March 20, 2023 • 54 mins
In part three of this special four-part episode, Margaret continues her conversation with Shereen Younes about the early fight for LGBT rights and how it was a literal fight, fought on every front.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, and welcome to cool people who did cool stuff.
You were twice a week reminder that when we fight,
we win, not always like win the fight itself, but
fighting is winning because it's refusing to be beaten down.
That's what this podcast is about. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy,
and with me today is Shrine Unas. Yeah that's me,
Hi yay, and not with us today the producer Sophie. Sophie,
(00:28):
she is still very sick, and I hope she's feeling okay,
but yeah, yeah, she will be missed. But now we
can say anything we want. I know, like I can
finally tell everyone about the time that I and then
there were six of them and only three of us.
But then and I don't know, I haven't been the
(00:52):
same since. Well, So thank you so much for telling
me that that's really vulnerable of you. I really appreciate
you opening up about the experience. And I'm the audience
knows now too, because I feel like they're going to
be so much closer to you, I know, and I
feel like it's like I've been meaning to get it
off my chest since the pocket, like it's important context.
So Ian is our audio engineer and our theme music
(01:15):
was written for us by an women and this week
we are continuing the story from last week, the story
of Stonewall. Well, in a lot of ways, we're telling
the story kind of around Stonewall, since the story of
Stonewall itself is fairly well known, although it's still worth
telling again. So I'll tell it too, but I highly
recommend you go back and not you sharing you you
(01:36):
were there, but anyone who hasn't heard it should go
back and listen to parts one and two. Margaret's right
because similar to most things in history, there's like a
singular event sometimes that gets so much attention, and knowing
all the other events that led up to that mountain
sometimes is really helpful because it's not just like one
day it changed, right, And I think it's really helpful
(01:58):
to know everyone else the fall so hard before the
big event that's in your history books, I guess you know. Yeah.
Plus you get to hear about someone with a parrot
beating up NIVB Yes, and a cheetah right or leopard
leopard Yeah, I like to think that leopard fucked some
transphobes up. I mean, you have to go out with
(02:19):
the bang, I'm sure so yeah, I mean, like I
feel safer with my forty pound dog near me. Imagine
how much safer you feel as a trans person when
you're a fucking leopard invincible. Yeah, that should that should
be like band guns, legalized leopards. That's my take, leopards
for queers. Yes, exactly. So now that we've sort of
(02:42):
set the scene, not with the talking about leopards, but
you know, the larger thing. We haven't set New York scene,
but we've set the scene LGBT shit in the US
in the fifties and sixties. And I know that every
city is like unique and beautiful and cool, but like
in the broadest sense of New York City was one
of the other major cities during all this What I'm
trying to say is the New York City is extra
(03:03):
unique and cool. Social oppression pushed more and more queers
into big cities during all this time, right, and to
go back to like the twenties and shit prohibition meant
that since bars were illegal anyway, all the illegal shit
tends to hang out together. So gayness was more present
overall in the drinking culture in New York because all
the bars are illegal. So it makes sense what's one
(03:25):
more illegal thing? Yeah, and so we're going to start
today with Okay, not the like showiest person, but like
probably my favorite person. Wow, from all of this, Eva
could more favorite than Frank Frankton. Shit, poor guy, he's
wanting to be an astronomer. I just feel for that
(03:49):
when someone some peaceful marches. Yeah he tried, you tried, Yeah,
Eva Cotchever, or, as he's often remembered, Eve Adams. She
is a Jewish lesbian anarchist who moved from Poland to
New York in nineteen twelve. She spoke seven fucking languages. Well,
and I think she moved with her partner, but I'm
(04:10):
not one hundred percent certain on that. I read one
thing that said that she did, and soon enough. Her
job in the US, she's a traveling like door to
door salesperson, saleswoman who sells anarchist magazines. This is in
the sixties, no, the nineteen twenties, twenty okay, sorry sorry, yeah, yeah, no, no,
it's okay, So in the nineteen twenties and the nineteen
(04:30):
tens actually, And when she first moves there, she's like
traveling around being like selling Emma Goldman's Mother Earth and
if you want to hear more about that, listened to
our episode on birth control pioneers. And so she's distributing
these like illegal underground newspapers and shit everywhere, probably in
a bunch of different languages I assume at least Yiddish
and English and a couple other. She goes to Chicago
(04:51):
for a while, she lives there for a while, and
she makes her living teaching Russian. So I guess that's
another one of her seven languages. Well, and she runs
a gay literary salon called the Gray Room. Wow, she
does a lot of six stuff. I want to be
a polygon and have a gray Room. Well, I know,
I know. That's like I always think about this whenever
people are like, what's yours? What if you could have
(05:12):
a superpower would it be? I don't want to fly.
I want to be invisible. I want to know every
language in the world, and that would be the best superpower.
Like I there are so many and there's no way
I could learn even like a handful of them in
my lifetime. Well enough, yeah, but that is the best superpower.
So all of the polygots out there, you're doing it right.
(05:34):
You're doing it right. Just I agree, And one of
my biggest frustrations is that, like I'm a jack of
all trades and I can't have a conversation in any
language but English. I can like read enough Spanish to
like not be fucked over, and if I'm inn like,
and I've like used Spanish as my like language in
other countries that aren't like Italy. In France, I get
(05:55):
around with my Spanish and stad of my English or whatever,
but I don't speak it well enough. And I'm so
good at learning shit, and I'm so bad at learning languages.
So much I know and so like just so much
respect for everyone who puts in net work and like
So from nineteen twenty one to nineteen twenty three, she
lives in Chicago and she runs the gay literary salam
(06:15):
The Gray Room, And then she moves back to New
York and she publishes a book. She's really subtle about
what she's about. The book is called Lesbian Love Wow Wow. Yeah,
not subtle. Anarchists are not known for being shy about
Her name is Eve too, Like it's so so ironic.
Her name is Eve. I love it, yeah totally. So.
(06:37):
In nineteen twenty five, she opens what might be the
first lesbian bar or even gay bar in the United States.
There's a lot of people being like, oh, the first bar,
or these bars like one in New Orleans and I
think one in the Bay or whatever. But those are
in the thirties, and I think that what is happening
here is that people aren't counting prohibition era ones because
they speakeasies, so they're not like legal bars. I don't
(07:00):
fucking care what's legal. Yeah, it's all made up, yeah, exactly.
It is completely unrelated to what's ethical. Um. So she
opens what might be the first gay bar in the
United States, and it's called Eve's Hangout or Eve Adams's
Tea Room. Adams two is great, what a great name.
(07:20):
Oh my god, Yes, I know, I know she spells
her name at least in this context with two d's,
So Adams like the Adams family. This is the second
anarchist queer connection to the Adams family that I've made.
We talked about in the episode up about Up against
the Wall, motherfuckers, But the woman who played Granny Adams
(07:43):
in the nineteen ninety one one was a queer anarchist
pacifist m wow, like theater person from a connection from
the nineteen sixties. Who was a good connections Yeah, who
was a big part of inspiring a lot of the
subcultural shit that the hippies did through the up against
the wall motherfuckers. Wow, yeah, that's so cool. I know
(08:04):
Adam's family secretly like why I actually always thought they
were cool, but secretly like anarchists too. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And so an Eva gets called the Queen of the
third sex because the third sex was yet another way
of describing gay folks at the time. I see that
all more time, the third sex, the third sex, Yeah,
was a way that people would talk about there's like
(08:26):
men women in gays interesting, m Yeah, and it's one day.
I don't know. When I do more of a nineteenth
century homosexuality episode will like dive more into and I
will know more about exactly how third sex relates to yah,
homophile and all of these other things that are going on. Yeah.
