then, in 1992, Goodman approached Alan with a proposition to sell his company. Alan initially hesitated as his own company was thriving and the acquisition carried real risk but was persuaded to move forward by two primary sales agents of Funmaps: Matt Mathrani and Alden Thayer, who were passionate about keeping the project alive and serving the community. Alan agreed, bought out Goodman's company, and FunMaps® became a subsidiary of Columbia Marketing Corporation. It was a decision that would change the course of his life and quietly change the lives of countless LGBTQ+ travelers across North America.
What followed was over three more decades of building something larger than a tourist guide. At its height, FunMaps® reached dozens of cities across the United States and Canada from New York to San Francisco, Toronto to Fort Lauderdale and the maps became indispensable companions for LGBTQ travelers who needed to know not just where to go, but where they would be safe and welcomed. That distinction mattered enormously in an era when mainstream directories simply erased queer spaces from the map altogether. Building and sustaining that network was not effortless work: Alan spent years working directly with business owners, organizers, community leaders, and advertisers to keep each edition current and well distributed, facing stigma and financial hurdles along the way without ever losing his conviction that LGBTQ+ people deserved to travel with confidence.
Building a Lifeline, One Map at a Time
As the internet reshaped publishing, Alan adapted rather than retreated. The map guides moved from print into mobile-friendly web maps and eventually an app, and in the past five years alone, Beck has published FunMaps® digitally for more than 41 destinations, putting all of them in users' hands through a single mobile app. His recognition has followed accordingly: in May 2024 he received a Trail Blazer Award for pioneering FunMaps®, and he was also honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Florida Out Coast Convention for his work in LGBTQ+ tourism, and a Lifetime Honors award from the Stonewall National Museum, Archives & Library.
Alan remains a fixture of Fort Lauderdale's LGBTQ+ institutional life, currently serving as Vice-Chair of the Stonewall National Museum, Archives & Library. His personal story including his Jewish upbringing, an early realization of his sexuality, three prior marriages, and his eventual partnership with Broward College history and ceramics professor Nicholas Starr, whom he met in New York over four decades ago adds depth to a public legacy built largely on maps but really built on something closer to trust.
Now in his late eighties, Alan is often described as a Publisher and as a friend, compassionate, loyal, and the kind of person who quietly supports other people's dreams. Though print maps have largely given way to digital platforms, FunMaps® continues to be published and distributed. For a community that has often had to find its own way, Alan Beck spent five decades making sure that way was easier to find.
Share Your Alan Beck Story
Alan Beck's legacy isn't just in the maps — it's in the thousands of people who used them to find a bar, a beach, a community center, or simply proof that they weren't alone in an unfamiliar city. If Fun Maps guided you somewhere that mattered, or if you crossed paths with Alan himself over the years — at a Pride event, through Columbia Marketing, at the Stonewall National Museum, or anywhere else his work touched — we want to hear about it.
Did a Fun Maps guide lead you to your favorite bar in a city you'd just moved to? Did it help you find safety, community, or even love somewhere far from home? Have you met Alan in person and come away with a story worth telling? Whether it's a quick memory or a longer reflection, your story helps complete a picture that no single article can capture — the human side of a project that, for over fifty years, helped a community find itself.
Share your stories, photos, and memories using the form below. We may feature them in a follow-up piece honoring his remarkable contribution to LGBTQ+ travel and community life.
Tell Us Your Story
Whether Fun Maps guided you somewhere unforgettable, or you have a personal memory of Alan himself, we'd love to hear it. A few stories may be featured in a follow-up piece honoring his legacy.