Saturday, July 28, 2007

82 Club in NYC





Boys and the Band

Most people believe that gay life pre-Stonewall was hidden and full of shame. Thankfully an upcoming event by Drag historian and NYU professor Joe E. Jeffreys will shed a light on the joy and exuberance some gay men were able to find during the 1950s. Starting in that decade through to the 70s the East Village nightspot, the 82 Club, offered lavish drag shows three times a night. Later the 82 became a rock and roll club where bands like the New York Dolls and the Mumps played. The club also served as a gay male cruising ground.

Professor Jeffreys, who recently screened a mockumentary about the history of drag queens in NYC, will host this multi-media talk incoporating hundreds of photographs that span the history of the space, as well as rare audio and video clips of this legendary club.

For more on this interesting phenomenon, and to see some wonderful photos from that forgotten era, please visit the link at the bottom of this post. More on this club to come...





A NIGHT AT THE 82 CLUB
Monday, August 6th, 2007
6pm @ The Bijou, formerly the 82 Club
82 E. Fourth St. at Second Ave.
8pm @ Dixon Place
258 Bowery @ Stanton St.
212-219-0736
www.dixonplace.org
$12/$10 for students/seniors


82 Club
http://www.queermusicheritage.us/fem-cl82a.html
http://streetsyoucrossed.blogspot.com/2005/09/what-drag-too-many-snags.html
http://www.vickirene.net/intterry.htm
http://www.sohoblues.com/Clubs&Discos/index.htm
http://gridskipper.com/travel/new-york/top-picks-historic-gay-east-village-272791.php
http://cinematreasures.org/theater/16899/

Gay New York
http://www.amazon.com/Gay-New-York-Culture-1890-1940/dp/0465026214

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Marc Rubin


From our archives:

Date: Sun Mar 18, 2007 9:37 pm
Subject: Marc Rubin

They say that things happen in 3's. It pains me to say that at least in the case of the passing of Stonewall-Era gay activists, this has been the case these weeks. Last month saw the passing of Marc Rubin as well as a very generous anonymous donor who helped fund the early Gay Movement, in addition to pioneer Barbara Gittings.

Marc Rubin was an early activist who was a leader in the Gay Activists' Alliance (GAA) in the 1970s as well as a member of the Lavender Hill Mob. In 1974 he helped found the Gay Teachers Association, and was involved in the early planning for the Institute for the Protection of Lesbian and Gay Youth, the original incarnation of the present Hetrick-Martin Institute. In 1994, Mr. Rubin was one of the primary organizers of the Stonewall 25 celebration and insisted that both the GAA and GLF (Gay Liberation Front) be given special places of honor. This was in response to what he felt was the erasure of the role the GAA and GLF played in the early stages of the movement by gay historians.

To give just a bare bones version of their history and significance, the GLF was the organization that came directly out of the Stonewall Rebellion in 1969. Members of GLF were often divided on which direction to move in, and as a result of their fractured direction, led to the group's disbanding after about 2 years. Despite being so short-lived GLF is important, amongst other reasons, for putting forth the notion that the act of coming out was itself a political one.

GLF members who wanted to focus solely on gay issues broke off to form their own organization, the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA). The GAA were known for their work both politically and socially. They frequently organized ZAPS, which were public confrontations with elected officials regarding various issues relating to the gay and lesbian community. In a short time they managed to get passed several laws protecting gays and lesbians in NYC. The GAA headquarters also became a community center of sorts, organizing fundraisers and dances, which helped fund the GAA.

Unfortunately in an arson that remains unsolved to this day, the headquarters burned down, which along with other factors led to the group's dismantling in 1981. GAA members went on to found the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), and the LGBT Community Center in NYC. Another offspring organization, the Lavender Hill Mob, eventually would go on to join forces with ACT-UP to protest discriminatory practices regarding HIV/AIDS issues.

I'll write more in-depth about the GLF, GAA, Lavender Hill Mob, and HMI in future posts, but for now, to learn more, go to:

Marc Rubin
MarcRubin1
MarcRubin2

GAA
GAA1 (please excuse the top photos!)
GAA2
GAA3
GAA4

GLF
GLF1
GLF2
GLF3
GLF4
GLF5


Lavender Hill Mob
LavenderHillMob1
LavenderHillMob2

LavenderHillMob3

LavenderHillMob4

Hetrick-Martin Institute
HMI1
HMI2

********************************************************


http://gaycitynews.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18055302&BRD=2729&PAG=461&dept_id=568862&rfi=6


Marc Rubin, Early Activist, Teachers' Organizer, Dead at 74
By: PAUL SCHINDLER
03/08/2007
Email to a friend Post a Comment Printer-friendly



GAA activists (l. to r.) Vito Russo, Jim Owles, Marc Rubin, and Pete Fisher get a summons from police for staging a dance at the group�s famed Firehouse headquarters in Soho.

Marc Rubin, a pioneering activist who was a leader in New York's Gay Activist Alliance (GAA) of the early 1970s, helped found the Gay Teachers Association in 1974, and was part of the Lavender Hill Mob, a direct-action precursor to ACT UP, died on February 28 at the age of 74.


Rubin's death was announced by his partner of more than 35 years, author and activist Pete Fisher.


Contemporaries of Rubin recall his "commanding presence" at public demonstrations in Manhattan that were often met with law enforcement hostility and the scorn of passersby.


Recalling Rubin and Fisher as "a legendary couple" in GAA, Joe Kennedy, author of "Summer of '77: Last Hurrah of the Gay Activists Alliance," said, "They were very courageous. Others might be intimidated by hostile crowds. They would go places others would not." Kennedy described the couple attending Fisher's high school reunion in Westchester in the early '70s dressed "in full leather regalia."

Kennedy said that Rubin's size and "booming voice" gave him a memorable role in the many activist debates of the era, but emphasized that he was influential because he was "very persuasive," not domineering.

"He was a natural leader," Kennedy said.


Steve Ashkinazy, a social worker, also knew Rubin during this period and worked with him briefly on the early planning for the Institute for the Protection of Lesbian and Gay Youth, now the Hetrick-Martin Institute. Commenting on Rubin's death, Ashkinazy said he had just days before watched a video of the two of them speaking at a high school during the early 1970s. A public school teacher who worked with delinquent boys, Rubin with Fisher wrote a novel based on his experiences, "Special Teachers/ Special Boys," published by St. Martin's in 1978.

In 1974, Rubin, one of the first out gay teachers in the city's school system, and Merill Friedman placed a notice in the Village Voice to organize the Gay Teachers Association. Roughly 40 people turned out to form the group now known as the Lesbian and Gay Teachers Association. It was from the ranks of that group that Lambda Legal in 1987 drew the plaintiffs for a lawsuit to win domestic partner benefits for lesbian and gay public school teachers. The suit dragged on for six years, and was settled in negotiations with Mayor David Dinkins giving such benefits to all city employees just days before he lost to Rudy Giuliani in 1993.


In a 1999 remembrance published by Gay Today at badpuppy.com on the occasion of Stonewall's 30th anniversary, Rubin recalled the spirit of his activism in the early days, and lamented the "erasure" of GAA from queer history, even in the gay press.


"To distort history is to redefine reality, to bend it towards serving selective and exclusiona y agendas," he wrote. Then contrasting GAA with the group it grew up in reaction to, Rubin wrote, "GLF, Gay Liberation Front, was conceived as being part of the entire Liberation movement, one segment of a worldwide struggle against oppression. It was anarchic and strongly allied to, albeit rather unwelcome in, all leftist movements. The Gay Activists Alliance stood for writing the revolution into law... [T]he organization's single issue focus enabled it direct all of its energies toward working intensively in, on, with, and against 'The Establishment' on issues affecting lesbians and gay men."


He then went on to recall a dozen demonstrations, pickets, sit-ins, and zaps aimed at unfriendly or uncooperative institutions from the City Council to St. Patrick's Cathedral to the Taxi and Limousine Commission (for requiring psychological testing of gay taxi drivers) to "The Dick Cavett Show" (because of the host's "relentless anti-gay spiels"). It was that ethic of on-the-spot activism that Rubin and others, most notably Marty Robinson, brought to the Lavender Hill Mob's AIDS protest activities in the mid-'80s.


"I really adored him," said poet, novelist, and activist Perry Brass in admiration of Rubin's dedicated activism. Seeing Rubin for the first time in several years at an ACT UP meeting in the late '80s, Kennedy recalled him saying, "I will never be as young and energetic as I once was, but I will always be an activist."