(08:46):
So they didn't mean it, but it's biological sex. Obviously
they made it more like like what did they what
does what does they mean by sex? Back then? So
I don't This is the part I don't totally get,
but I'm under the impression by third sex they meant
like kind of like, yeah, third sexuality interesting, but also
I think that they kind of understood it as this
(09:07):
like in it thing, this like part thing that's part
of you, so it's also a thing that you like.
It's basically if you're if you can be bored with
the sex of a woman, you can be born the
third sex too, So that's kind of like I think,
so not too bad. No, and the third sex was
not a pejorative. I believe. I believe it was used
(09:28):
by um, by the gay movement. That's cool. Yeah, No,
it's gonna be really funny when one hundred years from
now people are like, and this podcast host she was
a transgender woman, which is I know it sounds kind
of fucked up to say, but you have to understand
in twenty twenty three, you know, like, because the way
(09:48):
that we think about sex and gender is constantly changing.
And that's totally fucking fine. That's so true. It's so true.
Um just kidding this time we got it right and
everyone else is wrong. So um. Yeah, this club, it's
definitely ten years earlier than Mona's for forty club in
San Francisco, which is open in nineteen thirty six. And
gets called the first lesbian bar. It depends on definitions.
(10:09):
This one also in a lot of ways, it was
less of a bar. It was almost certainly a speakeasy.
Most tea rooms were coded as we're just speakeasies, And
it's usually described as a speakeasy. But it's more of
an event space, and it's like a place to go
to poetry discussions and shit than it is to get
drunken dance. Love that. Yeah, I know, i'd like actually
(10:31):
do a way better at this. I mean I would rather.
I mean I always say I'm not a big drinker
or bar person, but just put me into like a
tea room or poetry place, like that's the ship. You know,
that should be more normalized. I really think about that
every time. That's seldom times I have to go out.
I just want to go to a bookstore and drink
some tea. That should be normalized. I don't need to
go to a freaking bar and pretend to like alcohol.
(10:53):
I agree. And so there's this sign up at this bar.
Maybe probably not, but historically this is the story. It's
probably apocryphal, which is sad because sometimes our enemies make
up the coolest things about us. You know, this was
like yeah, like like the lavender lads. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
(11:14):
And in this case, the news articles that were like
condemning this place claim that there's a sign up at
the bar that says men are admitted but not welcome.
Thank you. Yeah, you know, we rule. Do they work
for us? I know? Yeah. The same source that claims
the sign existed was a nineteen twenty six article in Variety,
(11:34):
and it basically the rest of the article is like,
this place is an evil sex den where Mannish women
prey on our innocent girls. So she runs a cool
lesbian bar, an important social center for New York's bohemian
scene and for immigrants and lesbians and working class intellectuals.
It's a popular after theater club. A lot of the
big writers at the time, Henry Miller and Nias Ninn,
(11:56):
all those people are hanging out at this place. But
then an NYPD vice squad kind of killed her in
a roundabout way, in a roundabout way. But I blame
the vice squad for her death because she was a
Jewish lesbian anarchist, right, And that is literally three Nazi
(12:16):
death sentences. Yeah, each one of those is enough to
die from the Nazi point of view, and so some
piece of shit undercover woman cop not the only time
that a woman lesbian cop is going to come up
bad in the stories. This week, she goes into the
place and she declares it a den of sin or whatever.
Like theoretically, is a couple different ways of stories heard
(12:37):
like either like Eva's like, yo, check out my book
Lesbian Love, What's up? Or the cop like goes on
this like elaborate date with her and like goes with
her to hotel and shit, And I've no idea if
they bang either way. At the end of it, because
Eva like possibly might have hit on this cop, she's
arrested for obscenity and she's deported from the United States
to Portland and so I po poland even worse, um
(13:01):
well at the time in nineteen twenty seven, she's deported
to Poland. Oh shit, and she she gets by for
a while. She she moves to Paris. She makes her
money selling naughty books to American tourists, which rules, yeah,
it's possible. I read like one line that claimed, but
with no further information, that she went to Spain to
throw down in that whole Spanish Civil War thing. That.
(13:23):
You can listen to me talking too about with Jamie
Loftus if you want to hear more about that. Yea.
Then came back to Paris after that whole thing fell,
and then she tried to get out of Europe, right
because she's a it's a really bad time to be
a three strikes girl, right, and the US won't let
her in and she couldn't raise enough money to get
herself to Palestine, which is like, you know, the only
(13:44):
other place to try and get herself as a Jew.
Her and her partner were arrested by the Nazis in
nineteen forty three and they both died Noschwitz. Well, so
I blame that fucking cop straight up who went in
and then trapped her. God, that just really proves to
show that you can be anything. You can be. You
(14:05):
can be a woman, you can be gay, you can
be black. If you're a cop, that trumps everything in
my opinion, you know what I mean, Like it doesn't
matter how like marginalized you are if you choose to
be a cop. To me, that that trumps everything because
that happens, yeah, because you've you've chosen what position you
want to have in the systems. Of oppression and power. Yeah, exactly.
(14:29):
Well that's so fucked up. Yeah, she looks have been
pretty young too, right like she I think she was
in her forties when she does, I know, I know,
but it's yeah, god, that's so that's tragic. Well I'm glad. Yeah,
she had a good run. Yeah, that's cool. Do you
(14:52):
think she's Do you think her bar was not considered
the first bar because it wasn't legal back then and
was the first bar that you mentioned, Like, that's considered
the first bar after prohibition ended. Okay, so that's my
best guests as to why these ones don't count, because
I assume there were other ones. Actually there's even another
literally the stone Wall in was well we'll get to that, okay,
(15:12):
a little nugget so spoiling. Yeah, yeah, totally. But after
the war, New York City stays pretty gay. Even though
they had their mini lavender scare, you know, where they've
fired the gay teachers or whatever, it stays pretty gay,
much like San Francisco. The gay beats were a big
part of this, you know, like some of like New
York's cultural icons were like writing about how they have
(15:34):
gay sex and it rules, you know. William burrows and
shit like that. So the government does it's government thing,
and it starts in trapping well, I don't know if
it's started, but at this time it's in trapping gay
men and blackmailing them. It cracks down on gay people
drinking or existing in public. The liquor board starts pulling
licenses away from any business that might become disorderly. And
(15:55):
I'm putting scare quotes around that. Basically any bar that
is like known to be a gay bar and have
its liquor license pulled because that accounts as disorderly and so.
And there's all of these different laws at different times
that are like get kind of conflated to each other.
And I don't totally understand the timeline, but there were
laws like you're not allowed to be a woman who
drinks in public, you're not allowed to be a gay
(16:15):
person who you're not allowed to serve alcohol to gay people.
But sometimes these things that people say like oh, this
was the law, it's actually this was what the police enforced,
not a specific code. Of course, that's that makes sense.
That still happens today, Like what's yeah, well, yeah, that's
(16:37):
so absurd. So if there's no legal way for gay
folks to gather. Then they all just stop pink gay
and become heterosexual and happen. No, just kidding, they drink illegally,
enter the mafia. Oh I'm interested in this. So the
Geneva se family is the crime family is the oldest
(16:59):
and largest of the quote five families of organized crime
of New York City. And they're this Italian American mafia group.
They're still around. Um oh were they called the ken
Jenova essay? Um? I might be pronouncing that last name
for mafia, I know. And they're like the fucking if
you think of the Italian mafia in New York, Like,
there's several other ones, but this one's the big, biggest one. Yeah, okay,
(17:22):
So like the Sopranos, this is like, yeah, there are
literally two people named fat Tony in this story. Well
that's that's amazing. Yeah, that's how you know they're the
top dog mafia. He thought just one, there's two fat
Yeah exactly. And so they do crime stuff, heroin dealing, gambling, rigging,
boxing matches, all that shit, running legal bars during prohibition
(17:44):
and after prohibition. And they are like more complicated morally
than I can easily get into one day, we'll do
an episode about how the mafia and the US government
like work together to fight fascism or whatever. Oh yeah,
you gotta teach me about that suit. Yeah, I'm I'm
I'm excited to learn more about it. There's this Jewish
gangster named Meyer Lanski who like organized mafia Jews to
(18:08):
go beat up Nazis in the US with like crowbars
and shit. Why do we learn about that stuff? That's
what I fucking that's right. Interested in fucking history with
gold Rush or whatever? The ship? Yeah, yeah, totally. And
if you get tell the story of the gold Rush,
you need to tell the story of all the like
gay lesbian prostitutes who like fucking make all their money
(18:29):
and like run their own bars and like don't have
pimps because you know, like yeah, another So we'll get
to I need to look that up as soon as
we're done. But that sounds incredible, and you're right, you're right. Yeah. Overall,
I'm not a big fan of the mafia or whatever,
but we all got to accept everything's complicated in the
in the fifties and the sixties at least, and I
think actually earlier than that, the mafia is running the
(18:51):
gay bars in New York. Mostly they do it for money.
They can charge a ton for water down, bootleg, homemade, stolen,
et cetera, liquor the radically at the Stonewall there was
like literally not a drink that wasn't watered down. I
read one thing that was like, if you knew the
right people, they'd go out back and get the like
they'd have like the bottles of liquor, and they'd be
like labeled, but it would all be lies, you know,
(19:13):
and they like really liked you, they go out back
and get the real I don't know enough about liquor
to give you an example of a compliment fancy liquor.
And also by running gay bars, they can extort anyone
who fucks with them because the customers are gay, and
gay people are easy to extort in a time of
shame and you know, cry or it's illegal to be gay,
they're easy targets for sure. Yeah. The mafia gets away
(19:36):
with this by paying off the cops. What gets called
gayola instead of payola. Wait really yeah, at least at
the time I think it was called gayola. Yeah that's
pretty funny. Yeah, yeah, no, totally. And they pay the
cops a fucking ton of money. Stonewall was paying the
cops two thousand dollars a week, which is more than
sixteen thousand dollars in today's money. WHOA, that's a that's
(20:01):
a fat sum. That is a fat sum of money.
And how was that was possible through the mafia? The
mafia was. Yeah, it was the money that the mafia
is making both off of the overpriced drinks, but also
they were like running other crimes out of the establishment,
mostly drug dealing. There's arguments about the level of sex
(20:21):
work that was happening at the at Stone Wall, but yeah, basically,
by selling overpriced drinks to gay people, they have to
turn around and pay sixty five thousand dollars a month
in modern money. Oh well, which adds so much money,
I know, it's almost it's three quarters of a million
dollars a year. Well, and after paying the cops so
(20:44):
much fucking money, the cops still raid the mafia bars
because they have to keep up appearances or whatever. And
also the mafia people don't care if they fuck with
some of the gay people, but they do it on
week nights, they do it early in the night and
usually they and they give a tip ahead of time
to the bartenders so they'll like get most liquor out
or like kind of give heads up to the customers.
They actually like like, hey, at seven pm today, you
(21:07):
don't want to be here, you know, and cops would
raid and they would like there's a lot of different
accounts of these types of raids, but usually basically it's
like they show up and like make sure you're wearing
gender appropriate clothing is like a huge one. And who
decides that just like skirts and pants that's no whatever. Well,
(21:27):
well no, and actually this is important because the thing
that people talk about is they say that there was
a law at the time that said you have to
have three articles of clothing that matched ther your ID marker,
Like you're on your idea. It probably wasn't a law.
It was probably the rule that the cops used. And
we'll get into some of the things that people did
(21:48):
to work around that. But yeah, so you mean like
three arcis of cloth if if it said, like, oh,
I'm a woman, I have to have three articles of
clothing that proved I was a woman, like quote unquote
proved Yeah, Like like who just that's so interesting to know,
like what's on each list, I wonder, Yeah, no, and
they will literally like m fondle your genitals and like
(22:12):
you know, expose you to everyone, and like they will
like you know, and they'll take people to jail over it,
and like you know, it's obviously never nice to be
in jail, and it's like extra not nice to be
a gay man in jail, and like you know, just
about one violation after the other after the other. Yeah.
And we'll talk about this a little bit more too later.
(22:32):
But and the cops did it because no one stopped them,
like they kind of like literally cops from this period.
We'll talk about how gay folks were like easy marks,
you know, because they were like ashamed and beaten down.
So Stonewall in it was originally called Bonnie's Stonewall with
A and stonewall was two words, and it was opened
(22:55):
in nineteen thirty and it claimed to be a tea room,
but it was a speakeasy. And I've read accounts to
say it was heterosexual. And I've also read accounts that
it was named after a lesbian's autobiography called the Stone
Wall from like the nineteenth century, And so I'm guessing
it started off as a lesbian bar, and it wasn't
(23:15):
too straight, and people just like to ignore lesbian's that's
my best guess, right, Yeah, that sounds about right. And
it might have eventually just stopped being a gay bar
before for a while, I don't know. In nineteen thirty
four it moved to Christopher Street, where it more famously is.
In nineteen sixty four it was the interior was destroyed
by flames and it closed down. But do you know
(23:37):
what will make you flame proof? Responsored by fiberglass walls.
That's a that's a great How did you How did
you land that one? That's that's pretty good. That's pretty yeah. Thanks.
I'm a professional podcaster. They teach you at podcasting Academy
(23:57):
how to do awkward ad transitions and try to make
them funny. Thank you, thank you. Well, actually a stone
wall would make you more fire resistant. You're not wrong.
So if the next year's ad is for a masonry company,
then it's the right one. And if it's not, you
(24:18):
should complain to Sophie. That would make me believe in God,
I think, and we're back. I hope you enjoyed the
ad for all of the bricks and brick related services, only,
of course, for making things more fire resistant, not proving
(24:40):
that cops can't fuck with you easily. It's not like
all of our rights that anyone has ever had started
with someone throwing bricks at cops. No, of course not.
But also for the folks that did the right thing.
And listen to the first two episodes, the progress from
donuts to brick is incredible to me. Yeah, yeah, totally,
(25:05):
like that's just again chef's kiss for all that. Yeah.
So the place burns, the interior is gutted in flames,
and it's destroyed, and it closes. Two years later, in
nineteen sixty six, the mafia bought it. Three mafia guys
bought it and turned it into a gay bar. And
(25:26):
they did. They phoned this in. They spent like a
couple thousand dollars repairing the place and covering up the damage.
Mostly they just painted it black and kept it dimly lit,
so just like like just concealed with darkness the damage. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
They didn't bother plumbing it. There was no running water
(25:48):
behind the bar. There was running water in the bathrooms. Okay,
let's good at least, so they kept the glasses in
a big tub of water and gave each one a
little rinsey rinse in the same gross tub. God um
before serving it to someone else. Damn. Yeah, just think
of it in COVID times. Let's just I wonder how
(26:12):
many people got sick? Well, no, I don't want to
think about it. Well, yeah, I'm gonna tell you anyway.
I'm sorry. This was blamed in a gay newsletter at
the time for a nineteen sixty nine outbreak of hepatitis
among gay men in New York City. Oh my god.
It was three mafia guys who bought the place. And
it wasn't uncontentious that they decided to do this. I mean,
(26:32):
game mafia people did own gay bars, but it was
still like a little Well, let's talk about fat Tony.
Fat Tony number primary, Okay, okay, number primary. That's a number.
The controlling interest was held by this guy named Tony
Lareya or Fat Tony. He was a very large man.