Indeed, Rubin was one of the primary organizers of the city's massive Stonewall 25 celebration in 1994, at which he insisted GAA and GLF be given special places of honor.

Two years ago, Rubin, suffering from symptoms that included memory loss, underwent brain surgery, from which he recovered well. Kennedy, however, said that on Pride Sunday last year he received a call from Rubin saying that for the first time ever he was too sick to join the annual celebration and was instead spending the day calling his "old activist comrades."
Plans for a memorial service for Marc Rubin have not yet been completed.



©GayCityNews 2007

Anonymous Donor to Early LGBT Movement


From our archives:

Date: Wed Mar 14, 2007 7:58 pm
Subject: Anonymous Donor to Early LGBT Movement

A wonderful article on the life, contributions, and recent passing of an anonymous donor who helped fund a great deal of some of the movement's earliest endeavors. Choosing to remain anonymous to inspire others to give in the same way, the donor funded the co-founder of the National Gay Task Force, Bruce Voeller, allowing him to successfully lobby key American Psychiatric Association members in removing homosexuality from its index of mental disorders in 1973. The donor was also involved in funding the Institute for the Protection of Lesbian and Gay Youth (the precursor to the Hetrick-Martin Institute) in the 80s, as well as SAGE (Senior Action in a Gay Environment), and the Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project-sponsored ads in the New York Times after the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard. Strongly concerned about homeless LGBT youth, this donor gave huge sums to MCC (Manhattan Community Church) to fund shelters like Sylvia's Place and Marsha P. Johnson Drop-In Center.

I think this donor's life and work is an inspiration to young people of gays helping our own. To be able to step out of one's own financially comfortable experience to understand that for others less fortunate things could be a lot more difficult is certainly a trait more of us could stand to display.


http://gaycitynews.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18055247&BRD=2729&PAG=461&dept_id=568864&rfi=6

********************************************************

Anonymous Generosity, In Life and In Death
03/08/2007


A New York gay man who donated millions of dollars to LGBT causes going back to the early 1970s died February 22 at age 85.


He insisted on remaining anonymous in life and in death not out of a desire to be closeted, but rather to inspire others to give in the same way. This reporter knew him for 20 years and served as an intermediary between him and several organizations he supported over the last decade.

The donor, whose fortune was made as a Manhattan art dealer, was also an expert on sexually transmitted infections, for years running a foundation that disseminated prevention pamphlets he authored. An intimate of Margaret Sanger, he was also active in the defense of reproductive rights.

In the early 1970s, the donor funded Bruce Voeller - who co-founded the National Gay Task Force in 1973 - to lobby members of the American Psychiatric Association to drop homosexuality from its index of mental disorders. Washington's Franklin Kameny and the recently deceased Barbara Gittings of Philadelphia played the central public roles in that campaign, but the funding Voeller received allowed him to privately lobby key association members. The APA voted to make the change in 1973.

Voeller's initial salary at the Task Force was $250 a week, not enough to support his children from a previous marriage. The donor stepped in and more than doubled his compensation. A biologist, Voeller went on to establish the Mariposa Foundation for research on sexuality and STDs. The group pioneered the use of the spermicide nonoxynol-9 as an HIV-preventative during sex. Voeller died of AIDS in 1994.

Perhaps the most famous story about the anonymous donor is how he provided the seed money for the Institute for the Protection of Lesbian and Gay Youth - now the Hetrick-Martin Institute- to offer social services beginning in 1983. Founded in 1979 by the late Drs. Emery Hetrick and Damien Martin, it had been a volunteer advocacy and research group.

As a board member of Dignity, the gay Catholic group, in the early 1980s, I remember Hetrick and Martin making a lengthy presentation just to secure a $100 donation for the Institute (an indelible memory about the state of gay philanthropy in those days). The donor heard about the Institute's work, met Hetrick and Martin in their Murray Hill apartment, pulled $25,000 in cash out of his boot, and told them that he had another $25,000 for them but that it did not fit in the boot.

"Without this donor, it never would have gotten started," said Dr. Joyce Hunter, a founding member, who was vice president of the Institute's board at the time and went on become its first director of social work. She said the city matched the donor's contribution soon afterward.

Over the next decade, the donor pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars more into the Institute.

One of his primary causes over the last decade was SAGE, the New York agency providing services and advocacy for LGBT elders, to which he contributed nearly a million dollars. He sponsored full-page ads for SAGE in the New York Times promoting the slogan, "Who loves you when you're old and gay? SAGE does!" featuring a big photo of exuberant SAGE members singing around a piano.
The donor also paid for ads sponsored by the Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project on the op-ed page of the Times after the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, saying that the killers "acted in an atmosphere poisoned by the anti-gay rhetoric of religious and political extremists" and calling for education of young people in schools and at home on "tolerance, understanding, kindness, and concern for all."

One of the anonymous donor's lifelong concerns was homeless people, especially LGBT youth on the streets. Though he was not a religious man, he became a major donor to the Metropolitan Community Church of New York and its many programs for these young people. At his death, he was providing major funding for MCC's Sylvia's Place shelter for homeless LGBT youth - named for the late transgender leader Sylvia Rivera - on church premises at 446 West 36th Street and the new Marsha P. Johnson Drop-In Center, named for another noted transgender activist who is deceased, set to open in Harlem soon.

On the Sunday following his death, Reverend Pat Bumgardner, senior pastor of MCC, told her congregation that the donor was "as an imitator of God's generosity and kindness and that he strove by his example to make God's will for housing the homeless and feeding the hungry a reality."

While gay philanthropists have stepped forward since with more money and more varied causes, this donor will be remembered - though not by name - as providing critical sums when no one else would to populations in the community that almost no other big contributors cared about.



©GayCityNews 2007

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Greenwich Village Society For Historic Preservation


From the archives:

Date: Mon Jul 17, 2006 10:00 pm
Subject: Greenwich Village Society For Historic Preservation

There is an organization called the Greenwich Village Society For Historic Preservation and its website is http://www.gvshp.org/. Recently there was an article in Gay City News about the organization:

http://www.gaycitynews.com/gcn_525/preservingwestvillage.html


Volume 5, Number 25 | June 22 - 28, 2006

COMMUNITY



GVSHP executive director Andrew Berman stands in front of 129 McDougal Street—which historian George Chauncey found was the Eve Addams Tearoom from 1925 to 1926, run by Polish Jewish lesbian émigré Eva Kotchever and fronted with a sign that read "Men are admitted but not welcome"—was preserved in 2004. Kotchever's tearoom was raided by police, and she was convicted of "obscenity. GVSHP seeks a district-wide historic designation for the South Village. 2 Weehawken Street/394 West Street was the home of the Ramrod, a gay denim/leather bar from 1976 until 1980, when a former transit officer fired into it, killing two men and wounding six others. The city historic designation for Weehawken cites the role the west end of Christopher Street and adjoining blocks played in the gay bar scene's growth in the early 1970s.

Preserving West Village Gay History

Christopher Street's west end at Weehawken has won protection from the city

BY JAMES WITHERS

The past is always with us. Sure there are times when it is conveniently put away, or purposefully forgotten, but what happened before always stays around patiently waiting to be remembered or acknowledged. The history of gay New York is slowly becoming part of the official record the city keeps when it honors the past.

Last month city officials announced a new historic area in Greenwich Village. Called the Weehawken Street Historic District, the report the city wrote describing the designation is, as described by Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, "chock full of references to the area's gay history."

The district ranges from the corner of Christopher and Weehawken Streets and ends slightly beyond West 10th Street. According to Berman, this stretch of the Village was critical to gay life after the Stonewall Rebellion.

"Weehawken Street is an important part of gay history because in the 1970s through the 1990s, there was a very significant concentration of gay establishments, and it was a clear nexus of gay life in New York," said Berman. Although Stonewall ushered in an era of political activism, gay life as recently as 25 or 30 years ago remained essentially underground, minus the bright lights of public visibility.

The very layout of Weehawken permitted a gay cultural life to flourish outside the view of prying eyes.

"The fact that it was this tiny street tucked away, that one would likely never know about unless one was looking for it, allowed for the creation of a kind of private world which allowed something still somewhat furtive like gay life to flourish," said Berman. "It was also this separateness and hidden quality which probably also contributed to the anachronistic architecture being preserved as well. While this `hidden world' quality also led to some unsavory activity, by its very nature it also allowed a subculture to flourish here that had few other places to flourish."