He weighed like, you know, four hundred some pounds. Wouldn't
(26:54):
it be funny? I just realized how funny it would
be if Fat Tony was not fat I know, right, yeah,
another level of yeah yeah, or maybe they felt pressure
being named Tony to be fat yet it might have
been you know, I don't know. It can go either way. Yeah,
more power to you, whatever size you want to be
with any name you want. But his dad was not
(27:17):
so excited about him. His dad, who was a mafia guy,
was not excited about him hanging out with the gays.
Fat Tony's roommate was an openly gay Italian guy who
bartended at Stonewall and he was the guy who was
trusted to move the money around. I haven't heard him
referred to as mafia, but he lived with Fat Tony
was Italian, bartended the mafia bar and was the one
(27:39):
who was trusted to move the money around at the
very least. He's like a middleman. Yeah whatever, like and
because like one of the things is that people want
to people want to downplay the mafia connection with Stonewall
because they want to kind of whitewash our history. But so,
because of fear of raids and such, the money was
carried home from the bar several nights a week, several
(28:00):
several times a night. Sorry, like you know, because the
cops are going to comment and still all fucking money
because they're just I mean, these are basically just two
crime organizations, the NYPD in the mafia, just trying to
figure out delicate balance together. But Fat Tony he got
very into the culture. He started shooting I know, okay,
he started doing two things. He started shooting meth and
(28:20):
he started fucking dudes. But not as roommate. That was
a very important point in the book. I was reading, Um,
they stayed platonic, him and him and his roommate. Interesting
that that was. Yeah, it was a important thing to note.
I mean, it's nice to know that friendships French ship withstood,
you know, yeah, totally, and like, I don't know, actually
(28:42):
a weird way. It is like important, and I'll be like,
whoa gay people to just be friends with each other,
you know exactly. Yeah, yeah, there's like a level of like, oh,
like I respect you, and yeah, even though I'm doing
gay things now, I still respect you. Yeah, totally totally.
Fat Tony's story is kind of tragic. A little while,
I got really confused because there is another fat Tony
(29:03):
who rises really high and prominence in the family and
lives a long and healthy life, and so I was like, yeay,
our Tony's doing good, not our Tony. His family stopped
talking to him as a result of him being gay,
or him doing drugs, or some combination of the both,
and the rumor is eventually that his family killed him. No, Tony, Yeah,
(29:25):
and I don't know. Once again, it's like when you're
a dead gay mobster, it's hard to know whether you
get killed for being gay or for being a mobster
or what. You know, Damn, this happens. His death happens
after all the events of today. Okay, but I think
his story matters because people talk about the mafia is
(29:46):
this opportunistic thing that was ripping off gay folks. But
the thing that people need to remember about any story
about anything that has to do with sexual sexuality. We're everywhere,
like pick a profession and there's gays doing it. Yeah,
you know, um for good and bad. He wasn't the
(30:06):
only game mobster in the New York scene. Big Bobby
who worked the door next Big Bobby, These are great names.
Big Bobby worked the door at a place called Tony Pastors.
He was in love with a Chinese drag queen named
Tony Lee. Everyone is fucking named Tony. You want to
(30:28):
say Tony, every bar, every person all Tony's all the
way down. It's so funny. Isn't Tony correct wrong? Isn't
it like short for Anthony? Or is that not? I
think so? Or yeah maybe I think yeah, yeah, that's interesting.
Tony is a wow. What a name? What a name?
(30:51):
I know. So everyone's named Tony except for a freelance
circulating bouncer named Pete. And Pete was the most exaggerated
cliche archetypical Italian mobster who wore black shirts and ties.
He exaggerated his like Italian accent, which I saw referred
to as a street Italian accent, which made me realize
(31:14):
that the Italian accents of New York City are not
necessarily I'm from Italy Italian. It's like Italian American accent
that is a New York accent. You know. Pete was what,
at least in the nineties, we called a two beer
queer because he was a straight man who would then
get drunk, and he slept with both gay men and queens,
(31:35):
which were sort of seen as two different sort of
genders of people to sleep with in a lot of ways,
much like you would now when we say queens, we're
talking about drag queens, but we were talking about a
culture in which drag queen, trans vestite and trans women
are very um. There is a spectrum there, and it
is a spectrum that people are often moving around inside of. Yeah,
(31:55):
and like a lot of the queens would later come
out as trans women once. The sort of way we
talked about these things changed, but not all of them
right And for a long time Pete was sweet. He
would get his partners better jobs and shit with all
his connections. Later he runs off out of the city
with a queen and they lived as a heck couple
until he freaked out and killed her. No, yeah, it
(32:20):
pet which is why trans women have trust issues to
say yeah, to say the least, wow that pet Yeah.
It's also just weird that this guy saying Pete, I
can feel like, seriously, you know what, you'd have to
take him seriously. That's kind of crime guy. Yeah. And
(32:44):
I also think it's telling that some of the power
players in early gay history were either revolutionists like the
lesbian anarchists who opened the first bar or the gay
communist who set up the first organization, or they were
professional criminals like Tommy the lesbian of Fedora and a
Bar in San Francisco or Poor Fatony in New York.
So Stonewall, let's talk about Stonewall it self. Okay, it's
(33:05):
big standout feature versus all of the other gay bars,
including the crime bars. While all the gay bars were
crime bars, it allowed dancing. It allowed same sex dancing.
All the other gay bars no same sex dancing, um,
because that was for fear of like like a police action, yeah,
getting shut down, getting alled at and all this shit. Um.
(33:27):
Within Stonewall, there were two dance rooms. One was called
the White Room and one was called the Black Room
in a bad way. Um, so like segregated, segregated way,
so yes, but with like a little asterisk or something
to make it really obvious as a race thing. The
black room is also called the Puerto Rican Room. Okay,
both both rooms are painted black because they're hiring fire damage.
(33:50):
But it wasn't formally segregated. It was kind of culturally segregated,
and it was culturally segregated along race lines. But even
more than that, at least as it's been presented it
as I see it, as I've seen it, it's segregated
between like different like vibes, where like the white room
was like couples dancing mostly, and the black room was
like everyone trying out the new big group dances and
(34:12):
all the devil Yeah, like I'm being monogamous and normal
versus like I'm going to be a devil today. Yeah exactly,
And so yeah, whatever the latest dance craze was happening
in the black room and then the white room I'm
standing or whatever, and it and the white room skewed older,
(34:35):
it's skewed more cusgendered, it scwed whiter. And I don't
know that these were official names or these were like
what people just called them. There's a lot of different
reports about the clientele because everyone wants to own Stonewall
because it fucking what happens here rules, right, And everyone
like argues about Stonewall because yeah, because they want to
(34:58):
own it. Um. Yeah, it seems likely that the clientele
shifted over time and was constantly in flux. It was
almost exclusively gay men and or people assigned mail at birth,
but gay women started showing up too. The way I've
heard it said is that it started off all men,
and then they started letting in women, and then they
started letting in drag queens. Okay, and there were exceptions
(35:21):
all along to the drag queen thing, but like, for
the most part, if you showed up and you were
like in address, they'd turn you away because in order
to get in, you have to show up and there's
like this big, thick, fucking crazy door and there's a
gangster on the other side who's like looking through the
people and like trying to figure out whether to let
you in or not. You know, password, Yeah, it's like
if he recognizes you from having been there before, he'll
(35:43):
let you in. So you kind of kind of go
your first time. You have to go with your friends
who've been there before. But so eventually they start letting
in people in full drag, but for the longest time
they don't. And when women showed up and lesbian showed up,
they were kind of perceived, as I got told or
as I read, they're perceived as like honored guests, so
(36:05):
it wasn't their space, but everyone was like, what the
fuck was that lesbian doing in here? Instead everyone's like,
oh my god, you know that rules, thanks for coming,
you know. It was still kind of like also segregrade
in that way probably too, just like totally yeah, yeah,
I mean It's like, and if the point of the
bar is getting laid, then it sort of makes sense,
(36:27):
right that lesbians go to the lesbian bar and the
game I go to the gay bar. Yeah, that's true.
It's true. It's true. That's true. But I mean I like, well,
I mean, you know, it's complicated for me to fit
in and anywhere, but like, you know, I would like
us all just hanging out. But yeah, same. That's why
I like the word queer because and I yeah, I
mean too, I love the word queer totally. But also,
(36:49):
I mean when it's co mingled, if separately, it feels safe,
but commingled also feels safe too. Does that make sense?
Like it's still not like like, uh, there's you're you're
amongst Yes, exactly exactly. So I feel like, yeah, yeah,
I mean it makes sense back then that maybe they
were like m for us only. Yeah. And so one
(37:13):
of the main clientele at this place um at Stonewall
was street queens, and street queens was a specific youth
subculture of homeless queer youth, most of whom many of
whom all of them I don't know, did sex work.
A bunch of them lived in the park across the
street and were protected by some of the older queers,
one of whom will actually talk about. And this is
(37:34):
where a lot of the more famous characters around Stonewall
come from this culture. But you know what culture you
can belong to buy consuming stuff capitalism, the culture capital yeay,
(37:56):
everything's the same capital see for culture and capitalism. I
know they come from the same root word. See that.
Yeah it's actually really true. I never thought of it
that way. Yeah, yeah, I learned so much on this podcast. Yeah,
true things, much like the True Deals. Here you go,
ads and we are back. I'm talking about the street queens,
(38:21):
who I want to give their own episode one day probably,
But I will say the podcast Queer as Fact did
an episode about Stonewall that's really worth listening to, and
it talks more about the bar itself and the culture there,
and it draws from a bunch of firsthand accounts. So
if you want to hear people talking about like what
their time was like at Stonewall, Queer as Fact is
a fucking awesome podcast. And since amab folks assigned mail
(38:44):
at birth, folks weren't allowed to come in dresses, they'd
come in quote scare drag, which is a sick name. Yeah,
that's amazing. Yeah, so since like if it was rated,
you're supposed to know as illegal, do not of at
least three articles of clothing that matched the idea you
sex or id or whatever it was. Again, probably a guideline,
(39:05):
not a specific law. But so scare drag is dragon pants.
You get some tight fitting pants and a wig and makeup,
and you tie a men's shirt around your waist, so
if you need to transform, you just rip off the
wig and button up your shirtbook. I know. It's also
a fucking sick look. It's like a superhero like just
like it's time to go not Poka anymore, Ye Superman.
(39:29):
That's so cool, I know. But I think a great loophole. Yeah, totally.
And so they have this whole culture that they built
around scare drag and or aesthetic that they built around it.
And I like it because this black block. But for
nineteen sixty street queens, you know. Yeah, and while some
of the well the street queens were hustlers, right, they
(39:49):
generally weren't at Stonewall for work but to hang out. Um,
I'm sure some of them did do work there. Like
everything is like Oh, sex work wasn't a big thing there,
and I think it wasn't the people. I think the
people saying that aren't trying to downplay sex work. They're
literally being like, this is where people go to like
let loose rather than get work. But there is a
guy who connects them to sex work very directly, and
(40:10):
he is one of the most interesting characters in this
whole story. Oh, the bouncer at Stonewall is an Irish
Italian Catholic man named Ed the Skull Murphy. Wow. Wow,
what name. Wow. I wonder how he got that name.
(40:32):
First of all, ill, okay, great, Yeah, we're gonna talking
about We're talking about Skull Murphy. Yeah, there are so
many great names. I know gay history. I know when
the Skull was like eleven or so, he probably wasn't
named the Skull yet. He bashed a cop in the
head with a milk bottle for trashing his shoeshine. Stand. Wow,
(40:54):
out of all the skulls to bash, that is the
one I would want to to bash. To be named
the skull, Yeah, that's amazing. Okay. But so he fought
in World War Two and then he come back and
he becomes this professional wrestler where he got the name
the Skull right, and he's a big fucking guy. He's
like taking steroids and his signature fight move is that
(41:15):
he head butts people um ed. Oh yeah, I love that,
and it's between bouncing gigs for gay bars is the
other thing he starts doing for the mafia when he
comes back from the war. He also has another job.
Oh he shows on the ad transition here because of
the next part's about gold. But if you want some
(41:35):
gold and you don't want to buy it, the joke
here for anyone who's listening is that sometimes we get
ads for gold buying gold, and then usually make fun
of that because he's usually a bad investment. Yeah. Also
people I don't know people listen to I can happen here. No,
I'm allergic to gold, so that's another that's right, I
have gold teeth. Yeah yeah, allergy can't. Yeah, stay away.
(41:58):
So he liked to rob dentists. That was his other hobby.
This guy is so cool, so not from dentists. He
does some sketchy stuff, like some bad stuff, but yeah,
but he is. He is one of the most complete
characters of like Good and Bad. All Yeah, I'm just
(42:22):
really excited to hear what you would take make of him. So,
okay him and is one of his gay friends. I
don't know if they are lovers or not. Um. So
the gold thing was because he would steal stuff from
dentists and sell them, like the steal gold teeth from
dentists and sell them. Yeah. Yeah, that was was making
that trance. Like literally he would go and he's he's
steal their stash of gold teeth or like the gold
that they used to make crowns. Honestly genius move, no,
(42:45):
I know, And it worked for a very long time. Um.
One time they go rob this dentist and the dentist
is like, please don't take my diamond ring. It was
a gift. It was given to me by my father
for his buff for my bar mitzvah. And so they
let the guy keep his diamond ring because they're classy, right,
And so they just steal the gold teeth and then
they leave. But the next day there was a news
(43:06):
headline that reads, quote dentist CON's robbers out of ring.
So they go back. Yeah wow, so he like mis
represented of the story. Yeah yeah, So it's like he
convinced them to let me keep this. Yeah, because a
bunch of suckers. So they go back and they beat
him up and they take the diamond ring. That's hilarious.
(43:31):
On their seventy third dentist robbery. He gets caught a
lot of robberies before you. I know, I would say
the lesson here is that make sure you only rob
like seventy dentists or fifty if you want to play.
It's safe. It is completely safe to rob. The more
you rob, the higher the probability goes that you're doing
(43:54):
a caught. So just keep my mind when your numbers
go up. Yeah, totally. So he gets caught and he
does ten years. He gets out, he starts bouncing for
the mafia gay bars again, and he's perfect for it.
He's a crook, he's part Italian, he's scary as fucking hell.
He's the huge. Yeah, he earns a new nickname. Okay,
(44:15):
his new nickname. It was pretty good, so I know
this one's somehow even better. The two go really well together,
not like in the same word, but mother mother, because
he looks after and makes work connections for all the
street hustling youth. Mother is such an interesting name for
that kind of person. I know, I know, that is
(44:36):
so cool. And now here's where he gets messy. Oh no,
he starts in a new crime ring. And this new
crime ring they extort gay rich men. The scam is
called the Chicken and the Bull, and it's a reasonably
simple scam. You get a rich gay man to take
home a young sex worker who's called the chicken to
(44:59):
a hotel room. Then and either the worker the chicken,
just grabs the guy's wallet and runs and then you're
just like done, you know. Or the bull, who's either
a corrupt cop or someone like our man ed pretending
to be a cop, comes into the room and it's like,
I'm going to arrest you unless you give me a
bunch of money, and if the target is important enough,
(45:21):
like they come in and they're like, oh sha, that's
a fucking senator, because this absolutely gets some senators and shit,
they're like, actually, you know what, we're actually going to
blackmail you now and basically hold this over your head
that we know that you're game. We have pictures and shit,
you know, yeah yeah yeah, And so this isn't like blackmail, yeah,
and so this isn't just Ed doing it as this
whole extortion ring and it's mostly run by cops, including
(45:43):
a Chicago cop who was taking ten percent of every
extortion and was providing the fake police credentials and all
that shit. Well, okay, and this scam was fucking huge.