Six of the 14 buildings in the district were the homes of various gay bars. Some are still open for business—such as the Dugout—while others like Peter Rabbit, Sneakers, West Beach Bar & Grill, and Badlands have closed their doors. The Ramrod was shut down at the end of 1980, right after an infamous November shooting in which a homophobic attacker killed two men with a semi-automatic.

Making sure the city remembers the diversity of its past is one of missions of the GVSHP. Berman notes the organization, which was involved in the Stonewall National Register designation in 1999 preserving the famed bar on Christopher near Gay Street, is currently preparing to submit another application for the South Village.

"The South Village is the area south of Washington Square Park and West 4th Street between 7th Avenue and LaGuardia Place," said Berman. "In this case, the gay history goes back to the 1920s and earlier, and thus it will be part of the `historic' information we submit and the argument we will make for the area's significance and worthiness of landmark protections."

Historic designations serve an significant purpose, not only for specific neighborhoods, but also for the city on a whole.

"Historic district and landmark designations are so important because in our ever- changing city, they are amongst the only ways to ensure that significant parts of our city's history are preserved, and that things about our city that we think are significant are recognized and documented," said Berman. "Many aspects of our city's history have never been really given the due it deserves."

According to Berman, one segment of New York history that has been overlooked has been the impact of immigrant neighborhoods, a rather shocking fact considering the importance of newcomers from other nations in the building of this the city. GVSHP's hope is this oversight will change with the South Village proposal.

"Believe it or not, no neighborhood in New York City has ever been designated a historic district based upon its immigrant history, and we hope the South Village will be the first," Berman said.

The city currently has 85 historic districts—including the African Burial Ground near City Hall and the Gansevoort Market in Manhattan; Park Slope and the Heights in Brooklyn; Riverdale and Mott Haven in the Bronx; Jackson Heights and Fort Totten in Queens; and St. George in Staten Island.

Once a neighborhood is given the designation, buildings are protected from demolition and the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission must approve any exterior alterations.


For more information on the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, visit www.gvshp.org.

Barbara Gittings


From the archives:

Date: Thu Mar 8, 2007 8:47 pm
Subject: Barbara Gittings


Hi everyone,

As you might have heard, the legendary, iconic, gay activist Barabara Gittings died late last month on February 18th at the age of 75, after a lengthy fight with breast cancer.

Widely regarded as the mother of the modern Gay Rights Movement, Barbara Gittings was one of the early pioneers of Gay Rights in the 1950s, helped found the NYC chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis, and edited an early lesbian publication called "The Ladder," from 1963 to 1966. In 1965, 3 years before the milestone event of the Stonewall Rebellion in 1969, Gittings helped organize one of the first gay rights protests in modern memory in demonstrations at the White House in Washington DC and Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Along with another Gay Rights pioneer Frank Kameny, Barbara Gittings was instrumental in the campaign that led to the American Psychiatric Association's 1973 decision to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. Ms. Gittings was instrumental in securing the appearance and testimony of that famous, pro-gay masked psychiatrist.

When I heard about her passing I had to jot down my reaction so I've
included it here below at the end of this post.

*****************

The wonderful podcast, Gay USA, hosted by veteran LGBTQ rights
activists Andy Humm and Ann Northrop, dedicated an episode to Barbara Gittings and you can listen to it here:
http://web.mac.com/depeche7/iWeb/Site/Podcast/D874F98A-9418-4D75-805A-0E3D037D54\
62.html


*****************

The following is a partial listing of coverage of her passing by media sources:
http://gaycitynews.com/site/index.cfm?newsid=17884544&BRD=2729&PAG=461&dept_id=5\
68864&rfi=8

http://www.edgeboston.com/index.php?ci=108&ch=news&sc=glbt&sc2=news&sc3=&id=1829\
3

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/19/AR2007021900921.\
html

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/states/pennsylvania/counties/phila\
delphia_county/philadelphia/16736722.htm

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-passings20.2feb20,1,29\
04550.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=aR_HOK8TU.E0&refer=muse
http://www.generationq.net/articles/Gay-Pioneer-dies-at-75-00001.html
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--obit-gittings0218feb18,\
0,5155742.story?coll=ny-region-apnewyork


*****************

The following are some articles on Ms. Gittings:
http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/gittings_b.html
http://www.citypaper.net/articles/042299/feat.20q.shtml
http://www.glbthistorymonth.com/glbthistorymonth/bio.cfm?LeaderID=14
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Gittings

*****************

Barbara Gittings has been featured in many documentaries on gay
history. Here is a partial listing:
Before Stonewall http://imdb.com/title/tt0088782/
After Stonewall http://imdb.com/title/tt0244955/
Out of the Past http://www.pbs.org/outofthepast/

*****************

A partial listing of statements released by our community leaders
mourning the passing of Barabara Gittings:
http://www.thetaskforce.org/Update/2007/07_07_0221/index.htm
http://www.glsen.org/cgi-bin/iowa/all/news/record/2039.html
http://www.hrc.org/Template.cfm?Section=Press_Room&CONTENTID=35521&TEMPLATE=/Con\
tentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm

http://www.glaad.org/media/release_detail.php?id=3977&

*****************

I don't know what this is, but I was immediately devastated. I was very angry and then I felt sad, then nauseated I did not know her and have never met her. What I do know is that she is definitely one of our founding mothers for everyone who is LGBTQ in America. Her work laid the groundwork for our movement and we would not have the freedoms today if it weren't for her efforts.

I guess i am upset because it is as if my parent has died. I know this is so contrived and silly to say and to feel but somehow i feel connected to her and am touched by her story. Somehow I always felt that as an activist i might some day be able to meet her and to tell her how much her work has meant to me. That in our times today where so many of our LGBTQ youth do not know anything about their history that someone like me feels so grateful for her and her work. I am incredibly sad that I will never get a chance to tell her this.

Another part of me feels with her passing, we as a community becomes that much more removed from those times of the initial fire that fueled our movement. i guess what i am afraid of is that oftentimes when we protest and fight for justice, we do it not so we ourselves can enjoy the fruits of our labor because we often cant, but in order so that those that come after us can enjoy a level of freedom that we ourselves cannot and did not. But then because the previous generation was so successful, the next often experiences a situation that's so vastly liberating that they mistakenly believe that the freedoms that they have had always been there.

That is why I hope that Stonewall Youth can become a place where the importance of our history and struggle is being passed onto the next generation.

Gay L.A.


From the archives:

Date: Sun Sep 24, 2006 9:13 pm
Subject: Gay L.A.

Hi Everyone:

I just wanted to let everyone know of a new book that's coming out in October called Gay L.A. cowritten by famed lesbian historian Lillian Faderman. There is a great interview with her about the book in the current issue of Lesbian News(http://www.lesbiannews.com/), the one with hottie Jackie Warner of Bravo's WorkOut on the cover. The article's not up on the web but below is a page selling the book. Enjoy!


http://www.booksamillion.com/ncom/books?isbn=046502288X

Drawing upon untouched archives of documents and photographs and more than 200 new interviews, the authors chart L.A.Us unique gay history, and show how geography,
economic opportunity, and a constant influx of new people created a city that
was more compatible to gay life than any other in America.

************************************************

Date: Fri Dec 1, 2006 11:06 pm
Subject: Re: Gay L.A.

Here's a great article in this week's Blade about the Queer L.A. book
I've mentioned, by Lillian Faderman:

http://www.nyblade.com/2006/11-27/arts/books/books.cfm

Discover Queer L.A.
Two authors research Los Angeles’ homo history

By KATHI WOLFE
Monday, November 27, 2006

Drag queens, butch hustlers, their friends and customers are talking,
cruising, camping at a gay hang-out. Cops arrive, harass the patrons,
make arrests and a riot breaks out. Stonewall, right? Wrong.

This riot occurred in 1959, when police raided Coopers Doughnuts, a
coffee shop in Los Angeles, say Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons,
co-authors of Gay L.A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics
and Lipstick Lesbians.

This was perhaps the first homosexual uprising in the world,
Faderman and Timmons write in Gay L.A.,a comprehensive social,
political and cultural history of gay and lesbian life in Los Angeles.
But the historic moment went unreported and unrecorded.

Mention gay culture, and youre likely to think of New York or San
Francisco, Faderman says in a Blade interview. While not denigrating
the contributions of these cities to the gay rights movement, Faderman
says a number of gay and lesbian institutions from the Metropolitan
Community Church to the first gay and lesbian community service
center began in L.A.

Lillian and I had a similar dream, says co-author Timmons, who also
spoke to the Blade about the new book. The pair wanted to highlight
L.A.s contributions to the national gay civil rights movement and
present a well-rounded picture of the citys emerging gay culture.

We wanted to talk about the diversity [of this history] the racial,
ethnic generational diversity, Faderman says.

The co-authors interviewed a variety of people, including former
Hollywood stars, Latinos, blacks and teens.

L.A. is the most diverse city in the world, Timmons says. Its
impossible to cover absolutely everything, but we did as best we could
to try to do that.

ITS HARD TO imagine a better pair to tackle the citys history.

Faderman, known as the founding mother of lesbian history, is the
award-winning author of numerous books, including Surpassing the Love
of Men and Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers.

I came out in 1956 in the [working class] teenage gay girls bar
scene, she says. Id never been a masculine-looking woman, but I got
stopped by the cops.

Though Faderman was hassled by the police for a supposedly
unfeminine demeanor, she wasnt arrested, she says.

Timmons also has a rich history with L.A., having lived there for 30
years.

I came here in 1976 to go to college, he says. I got involved with
covering the growing gay scene ... doing journalism about politics
and gay culture.

He has covered the gay experience from entertainment to AIDS, and his
work has appeared in numerous publications, including L.A. Weekly and
The Advocate. Timmons is also the author of The Trouble with Harry
Hay,a seminal work of gay history about the gay civil rights pioneer
of the title.

The differences in their backgrounds and generations helped their
collaboration, the co-authors say.

Stuart knew the gay male community [in L.A.] and how it came
together, Faderman says, and her own personal involvement with the
lesbian scene of L.A. provided a complement to Timmons knowledge. We
kept each other honest.

This collaboration appears to have worked out well for both authors.

We are both pleased that the book is probably deeper ... than if
either of us had tackled the same material on our own, Timmons says.

Faderman and Timmons hope that Gay L.A. will help people remember
their history.

The co-authors didnt want to whitewash anything, Faderman says. We
wanted to show whats been difficult and whats been wonderful.


***************************************

Date: Sun Mar 18, 2007 9:40 pm
Subject: Bohemian Los Angeles

In this history of Los Angeles' Boho world in the first half of the 20th century, Hurewitz shows how "groups of individuals who engaged in similar activities and sought to adopt a shared self-definition" made a major social impact. Focusing on the community of Edendale, Hunter College history professor Hurewitz begins by examining the social circle of the once world-famous drag performer Julian Eltinge and the gay male scene in the 1930s, and concludes with a discussion of Communist Harry Hay, who formed the first gay rights group, the Mattachine Society, in 1950.

Bohemian Los Angeles:

http://www.amazon.com/Bohemian-Los-Angeles-Making-Politics/dp/0520249259

http://californiawriter.blogspot.com/2007/01/bohemian-los-angeles.html

http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10561.html

Gay San Francisco


From the archives:

Date: Thu Sep 28, 2006 10:30 pm
Subject: Gay S.F.

Hey all,

I just realized I couldn't possibly talk about Gay L.A. without talking about
the Grande
Dame of gay American cities, San Francisco herself. A great book that came out
a few
years back (when yours truly was still just a wee toddler gay back in HS) is Gay
By the Bay
by Susan Stryker. What's great is that it features lots of photos too for those
of us
attracted to shiny, pretty, glossy things (me):

http://www.amazon.com/Gay-Bay-History-Culture-Francisco/dp/0811811875

Enjoy!

Compton's Cafeteria Riot- San Francisco's Stonewall


Another classic post from our archives:

Date: Mon Jul 17, 2006 9:55 pm
Subject: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria- San Francisco's Stonewall

Here's a couple of wonderful articles regarding the riot at Compton's Cafeteria
in San
Francisco n 1966. There's also a gem of a film made to document the event
called:

Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria
http://frameline.org/festival/29th/programs/
screaming_queens_the_riot_at_comptons_cafeteria.html

http://filmguide.newfest.org/tixSYS/2006/filmguide/title-schedule.php?
Range=QS&ShowShorts=N&ShowPast=Y

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2005/06/19/17482301.php

Screaming Queens: Documentary On the Compton's Cafeteria Uprising
by KQED (reposted)
Sunday Jun 19th, 2005 6:33 PM
Sun, Jun 19, 6:00 pm KQED TV
video: preview-103.rm.ram
RealVideo metafile

It's a hot August night in San Francisco in 1966. Compton's Cafeteria, in the
seedy
Tenderloin district, is hopping with its usual assortment of transgender people,
young
street hustlers, and down-and-out regulars. The management, annoyed by the noisy
crowd at one table, calls the police. When a surly cop, accustomed to
manhandling
Compton's clientele, attempts to arrest one of the queens, she throws her coffee
in his
face. Mayhem erupts -- windows break, furniture flies through the air. Police
reinforcements arrive, and the fighting spills into the street. For the first
time, the drag
queens band together to fight back, getting the better of the cops, whom they
kick and
stomp with their high-heeled shoes and beat with their heavy purses. For
everyone at
Compton's that night, one thing was certain -- things would never be the same
again.


Screaming Queens introduces viewers to a diverse cast of former prostitutes,
drag
entertainers, police officers, ministers and neighborhood activists, all of whom
played a
part in the events leading up to the Compton's Cafeteria riot. Mixing recent
interviews with
archival footage, printed documents, impressionistic reenactments and period
music, the
program depicts a marginalized community few people know, one that exists in the
midst
of a city famous for its cosmopolitan glamour. With extraordinary candor and
from
differing points of view, the subjects recount the difficulties they encountered
in the
Tenderloin, as well as the sense of community they created there in the
mid-1960s. Felicia
Elizondo tells of prostituting herself in order to survive. Aleshia Brevard, a
drag
entertainer, describes how her talent spared her from street prostitution.
Perhaps most
surprising is Sgt. Elliot Blackstone, who helps explain the conflict between the
San
Francisco Police Department and the city's transgender community and how the
SFPD's
policies changed to reflect greater acceptance in the years following the 1966
riot.

The documentary goes on to show the connection between transgender activism and
the
larger social upheavals affecting the United States in the 1960s: the civil
rights and sexual
liberation movements, the youth counterculture, urban renewal, and Great Society
antipoverty programs. "Glide Memorial Methodist Church first reached out to the
transgender community in these years," the Rev. Ed Hansen explains, "because of
new
thinking about the church's role in society." Amanda St. Jaymes and Tamara
Ching, both
transsexual activists and former prostitutes, recount the ferment in the
Tenderloin in the
1960s as well as the growing sense of dignity among transgender people. But in
the
summer of 1966, many others, including most San Francisco police officers, did
not share
these new ideas. By bringing these social and political tensions to light,
Screaming Queens
offers viewers a fuller understanding of the events and conditions that led up
to the riot.

Further, Screaming Queens explores the reverberations, both large and small, of
the rise
of transgender activism, a story in which the riot at Compton's Cafeteria plays
a pivotal
role. Sgt. Blackstone tells of singing "We Shall Overcome" with Tenderloin
activists who
successfully fought for new social services for their community. Suzie Cooke
recounts her
job as a transsexual counselor in one of the new agencies founded after the
riot. Ching
connects the Tenderloin transsexuals' new activism to the rising Gay liberation
movement.
And St. Jaymes explains that although the queens from Compton's were "wild as
the wind,"
they were "determined to make something of themselves, and be something other
than
prostitutes."

The film ends on a high note. It shows how in just two short years transgender
activism
helped transform San Francisco culture in subtle and profound ways and presents
reflective comments from the Compton's Cafeteria subjects who bravely ushered in
a
controversial revolution that continues today.

Screaming Queens sets out to foster a better understanding of the experiences of
transgender people and to inform a broad audience of their often-difficult lives
and
unheralded accomplishments. Along the way, the program also illuminates the
interplay of
urban politics, community mobilization and social services in creating the
modern inner
city.