It's actually the same scam run by veteran of the Pods,
Sophie Lions, who is Ueen of the Underworld. If you
want to hear my episode about her from last fall.
(46:04):
Hers was straight and she did it alone, and she
didn't somehow manage to entrap some of the most powerful
people in the country because they did this to a
bunch of prominent people, including Liberaci, whoa an admiral and
a congressman. Oh shit, the Admiral William Church killed himself
when the whole thing was uncovered and he was revealed.
(46:25):
And it's interesting. It's when the crime is uncovered, when
the criminal ring goes down, it drags all the blackmailed
people into the limelight and it outs them. It's the
thing that they'd been paying to have not happened. The
government then does to them, right. That sucks. Yeah, And
it actually parallels some one of the things that we
(46:46):
talked about you and I when we talked about the
gay resistance to Nazis. How early German gay rights activists
in the nineteen tens and twenties used to out prominent
closeted people, which led to a bunch of suicides. It
was there like activism. It's like fucked up. But yeah,
and so I don't think this is good, but this
is what happens. The Mattachine Society that we talked about
them last time, the sort of more reformist organization. They
(47:09):
actually help with the government's investigation of this because they
want to stop this extortion ring, this targeting gay men,
and they serve as the go betweens between the victims
and the cops because the cops don't want to talk
directly to the Sorry, the victims don't want to talk
directly to the police. So ed the skull Murphy. When
the ring gets busted, he starts snitching. No mother, I know.
(47:32):
He still gets five years, but he didn't serve at all.
Rumor has it, which does not mean this is true.
Rumor has it he has blackmail photos of FBI director
j Edgar Hoover, and he held for the rest of
his life. He held that Hoover was gay. And liked
a cross dress and is later It's later been claimed
that the reason Hoover didn't go after the mafia was
(47:52):
because of these photos. Oh we shit, right, I mean
I thought the other as you mentioned, we're big fish.
But that's the biggest fish. Yeah, I know. Wow, that
is I mean I kind of believe him. Why would
he lie about that? Yeah, I see no particular reason.
Like my gut instinct is that this is true, but
(48:14):
I haven't really looked into it, and I'm not trying
to like specifically say I know that this is true, right, Yeah,
but just like all all science point to Yes, that's
so interesting. Yeah. Well so he gets out of prison. Yeah, yeah, no,
and he goes back to bouncing gay bars. Um, he's
the main doorman at Stonewall and he's there the night
of the riots. He sells drugs, he's pimping, or rather
(48:37):
he's making introductions for which he took tips. And he
also protects young sex workers. Like there's like a story
about like, um, the street queens love him, right, and
so I think that's telling about his relationship in the
work environment for them. When when customers try to assault
the young sex workers, there's mother showing up and he's
(48:58):
fucking scary, right is he sorry if you mentioned this?
Is he gay? Yes, but he's not out? Oh shit,
yeah yet? Okay, yeah he's gay the whole time. Yeah, okay,
I just wanted to make sure. Yeah. Yeah. He also
at the bar, he's running a ring of street queens
stealing wallets. I don't know if this is directly related
(49:19):
to the chicken extortion or not, but or if he's
just still like, yeah, what's up, Like if you ever
want to steal a wallet, I'll like move it for you,
you know, I don't. I don't know exactly. He's also
snitching to the mafia about which patrons are so rich
that they can be extorted. He's also maybe informing the
cops about what's happening at Stonewall. And this is the
(49:41):
one thing that I feel is like contentious and we
don't know, I've read both things. He also very adamantly
is like I ain't no snitch or kind of like
one and done. You know that he and he had
also snitched on cops, so it's like a little bit
right MESSI he also was and he's this white guy
and he's specifically known for defending people of color, and
(50:03):
after Stonewall, later bars sometimes wouldn't hire him because they
were convinced he'd quote turned the club black because he,
like you know, was friends with all people. Yeah, it
was an ally, yeah, yeah, I mean he was also gay,
but as far as race, yeah, damn. I mean it
(50:25):
is messy though, You're right, because he sounds like he
was a really good person that people respected in the community, right,
even though he's doing these things that are actually unconsciousable. Yeah,
and we're going to talk about his like I think
probably next episode. This isn't me skipping to next episode.
There still a bit more in this episode, but he's
going to come back into the story after Stonewall, and
(50:47):
he has a really interesting arc from there too. Okay,
cool the acid dealer at stone Wall, it's talking about
someone else. There is one of the bartenders, and she's
a queen named Maggie Jigs. These names I know. So
here's to the Maggie's of the world. I will say YEA.
Her partner, Tommy Um I think both romantic and um
(51:08):
and business kept a toy duck on the bar and
would quack it anytime someone left a tip. I love
I know, I love that it's like this sketchy crime bar,
but everyone's like kind of having fun and quack in
the duck and it's simple community where people feel safe
and yeah, so if like, yeah, you're gonna get a
wallet's stolen, but no one's gonna fucking treat you like
(51:28):
ship for being gay. Everyone loved Maggie even though shecasonally
stole shit from you. Her attitude towards money was two
for the bar, one for myself. I respect that she
was really good at setting up three ways. Okay, fucking
hero Maggie Jigs And I almost am certain this is
an independent investigation. This is a kai googled Maggie jigs Um.
(51:50):
She gets her name from a comic strip at the
time called Bringing Up Father, which is this Irish American
couple Maggie and Jigs and they're like dealing with class
stuff where like they they suddenly become rich rich, but Jigs,
the husband wants to like still like stay down and
dirty and hang out with all his poor friends, whereas
like Maggie is like a nag and wants to be
(52:10):
like rich or whatever. Also at the bar, a nearly
naked go go dancer dance in a gilded cage on
the bar m Risque. Yeah, it's a really interesting place.
Some people loved it, some people hated it. It had
a reputation, like there's a lot of his there's a
lot of the people who are involved, even in the
Stonewall riots. A lot of them were like, I don't
(52:31):
go to fucking Stonewall. Fuck that place, right because it
was just like too risky. So no, because it well,
like one, it was like too crimy I think for
a lot, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, And it also had
a place sense. It's kind of intense, I know. And
it had a reputation as a place where chicken hawks,
older men cruising for younger boys hung out. And so
(52:53):
I think some people are a little bit like, nah,
that's sketchy, right no, right, yeah, so that's the bar.
And let's hear about the riots. So on Wednesday, whoa
we did it? Wow? Yeah, that's so interesting, so many
good names. I know. I can't wait to hear about
the end of the skulls arc. It's so good. I'm
(53:16):
so excited. Yeah. No, there's like, well, y'all just gonna
have to wait for part four. Cliffhanger, I know, So
what else people don't have to wait for is to
connect with you with your You can follow me on
the internet if you want to. You don't have to.
I get it, but I'm Shiro Hero on Instagram a
(53:39):
Shiro Hero six six six on Twitter. They will follow
you wherever you make up. I actually don't know the
legality of me singing songs on here um from a
like copyright point of view. I know I saw you
were singing, but it reminded me of the Gilmore Girls song.