This important documentary tells a forgotten San Francisco story of dramatic
social
change from the compelling perspective of firsthand participants. The film's
story focuses
on the experiences of the rioters themselves, the police and the social-activist
clergy
members. It also follows historian Susan Stryker's rediscovery of the 1966
disturbance at
Compton's Cafeteria. At that time, transgender people faced serious employment
discrimination, police harassment and other difficulties. The program's subjects
describe
the challenging circumstances and the misconduct of officials that drove them to
take
militant action in the streets. Screaming Queens then examines the significant
changes --
in police practices, social services and self-image -- that came out of the
conflict. In her
story within the story, Stryker reveals how the Compton's Cafeteria riot,
although not as
large as New York's Stonewall conflict, was a dramatic turning point in a
decades-long
process of transgender community formation and political mobilization in San
Francisco, a
process that involved dramatic changes in medical practices, urban politics,
neighborhood
geography and public consciousness.

Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria is produced in association
with The
Independent Television Service (ITVS) and KQED Public Television.

http://www.kqed.org/truly/film-103.jsp


****************************************


http://www.gay.com/news/article.html?2006/06/22/4

Historic 1966 transgender riot remembered

Larry Buhl, PlanetOut Network

published Thursday, June 22, 2006
A memorial plaque commemorating the 40th anniversary of the first known instance
of
transgender resistance to police harassment in the United States was installed
at a
ceremony Thursday in San Francisco.

The Compton's Cafeteria riot predated the famous uprising at New York's
Stonewall Inn by
three years.

Although Gene Compton's eatery in the seedy Tenderloin district of San Francisco
was a
haven for gay men, lesbians and transgender people, police harassment was
nonetheless a
common occurrence. On an evening in August, 1966, an officer entered and grabbed
one
of the "queens," who threw a cup of coffee in his face. Mayhem erupted as drag
queens
kicked the cops with their high-heeled shoes. Rioters smashed windows, broke
furniture
and set fire to a car. The event lasted a day, and picketing lasted several more
days.

In the aftermath of the riot, the San Francisco Police Department's community
relations
department began focusing on sensitivity training and brought gays, lesbians and
transgender people into the dialogue, said Cecilia Chung, San Francisco human
rights
commissioner and deputy director of the Transgender Law Center.

"Forty years ago, female impersonation was illegal, and you could even be
arrested for
wearing buttons on the wrong side of your shirt," Chung said. "In many ways, we
can
attribute our success in the transgender civil rights movement and the larger
LGBT
movement to our courageous predecessors at Compton's Cafeteria."

A plaque was placed Thursday at the site of the cafeteria at Turk and Taylor
streets.
Among those honored at the ceremony were several transgender individuals active
in the
community 40 years ago, and retired police Sgt. Elliott Blackstone, the San
Francisco
force's first liaison to the LGBT community.

Blackstone, who is straight, has been a longtime ally for gay men, lesbians and
transgender people, and even took up a collection at his church to help
transgender
women buy hormones. He will be honored as the lifetime grand marshal at San
Francisco
Pride on Sunday.

"Unexpected allies, like Sgt. Blackstone, fought by our side against prejudice
and stigma at
a time when our cries seemed to be ignored, and helped to create a ripple of
positive
change," Chung said.

Other speakers at the ceremony included the Rev. Cecil Williams of Glide
Memorial Church;
author/activists Leslie Feinberg and Jamison Green; Mara Keisling, executive
director of
the National Center for Transgender Equality, and representatives of the San
Francisco
mayor's office, Human Rights Commission and Police Commission.

Chung admitted that although there are many strong allies for the transgender
community
in San Francisco, most of the country lags far behind in the fight for equality.

"We're a historically marginalized group, and although we're seeing the
inclusion of gender
identity in the dialogue, fighting for equality is still very challenging,"
Chung said. "Just
like gays and lesbians, we're one constitutional amendment away from having our
rights
removed."

************************************************

http://www.gaycitynews.com/gcn_526/recallingasanfrancisco.html

Volume 5, Number 26 | June 29 - July 5, 2006

CRIME

Recalling a San Francisco Stonewall

Drag queens fought back at a Tenderloin coffee shop in 1966

BY JOE DIGNAN


RICK GERHARTER
Felicia Elizondo, a Compton's veteran, spoke at the June 22 dedication about the
freedom
she won in the wake of her community's first strike back at police 40 years ago
this
summer.

It was the place, deep in San Francisco's Tenderloin, where gay street hustlers,
drag
queens, and transsexuals could linger over a cup of coffee for hours. At Gene
Compton's
Cafeteria the food was cheap and the management tolerant. And Compton's was open
all
night.
Then, back in 1966, there was no such thing as a gay rights movement. The Castro
was
still a working-class Irish neighborhood, and it would be seven years until
homosexuality
was declassified as a mental disorder. The Tenderloin was the gritty, down and
out part of
the city, heir-apparent to the infamous Barbary Coast, where the city's
castaways could
drift, and the swells could come to slum. "The place to go for sex and drugs and
late night
fun," said historian and filmmaker Susan Stryker.

And Compton's was at its center, the place to meet. But by August 1966, tensions
in the
Tenderloin had been building for years.

Drag queens were routinely harassed and arrested by police—for obstructing the
sidewalk,
for loitering, for "same-sex touching," and for cross-dressing. "If the buttons
were on the
wrong side, like a blouse, you could get thrown in jail," recalled one
Tenderloin resident,
Amanda St. Jaymes.

Most of the time they went quietly. "You, you, you, and you," a cop would
gesture,
remembered Tamara Ching, who was a drag hustler during the period—"come with
us."

"You could be dragged off to jail at any time—for no reason at all."

"They'd drive us all around North Beach. Drive us all around the Tenderloin
before they'd
take us to jail," said St. Jaymes. Once there, they were humiliated. Paraded in
front of the
other prisoners. Their heads shaved. "I refused to let them shave my head, and
they put
me in the hole. One girl was in there 60 days, in the hole, because they
wouldn't let them
cut her hair," she said.

Then, one hot August night, the exact date lost to history, as queens and
hustlers crowded
Compton's booths, a small phalanx of cops entered the teeming restaurant. One
cop,
expecting the "girl" to come quietly as the girls always had before, grabbed an
arm. But
this time a cup of coffee flew in his face.

Nightsticks were drawn. Mayhem. For the first time the drag queens fought back.
Heavy
glass sugar shakers hurled by the queens shattered the restaurant's big
plate-glass
windows. Fighting spilled onto the street. Reinforcements arrived, sirens
blaring. Shocked
cops retreated as they were hit with high-heeled shoes and heavy purses. For a
moment,
the drag queens got the better of the cops. The corner newsstand went up in
flames. A
police car was destroyed.

"Years of pent-up resentment boiled out into the night," said Stryker.

Forty years ago this August, three years before very similar riots at New York's
Stonewall
Inn, Stryker says that America's gay rights movement was born, not on
Christopher Street,
with the rebellion commemorated every June in gay pride celebrations across the
country,
but in San Francisco's Tenderloin at Gene Compton's Cafeteria.

"It was the first known instance of collective, militant queer resistance to
police
harassment in United States history," Stryker said.

"We have an old expression in the police department, `clubs are trump,'"
remembered San
Francisco police Sergeant Elliot Blackstone of the ease with which cops resorted
to their
nightsticks. "Well, clubs were trump then."

"A lot of them went to jail," St. Jaymes said, but added "There was a lot of joy
after it
happened… there was a lot of `I don't give a damn — this is what needs to
happen.'"

Fast forward 40 years.

Another sweltering day in the Tenderloin, this time in June, this time a few
days before San
Francisco's giant pride celebration. The cafeteria closed in 1972, became a porn
emporium, and is now a drop-in help center for the women who still work the
streets of
the Tenderloin.

About 100 gathered on the street corner in front of what was Compton's. In the
crowd—a
dozen or so drag queens, beads of perspiration forming beneath their makeup,
three or
four television news crews, lots of reporters, city bureaucrats stuck to their
suits, two city
supervisors, the district attorney, the gay city treasurer, a mayor's office
aide with a
proclamation declaring it "Gene Compton's Cafeteria Riot Day"—all gathered
around a new
granite plaque on the street corner.

"Here marks the site," it says and the crowd ballooned out into the street
around it. But the
cops! There's a full-on lieutenant directing traffic. They stand, at ease, but
perspiring, a
solid line of brass and blue. The chief. Two commanders. "Pretty much the whole
command staff," said Theresa Sparks, a trans member of the Police Commission.

They're there to say a few words, and say it's not like that anymore. It took
until 1997, but
then San Francisco got an ordinance protecting trans people from discrimination.

They're also there to honor Sergeant Blackstone, the LGBT community's first
supporter on
the San Francisco force. He was driven from the department, Stryker said, after
enemies
planted narcotics in his desk. Last week, from a wheelchair in front of
Compton's, he
collected proclamations from a lesbian state senator and the full Assembly and a
thanks—
but no apology—from Police Chief Heather Fong.

One of the city's cross-dressing trans-religious Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence
inaugurated the plaque: "Amen, A-women and A-the others," she intoned as she
sprinkled
gold glitter into the air.

And Stryker spoke. Stryker is the director, along with Victor Silverman, of the
movie
"Screaming Queens, the Riot at Compton's Cafeteria." In 1995, Stryker unearthed
evidence
of the then-forgotten riot while doing research at San Francisco's GLBT
Historical Society.
Her film maintains the riot was not an isolated incident; violence exploded at
the corner of
Taylor and Turk in San Francisco's Tenderloin because of the confluence of many
factors.
And the riot itself triggered other forces that flowed into the modern gay
rights
movement.

The Tenderloin had long been the place to satisfy "the fleshly needs of men,"
says a voice-
over in Stryker's movie. "A marketplace of vice, degradation, and human misery."
But it
was a vice-ridden district run by corrupt police who demanded payola from the
prostitutes
and illegal clubs.

"Police would give people of indeterminate gender the message that they belonged
in the
Tenderloin, which at the time was a gay ghetto—a slummy gay ghetto," said Suzan
Cooke,
who walked the streets there.

"The Tenderloin was populated by the pimps and the whores and the drag queens
and I
felt very comfortable there," said Aleisha Brevard, who was a female
impersonator.

"We sold ourselves because we needed to make a living," said Ching.

But it was dangerous too. Some girls had been beaten up by johns surprised that
they
were men. Some had been killed.

Then came the Vietnam War. Long hair and love beads became a symbol of a man
against
the war, not a man who wanted to be a girl, said Stryker. Soldiers crowded the
Tenderloin
on their way to Vietnam. Police raids escalated. A few blocks away the black
civil rights
movement moved into the Tenderloin when Reverend Cecil Williams took over as
pastor of
Glide Memorial Methodist Church. And that movement fueled the new LGBT
militancy, said
Stryker.

In July 1966, a new activist organization called Vanguard, mostly street
hustlers and drag
queens, formed. They met at Compton's, but the management didn't like "the
uppity new
political attitudes some of its customers were starting to express," said
Stryker, and put
them out. And so Vanguard picketed the cafeteria on July 18. That boiling
resentment led
directly to the riot, she says.

After the riot, partly because of Blackstone's work, police attitudes slowly
changed.
Stanford opened a sexual-reassignment clinic in 1968. The city's health
department
started issuing ID cards for people who had changed their sex—something the
state would
not do—so they could get regular jobs.

"I am so proud of these women," Stryker said. "It brings the power of our
history to bear
on the struggle."

"Once you feel good about yourself," said St. Jaymes in the kicker to Stryker's
movie,
"nobody can hurt you."

Others say that the while the riot might have been an important milestone in gay
history,
its real importance is to each of the people whose lives it made possible.

" I went from being a teenaged sissy boy to being a woman," said Felicia
Elizondo, a
Compton's veteran at the dedication. "Being a woman now is just fantastic."


Susan Stryker's "Screaming Queens" documentary will air on Channel 13 on July 4
at 3:30
a.m. It is available on DVD at screamingqueensmovie.com.

Monday, July 9, 2007

Daughters of Bilitis


Full Disclosure: Stonewallyouth originally started a year ago as a mailing list. We talked about some great topics and thought our blog readers should know about them as well. So there'll be some 'classic' posts from the Stonewallyouth mailing list posted in the future, marked accordingly. Enjoy!

******************************************

Date: Sat Apr 21, 2007 10:40 am
Subject: The Daughters of Bilitis

"Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the
Rise of the Lesbian Rights Movement," is the first and only
full-length text to be published about Daughters of Bilitis, a lesbian
rights group around for over fifty years. "Daughters" blends
formidable research and quirky anecdotes to relay the story of
pioneers who helped launch efforts for lesbian and women's equality in
1950s America. It's an important history lessons for the queer youth
of today, as most educational systems do not teach about lesbian
activism. Here's the link, I reccomend checking it out and if you're
intrigued, check out the book!

http://gaycitynews.com/site/index.cfm?newsid=18144030&BRD=2729&PAG=461&dept_id=5\
68864&rfi=8

************************************************************

Date: Mon Oct 9, 2006 9:56 pm
Subject: Event and Book: Daughters of Bilitis

So check this out y'all!

Before there was the L Word, before Ellen, and before even the Stonewall
Rebellion, there
was the Daughters of Bilitis. Just as most gay men of "the Greatest Generation"
pointed to
WWII as a pivotal event in their lives, so too did a lot of gay women, but for
different
reasons. While WWII brought American gay men out of the closets of their
hometowns and
into the more gay-friendly cities of the US and Europe, the war allowed women
the
opportunity to enter the workforce in ways never before imagined. The image of
Rosie the
Riveter was born, and for some, the chance to earn their own money was an
experience
they'd never forget.

But when the war ended gay men and lesbians were asked to retreat back into the
conformity of a Leave It to Beaver-America. To counter their silence, a
courageous few
decided to form the Daughters of Bilitis.

*************************************************************************

Nearly 15 years before the Stonewall Rebellion and the birth of gay liberation
came the
Daughters of Bilitis (DOB). DOB was launched in response to the oppressive anti-
homosexual climate of the McCarthy era, when lesbian and gay people were
arrested, fired
from jobs, and had their children taken away on the basis of their sexual
orientation.
Marcia Gallo's new book, Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of
Bilitis and the
Rise of the Lesbian Rights Movement, chronicles the history of the Daughters of
Billitis and
introduces us to pioneering lesbian liberators who, during the 1950s, dared to
challenge
the homophobic silence and contempt that surrounded and endangered women-loving-
women for so many generations.

Celebrating the book's publication by Carroll & Graf, Gallo will be joined in
conversation
by Blanche Wiesen Cook, author of Eleanor Roosevelt, Volumes One and Two.
Everyone
interested in feminism, social and political history, and stories of bold life
journeys in
embattled times will be eager to read Different Daughters.

Meatpacking Remembered

In this week's Gay City News is a terrific article/essay by Abby Tallmer, a lesbian who grew up in the Meatpacking District during the 1970s. In its heyday, when the area far west of the West Village was the center of NYC's thriving BDSM scene, it was also the site where the nascent LGBTQ community was asserting their rights to their bodies, as this essay eloquently speaks about.

Nowadays the neighborhood is more associated with trendy restaurants and shops than transsexual prostitutes. In 2004 New York Magazine named it NYC's most fashionable neighborhood, and fans of the show "Sex and the City" will recall the promiscuous Samantha resided there.

More about the Meatpacking District to come but in the meantime, please check out the article, reprinted below!

***********************************************

http://gaycitynews.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18554250&BRD=2729&PAG=461&dept_id=569341&rfi=6

A Liberation Erased
By: ABBY TALLMER
07/05/2007

The recent history of Manhattan's Meatpacking District is a story about the homogenization of our city and the erasure of a generation of its people and their history. It is a story of how the intersecting forces of rising real estate prices, the Disneyfication of Times Square and Manhattan at large, the conservative national shift over the past two decades, and the onset of AIDS and the panic surrounding it have effectively eclipsed memories of a time when "Meatpacking District" was not a real estate term.

Instead, the term was ironic shorthand for the patch of West Village blocks, centered roughly at 14th Street and Ninth Avenue, to which countless visitors flocked, seeking the alternative sexual universe that existed there before the invasion of slumming heterosexual tourists looking for Stella McCartney's latest couture designs.

At the height of the feminist, gay, and sexual revolutions of the 1960s and '70s through the mid-'80s, the Meatpacking District was home to the city's thriving and mostly queer S/M and sex club scene.

Far from being a desirable destination, the Far West Village, as it was known back then, was unknown territory to most New Yorkers except for butchers, neighborhood residents, and the select group of queer and kinky people who roamed the streets and filled the clubs there in the late-night hours, staggering home in the early morning as the sun was rising and most others were heading off to work. During the day, strong men dragged animal carcasses through the garbage-filled streets. It was an area reserved for those with iron stomachs, given the stench of dead flesh and rotting trash that permeated the air.