Yeah great, whatever, some old I don't fucking shit about
(54:00):
what I'm singing at any given time. If you want
to follow me on the internet, I'm at Magpie Killjoy
unless you have something that you disagree with about what
I said, in which case I'm on Twitter at I
write Okay, and I'm on Instagram at Margart Killjoy and
we'll see you all Wednesday. Cool People Who Did Cool
(54:24):
Stop is a production of cool Zone Media. For more
podcasts on cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia
dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hello, and welcome to cool people who did cool stuff.
You were twice a week reminder that when we fight,
we win, not always like win the fight itself, but
fighting is winning because it's refusing to be beaten down.
That's what this podcast is about. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy,
and with me today is Shrine Unas. Yeah that's me,
Hi yay, and not with us today the producer Sophie. Sophie,
(00:28):
she is still very sick, and I hope she's feeling okay,
but yeah, yeah, she will be missed. But now we
can say anything we want. I know, like I can
finally tell everyone about the time that I and then
there were six of them and only three of us.
But then and I don't know, I haven't been the
(00:52):
same since. Well, So thank you so much for telling
me that that's really vulnerable of you. I really appreciate
you opening up about the experience. And I'm the audience
knows now too, because I feel like they're going to
be so much closer to you, I know, and I
feel like it's like I've been meaning to get it
off my chest since the pocket, like it's important context.
So Ian is our audio engineer and our theme music
(01:15):
was written for us by an women and this week
we are continuing the story from last week, the story
of Stonewall. Well, in a lot of ways, we're telling
the story kind of around Stonewall, since the story of
Stonewall itself is fairly well known, although it's still worth
telling again. So I'll tell it too, but I highly
recommend you go back and not you sharing you you
(01:36):
were there, but anyone who hasn't heard it should go
back and listen to parts one and two. Margaret's right
because similar to most things in history, there's like a
singular event sometimes that gets so much attention, and knowing
all the other events that led up to that mountain
sometimes is really helpful because it's not just like one
day it changed, right, And I think it's really helpful
(01:58):
to know everyone else the fall so hard before the
big event that's in your history books, I guess you know. Yeah.
Plus you get to hear about someone with a parrot
beating up NIVB Yes, and a cheetah right or leopard
leopard Yeah, I like to think that leopard fucked some
transphobes up. I mean, you have to go out with
(02:19):
the bang, I'm sure so yeah, I mean, like I
feel safer with my forty pound dog near me. Imagine
how much safer you feel as a trans person when
you're a fucking leopard invincible. Yeah, that should that should
be like band guns, legalized leopards. That's my take, leopards
for queers. Yes, exactly. So now that we've sort of
(02:42):
set the scene, not with the talking about leopards, but
you know, the larger thing. We haven't set New York scene,
but we've set the scene LGBT shit in the US
in the fifties and sixties. And I know that every
city is like unique and beautiful and cool, but like
in the broadest sense of New York City was one
of the other major cities during all this What I'm
trying to say is the New York City is extra
(03:03):
unique and cool. Social oppression pushed more and more queers
into big cities during all this time, right, and to
go back to like the twenties and shit prohibition meant
that since bars were illegal anyway, all the illegal shit
tends to hang out together. So gayness was more present
overall in the drinking culture in New York because all
the bars are illegal. So it makes sense what's one
(03:25):
more illegal thing? Yeah, and so we're going to start
today with Okay, not the like showiest person, but like
probably my favorite person. Wow, from all of this, Eva
could more favorite than Frank Frankton. Shit, poor guy, he's
wanting to be an astronomer. I just feel for that
(03:49):
when someone some peaceful marches. Yeah he tried, you tried, Yeah,
Eva Cotchever, or, as he's often remembered, Eve Adams. She
is a Jewish lesbian anarchist who moved from Poland to
New York in nineteen twelve. She spoke seven fucking languages. Well,
and I think she moved with her partner, but I'm
(04:10):
not one hundred percent certain on that. I read one
thing that said that she did, and soon enough. Her
job in the US, she's a traveling like door to
door salesperson, saleswoman who sells anarchist magazines. This is in
the sixties, no, the nineteen twenties, twenty okay, sorry sorry, yeah, yeah, no, no,
it's okay, So in the nineteen twenties and the nineteen
(04:30):
tens actually, And when she first moves there, she's like
traveling around being like selling Emma Goldman's Mother Earth and
if you want to hear more about that, listened to
our episode on birth control pioneers. And so she's distributing
these like illegal underground newspapers and shit everywhere, probably in
a bunch of different languages I assume at least Yiddish
and English and a couple other. She goes to Chicago
(04:51):
for a while, she lives there for a while, and
she makes her living teaching Russian. So I guess that's
another one of her seven languages. Well, and she runs
a gay literary salon called the Gray Room. Wow, she
does a lot of six stuff. I want to be
a polygon and have a gray Room. Well, I know,
I know. That's like I always think about this whenever
people are like, what's yours? What if you could have
(05:12):
a superpower would it be? I don't want to fly.
I want to be invisible. I want to know every
language in the world, and that would be the best superpower.
Like I there are so many and there's no way
I could learn even like a handful of them in
my lifetime. Well enough, yeah, but that is the best superpower.
So all of the polygots out there, you're doing it right.
(05:34):
You're doing it right. Just I agree, And one of
my biggest frustrations is that, like I'm a jack of
all trades and I can't have a conversation in any
language but English. I can like read enough Spanish to
like not be fucked over, and if I'm inn like,
and I've like used Spanish as my like language in
other countries that aren't like Italy. In France, I get
(05:55):
around with my Spanish and stad of my English or whatever,
but I don't speak it well enough. And I'm so
good at learning shit, and I'm so bad at learning languages.
So much I know and so like just so much
respect for everyone who puts in net work and like
So from nineteen twenty one to nineteen twenty three, she
lives in Chicago and she runs the gay literary salam
(06:15):
The Gray Room, And then she moves back to New
York and she publishes a book. She's really subtle about
what she's about. The book is called Lesbian Love Wow Wow. Yeah,
not subtle. Anarchists are not known for being shy about
Her name is Eve too, Like it's so so ironic.
Her name is Eve. I love it, yeah totally. So.
(06:37):
In nineteen twenty five, she opens what might be the
first lesbian bar or even gay bar in the United States.
There's a lot of people being like, oh, the first bar,
or these bars like one in New Orleans and I
think one in the Bay or whatever. But those are
in the thirties, and I think that what is happening
here is that people aren't counting prohibition era ones because
they speakeasies, so they're not like legal bars. I don't
(07:00):
fucking care what's legal. Yeah, it's all made up, yeah, exactly.
It is completely unrelated to what's ethical. Um. So she
opens what might be the first gay bar in the
United States, and it's called Eve's Hangout or Eve Adams's
Tea Room. Adams two is great, what a great name.
(07:20):
Oh my god, Yes, I know, I know she spells
her name at least in this context with two d's,
So Adams like the Adams family. This is the second
anarchist queer connection to the Adams family that I've made.
We talked about in the episode up about Up against
the Wall, motherfuckers, But the woman who played Granny Adams
(07:43):
in the nineteen ninety one one was a queer anarchist
pacifist m wow, like theater person from a connection from
the nineteen sixties. Who was a good connections Yeah, who
was a big part of inspiring a lot of the
subcultural shit that the hippies did through the up against
the wall motherfuckers. Wow, yeah, that's so cool. I know
(08:04):
Adam's family secretly like why I actually always thought they
were cool, but secretly like anarchists too. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And so an Eva gets called the Queen of the
third sex because the third sex was yet another way
of describing gay folks at the time. I see that
all more time, the third sex, the third sex, Yeah,
was a way that people would talk about there's like
(08:26):
men women in gays interesting, m Yeah, and it's one day.