Growing up in the neighborhood, I was ashamed to invite my grade-school friends over for fear they would think I lived in a garbage dump. But at night, the place came alive and the unlit, otherwise desolate streets became filled with other men, also tough-looking, but clad in leather chaps and motorcycle jackets with hankies protruding from their rear pockets and keys dangling from their sides. They lingered on street corners, purposefully eyeing one another, striking up conversations, offering each other a light, and often disappearing down mysterious alleyways or spilling into or out from unmarked but much-trafficked doorways.

There were other characters as well - adventurous male/female couples; groups of nervous young gay men and women clearly new to the area and intent on a mission, most often clad not in leather/fetish gear but in "regular" clothes; and the ever-present trans hookers, most, but not all, of whom were black or Hispanic. Many of the hookers almost completely passed as women, most of them as stunning as they were scantily dressed. They could been seen most often awkwardly climbing into and out of the limos and trucks driven by the married men from Staten Island or New Jersey who traveled there just for them.

In the early 1970s, I lived five blocks north of Christopher Street and three blocks from the Hudson River. I was then about nine years old, a queer kid waiting for the right time to spring this news on my parents. I was raised in a very permissive household and often walked the streets alone even after dark. Needless to say, the night action in my neighborhood hardly went unnoticed by me and, in fact, served as the object of much curiosity.

I remember riding my bike around the neighborhood, making special trips past the piers and the bathhouses and through the deserted side streets west of Greenwich Street, and down 14th Street and the short blocks just below. Though I wasn't quite sure what exactly went on behind these hidden and locked doors, I knew somehow - God knows how - that whatever it was had something to do with being gay, with being sexual, and even with a particular form of gay sexual expression that I gathered was considered in some way shameful. The very same men who cheerily said hi to me in my building's elevator usually looked more horrified than happy to see me when I greeted them from my bicycle as they loitered, regaled in leather, in alleyways or in front of dimly lit clubs or bathhouses.

As I would learn later, the unofficial center of all of this action was the "Triangle Building" on 14th Street and Ninth Avenue, which now houses Vento, a popular Italian restaurant opened in 2004, but was then the site of some of the most notorious leather bars in the city. Entrances to a stunning array of S/M and sex clubs and backrooms lined both the Eighth and the Ninth Avenue sides of the Triangle.
Those directly on the Triangle included the nationally known Hellfire Club, the Vault, J's, The Man Hole and many others.

Queer clubs within strolling distance included the notorious Mineshaft, the Anvil, the Asstrick, the Cellblock, the International Stud, the Glory Hole and, later, the Lure. Many patrons migrated back and forth all night long, every night of the week back when sexual freedom defined an era.

Nearly all of these clubs, except for the Hellfire Club and the Vault, were predominantly gay, though a few stray women here and there could at times be spotted in some of the less strict men's-only clubs. The Mineshaft's door policy, however, was notoriously strict, and many gay men were turned away each night for violating its strict leather/macho dress code. That didn't keep some inventive women from testing whether it was foolproof.

I know this to be true firsthand, for one night just after I turned 18, my best friends, Saul and Brian, decided that it would be fun to dress me up and sneak me in with them. As I am rather the femme type of lesbian, I was terrified about passing the rigid door inspection, but Brian and Saul had picked my outfit - white T-shirt, black leather jacket, jeans, and boots, with a sock in my pants prominently displaying package - done my hair so expertly, and even given me a fake five o'clock shadow. I remember shuffling after Brian and before Saul in line, though I pleaded to be last - Brian said this would look suspicious - and I vividly remember trying not to stare at the floor too obviously as the doorman inspected my ID. After what seemed like forever but was undoubtedly a matter of seconds, the doorman muttered "Next" and that was it. I was in.

All I remember is seeing a sea of nude, half-nude, harnessed and chained male bodies (the bottoms) and muscular men in full leather (the tops) broken off into groups of three, or four, or two, or eight, or more. Some, but not all, of the tops held whips and paddles of various sorts, and many were noisily using them on their willing victims.

I remember all sorts of sounds - cries and whimpers and gasps and moans and shrill but insincere pleas of "Stop!" and so on from the bottoms, and orders barked sternly or angrily or calmly or in in-between voices from some masters to their slaves, while others yelled numbers to their subjects for them to repeat or let out long strings of outrageously profane, and usually effeminizing, epithets or simply emitted a series of guttural, primal groans. All of the collective words and sighs were punctuated by the unmistakable sounds of flagellation - the sound of wooden paddles hitting flesh, or the snap of bullwhips slicing through the air and landing sharply on human targets, or even the ring of a bare hand making contact with a buttocks.

I knew from the moment I entered that I wouldn't be able to stay in the Mineshaft for long before being found out, so I was determined to take it all in. (In fact, my friend Saul, who stood behind me in line, was barred at the door because there was something "too effeminate" about him. After a half-hour, we reluctantly left to meet back up with him.) As I stood there transfixed, I thought to myself, "This is what men do when women aren't around."

This adventure took place a full year or two before I discovered the Lesbian Sex Mafia (LSM) - New York's first and only lesbian S/M organization, founded in 1981. I came upon the group just as I was growing convinced that no network existed for women who were interested in exploring S/M with other women.

Which brings us back to the Mineshaft. The immediate and intense exhilaration I felt upon getting past the guard and into the main play area was due to the liberating realization that there were no men there who cared about me (the real me, not the sock-down-my-pants-me) - not to mention the overpowering smell of God knows how many bottles of poppers that hit me the minute I began to wade through the crowd.
Even as a woman, I experienced the Mineshaft as my first purely queer sexual space. The club imparted a feeling of immense optimism, opportunity, safety, and community. When you were gay and in the Mineshaft or in any of the other queer S/M clubs in the Meatpacking District - or even gay and walking down those streets in the 1970s, '80s, and into the early '90s - you felt, often for the first time in your life, completely divorced, immune, and removed from socially imposed heterosexual judgments.

Fortunately, a few years later I was able to capture similar feelings in a purely lesbian sexual space, when LSM co-founder Jo Arnone began hosting Ms. Trick, a series of women's-only S/M nights at the otherwise gay male Asstrick Club.
These clubs gave us a place to feel as if we were no longer outsiders - or, rather, they made us feel as if it was better to be outsiders, together, than to force ourselves to be just like everybody else. This was at a time and in an era long before everywhere we looked, our self-appointed gay leaders seemed to be telling us that getting married was and should be every queer person's highest goal, although certainly then, as now, many extra-legal long-term gay couples existed.

Back then many of us believed that gay liberation was rooted in sexual liberation, and we believed that true liberation was rooted in the right - no, the need - to claim ownership of our own bodies, to celebrate, experience, and enjoy sexuality in as many forms as possible, limited only by one's time and imagination. We believed that gay pride was impossible without sexual pride, including leather pride. We were living - though we did not know it then - through one of the most permissive times in modern history and in one of the most permissive places in modern history - the Meatpacking District of the 1970s through the early '90s.

Today, when I try to explain this history to younger queers, they often don't believe me. The Meatpacking District during that period has attained an almost mythological status for the younger members of the LGBT community that makes it impossible for them to believe the concrete reality many of us took for granted back then. We were kids then, chronologically, and in terms of experience and the sense of possibility we felt. We fully expected that being gay was only going to get better and easier as we got older. Ours was the first generation to celebrate and experience our sexuality in all of its alternative forms - and that we did as much as possible. Most of us never foresaw a more restrictive world and never imagined that our joyful experiment would end. Little did we know that many of us would never live to adulthood, that this time and moment would be gone in a flash, and that an entire people, a moment, an era, and a geographic and symbolic neighborhood would vanish with it.

Never take your present for granted, because there's no telling how quickly and how thoroughly it will be erased.

©GayCityNews 2007

Beefcake: Bob Mizer and the AMG


Break Me off a Piece...

An exhibit currently running in Brooklyn features photographs from the Athletic Model Guild, a group started in the 1950s by gay photographer Bob Mizer.

At a time when gay pornography was deemed illegal, gay men were only able to get their fill of male visual erotica through G-rated magazines like Physique Pictorial, the publication of the AMG (Come to think of it, we're not quite different today---I remember before coming out I would constantly buy magazines like Men's Exercise, Men's Fitness, Men's Health under the guise of wanting to learn how to "keep fit").

Bob Mizer was able to capitalize on the popularity of the emerging Muscle Beach subculture of the time as well as many young men returning from WWII in search of some quick ways of making money. Although his studios would eventually be shut in a crackdown on homosexuality, his work allows us a glimpse into gay life in the 1950s.

Bob Mizer and the AMG's story is documented in the entertaining fictional 1998 film "Beefcake." (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0187712/)

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To visit the exhibit, check out:

Athletic Model Guild
Wessel + O'Connor Fine Art
111 Front Street, at Adams St., Ste 200
Brooklyn, New York
718-596-1700
http://www.wesseloconnor.com/
Through. Jul 27.

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For more information on Bob Mizer and the AMG, please go to:

http://www.bigkugels.com/content/AMGMizer.html

http://www.athleticmodelguild.com/

http://andrejkoymasky.com/liv/fam/biom5/mize2.html

Friday, July 6, 2007

Christopher Street Liberation Day March


Come to My Window

A wonderful exhibit is currently on display at the LGBT Center in NYC. It is called "A View From My Window: The Christopher Street Liberation Day March 1970-1984," and it features photographs of the NYC Pride March spanning fourteen years. For the uninitiated, our NYC Pride March was originally called the Christopher Street Liberation Day March, and the last Sunday in June recognized as Christopher Street Liberation Day.

Although it would seem to us today the inevitability that the Stonewall Rebellion would mark the beginning of the modern Gay Rights Movement, had it not been for the swift and smart actions of gay and lesbian activists, the event might've been forgotten, as just an isolated occurrence with little of no historical relevance. Luckily for us immediately after Stonewall, these courageous and visionary activists banded together to form the Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee, to ensure that the first anniversary of that fateful night on June 27th, 1969 would be commemorated. They ingeniously decided to do this with a march and rally, a concept which was quickly replicated in cities across the nation (see Reverend Troy Perry and the MCC posted on July 3, 2007 for information on the Los Angeles Pride March). Today LGBT Pride Marches draw millions in cities all over the world.

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A View from My Window: Christopher Street Liberation Day March 1970-1984
Photographs by Suzanne Poli
When: June 4 - August 17, 2007
Where: LGBT Center
208 W 13th Street
New York, NY 10011


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For more information about Christopher Street please go to:

http://www.planetout.com/news/history/archive/christopher.html
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0425,hoffman,54512,1.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Street
http://www.gaycenter.org/resources/museum
http://www.suzannepoli.com/site/home.php?b=10&bd=10_0&sbID=10&mID=2
http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=120&aid=70925

Tuesday, July 3, 2007

A GSA in the White House?


We all know that there's never been an openly gay president, but did you know that one of our mostly beloved presidents, John F. Kennedy, Jr., had a very close best friend that was gay? In the new book Jack and Lem , the author David Pitts tells the story of the extraordinary friendship between JFK and his best friend from school, Lem Billings. In the book its revealed that not only were they best friends but that throughout his entire presidency, Lem spent almost every weekend at the White House.

"He wasn't simply a friend", as Eunice Kennedy Shriver explains. "Of the 9 or 10 men who were close to the president, I would say Lem was number one."

I've not read the book yet but from the glowing reviews I think it should be a fascinating read. And it's a timely topic, as well, for we are still living under Don't Ask, Don't Tell, with its antiquated notion that somehow gays and lesbians are harmful to unit cohesion, team morale, and a slew of other ridiculous assumptions.

Well gosh if JFK's best friend was gay and he was very much present in the White House during one of the most challenging episodes of any presidency (Cuban Missile Crisis) and we were able to avert disaster, then it's obvious that not only are homosexuals not harmful but they could potentially be beneficial! How's that for a radical idea?

To learn more please visit:

http://www.jackandlem.com/

http://www.amazon.com/Jack-Lem-Billings-Extraordinary-Friendship/dp/0786719893

http://gaylife.about.com/od/gaybooks/a/jfklembillings.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lem_Billings

Reverend Troy Perry and the MCC


In the Pride issue of the Advocate recently there is a wonderful recollection of the first Pride March in Los Angeles by Reverend Troy Perry ( http://www.advocate.com/currentstory1_w.asp?id=45248 ). As founder of the Metropolitan Community Church, the largest, oldest, and most well-known LGBT church, Rev. Perry has been an activist in the LGBT community for the past 38 years.

Reverend Perry's inspirational story is one with which many LGBT youths can identify. Up until the age of 12 Rev. Perry had a fairly happy childhood. Unfortunately this all ended when his father passed away and his mother remarried. But unlike most LGBTQ youths, Rev. Perry's story took an even worse turn as his new stepfather was physically abusive individual, both to his mom and Troy, and Rev. Perry was even raped by one of his stepfather's friends. Despite these tragedies, Rev. Perry continued to pursue his faith, and became licensed to preach in the Baptist Church by the age of 15.

The next few years found Rev. Perry struggling with his feelings for men. At the age of 18, on the advice of his pastor, rev. Perry wed the pastor's daughter in an attempt to overcome his homosexuality. Like many men coming of age in those times (pre-Stonewall America), living a gay life was simply not an option and the pressure towards hetero-conformity was and still is immensely great.

Reverend Perry found marriage did not change his homosexual feelings. He was excommunicated from his church after church officials learned of a consensual sexual relationship he had with a man.

Moving his family to L.A., Rev. Perry began preaching at another Pentecostal Denomination, the Church of God of Prophecy. This time, however, he decided to live openly and bravely came out as a gay man both to his congregation and his family. History regrettably repeated itself and he was dismissed from his job again. This time, his wife left him and took their two young sons with her.

Though devastated, the reverent worked hard to rebuild his life and eventually found love with a young man. But the man abruptly ended the relationship, sending Rev. Perry's life into chaos yet again. He attempted suicide but was discovered by friends who saved him by rushing him to the emergency room.

At the end of this ordeal, Reverend Perry felt called to God again, and this time he was being asked to start a church that ministered to the LGBTQ community. The church began in 1968, a year before the Stonewall Rebellion and its membership originally came as a result of an advertisement in the Advocate.

The church has since grown exponentially from its humble beginnings . Reverend Perry has since also done work organizing LGBTQ marches, AIDS causes, etc. and he was one of the Grand Marshals of this year's LGBTQ Pride March in NYC.

Want to know more on this story? For the full story on the formation of the church and Rev. Troy Perry, please visit the following links:

http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/perry_t.html

http://www.mccchurch.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=About_Us&Template=/CM/HTMLDisplay.cfm&ContentID=662

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_Perry

Frank Kameny is Good


Hi Everyone,

To kick off our first post I thought it'd be appropriate to talk about one of the Founding Fathers of our movement, Dr. Frank Kameny. A terrific interview with Dr. Kameny is in featured in the current issue of the Advocate: http://www.advocate.com/currentstory1_w.asp?id=46138

Some of our peers out there might be asking who is Frank Kameny and why is he considered one of our Founding Fathers? In 1961, eight years before the Stonewall rebellion in 1969, Dr. Kameny founded the Mattachine Society of Washington DC with gay activist Jack Nichols. While most of the other gay and lesbian groups at the time opted for a more quiet and low-key way of organizing---that is, by hiding, Dr. Kameny championed a more aggressive approach by confronting elected officials. He helped organize the first Gay Rights protests in front of the White House in 1965, coined the slogan "Gay is Good," and under his leadership the Mattachine Society surged to the forefront of the Gay & Lesbian Movement (then called the Homophile Movement).

Amongst his numerous achievements he fought to remove discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation from federal employment, a battle which was accomplished in 1975, became the first openly-gay person to run for Congress in 1971, and was instrumental in getting the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality form its list of mental disorders in 1973. Along with the Daughters of Bilitis, and the Mattachine Society of NY, Kameny's group also picketed the Pentagon, US Civil Service Commission, and Independence Hall in Philadelphia, in the years before Stonewall.

Later on, Dr. Kameny co-founded the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, was the first openly-gay municipal employee, and wrote a bill that repealed Washington DC's sodomy law, which was enacted in 1993. Recently in 2006 Dr. Kameny donated his collection of more than 70,0000 letters, documents, and memorabilia of the history of the GLBT Movement to the US Library of Congress, and Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.

Frank Kameny's activism led the way for the militarism that would characterize the movement in the years after Stonewall. He is truly one of the greatest men in our community and and example of how the courage of one individual can change the course of history.

To find out more about Dr. Kameny, please visit:

http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/kameny_f.html

http://www.kamenypapers.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_E._Kameny

http://www.planetout.com/news/history/archive/19991220.html