I don't know. When I do more of a nineteenth
century homosexuality episode will like dive more into and I
will know more about exactly how third sex relates to yah,
homophile and all of these other things that are going on. Yeah.
(08:46):
So they didn't mean it, but it's biological sex. Obviously
they made it more like like what did they what
does what does they mean by sex? Back then? So
I don't This is the part I don't totally get,
but I'm under the impression by third sex they meant
like kind of like, yeah, third sexuality interesting, but also
I think that they kind of understood it as this
(09:07):
like in it thing, this like part thing that's part
of you, so it's also a thing that you like.
It's basically if you're if you can be bored with
the sex of a woman, you can be born the
third sex too, So that's kind of like I think,
so not too bad. No, and the third sex was
not a pejorative. I believe. I believe it was used
(09:28):
by um, by the gay movement. That's cool. Yeah, No,
it's gonna be really funny when one hundred years from
now people are like, and this podcast host she was
a transgender woman, which is I know it sounds kind
of fucked up to say, but you have to understand
in twenty twenty three, you know, like, because the way
(09:48):
that we think about sex and gender is constantly changing.
And that's totally fucking fine. That's so true. It's so true.
Um just kidding this time we got it right and
everyone else is wrong. So um. Yeah, this club, it's
definitely ten years earlier than Mona's for forty club in
San Francisco, which is open in nineteen thirty six. And
gets called the first lesbian bar. It depends on definitions.
(10:09):
This one also in a lot of ways, it was
less of a bar. It was almost certainly a speakeasy.
Most tea rooms were coded as we're just speakeasies, And
it's usually described as a speakeasy. But it's more of
an event space, and it's like a place to go
to poetry discussions and shit than it is to get
drunken dance. Love that. Yeah, I know, i'd like actually
(10:31):
do a way better at this. I mean I would rather.
I mean I always say I'm not a big drinker
or bar person, but just put me into like a
tea room or poetry place, like that's the ship. You know,
that should be more normalized. I really think about that
every time. That's seldom times I have to go out.
I just want to go to a bookstore and drink
some tea. That should be normalized. I don't need to
go to a freaking bar and pretend to like alcohol.
(10:53):
I agree. And so there's this sign up at this bar.
Maybe probably not, but historically this is the story. It's
probably apocryphal, which is sad because sometimes our enemies make
up the coolest things about us. You know, this was
like yeah, like like the lavender lads. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
(11:14):
And in this case, the news articles that were like
condemning this place claim that there's a sign up at
the bar that says men are admitted but not welcome.
Thank you. Yeah, you know, we rule. Do they work
for us? I know? Yeah. The same source that claims
the sign existed was a nineteen twenty six article in Variety,
(11:34):
and it basically the rest of the article is like,
this place is an evil sex den where Mannish women
prey on our innocent girls. So she runs a cool
lesbian bar, an important social center for New York's bohemian
scene and for immigrants and lesbians and working class intellectuals.
It's a popular after theater club. A lot of the
big writers at the time, Henry Miller and Nias Ninn,
(11:56):
all those people are hanging out at this place. But
then an NYPD vice squad kind of killed her in
a roundabout way, in a roundabout way. But I blame
the vice squad for her death because she was a
Jewish lesbian anarchist, right, And that is literally three Nazi
(12:16):
death sentences. Yeah, each one of those is enough to
die from the Nazi point of view, and so some
piece of shit undercover woman cop not the only time
that a woman lesbian cop is going to come up
bad in the stories. This week, she goes into the
place and she declares it a den of sin or whatever.
Like theoretically, is a couple different ways of stories heard
(12:37):
like either like Eva's like, yo, check out my book
Lesbian Love, What's up? Or the cop like goes on
this like elaborate date with her and like goes with
her to hotel and shit, And I've no idea if
they bang either way. At the end of it, because
Eva like possibly might have hit on this cop, she's
arrested for obscenity and she's deported from the United States
to Portland and so I po poland even worse, um
(13:01):
well at the time in nineteen twenty seven, she's deported
to Poland. Oh shit, and she she gets by for
a while. She she moves to Paris. She makes her
money selling naughty books to American tourists, which rules, yeah,
it's possible. I read like one line that claimed, but
with no further information, that she went to Spain to
throw down in that whole Spanish Civil War thing. That.
(13:23):
You can listen to me talking too about with Jamie
Loftus if you want to hear more about that. Yea.
Then came back to Paris after that whole thing fell,
and then she tried to get out of Europe, right
because she's a it's a really bad time to be
a three strikes girl, right, and the US won't let
her in and she couldn't raise enough money to get
herself to Palestine, which is like, you know, the only
(13:44):
other place to try and get herself as a Jew.
Her and her partner were arrested by the Nazis in
nineteen forty three and they both died Noschwitz. Well, so
I blame that fucking cop straight up who went in
and then trapped her. God, that just really proves to
show that you can be anything. You can be. You
(14:05):
can be a woman, you can be gay, you can
be black. If you're a cop, that trumps everything in
my opinion, you know what I mean, Like it doesn't
matter how like marginalized you are if you choose to
be a cop. To me, that that trumps everything because
that happens, yeah, because you've you've chosen what position you
want to have in the systems. Of oppression and power. Yeah, exactly.
(14:29):
Well that's so fucked up. Yeah, she looks have been
pretty young too, right like she I think she was
in her forties when she does, I know, I know,
but it's yeah, god, that's so that's tragic. Well I'm glad. Yeah,
she had a good run. Yeah, that's cool. Do you
(14:52):
think she's Do you think her bar was not considered
the first bar because it wasn't legal back then and
was the first bar that you mentioned, Like, that's considered
the first bar after prohibition ended. Okay, so that's my
best guests as to why these ones don't count, because
I assume there were other ones. Actually there's even another
literally the stone Wall in was well we'll get to that, okay,
(15:12):
a little nugget so spoiling. Yeah, yeah, totally. But after
the war, New York City stays pretty gay. Even though
they had their mini lavender scare, you know, where they've
fired the gay teachers or whatever, it stays pretty gay,
much like San Francisco. The gay beats were a big
part of this, you know, like some of like New
York's cultural icons were like writing about how they have
(15:34):
gay sex and it rules, you know. William burrows and
shit like that. So the government does it's government thing,
and it starts in trapping well, I don't know if
it's started, but at this time it's in trapping gay
men and blackmailing them. It cracks down on gay people
drinking or existing in public. The liquor board starts pulling
licenses away from any business that might become disorderly. And
(15:55):
I'm putting scare quotes around that. Basically any bar that
is like known to be a gay bar and have
its liquor license pulled because that accounts as disorderly and so.
And there's all of these different laws at different times
that are like get kind of conflated to each other.
And I don't totally understand the timeline, but there were
laws like you're not allowed to be a woman who
drinks in public, you're not allowed to be a gay
(16:15):
person who you're not allowed to serve alcohol to gay people.
But sometimes these things that people say like oh, this
was the law, it's actually this was what the police enforced,
not a specific code. Of course, that's that makes sense.
That still happens today, Like what's yeah, well, yeah, that's
(16:37):
so absurd. So if there's no legal way for gay
folks to gather. Then they all just stop pink gay
and become heterosexual and happen. No, just kidding, they drink illegally,
enter the mafia. Oh I'm interested in this. So the
Geneva se family is the crime family is the oldest
(16:59):
and largest of the quote five families of organized crime
of New York City. And they're this Italian American mafia group.
They're still around. Um oh were they called the ken
Jenova essay? Um? I might be pronouncing that last name
for mafia, I know. And they're like the fucking if
you think of the Italian mafia in New York, Like,
there's several other ones, but this one's the big, biggest one. Yeah, okay,
(17:22):
So like the Sopranos, this is like, yeah, there are
literally two people named fat Tony in this story. Well
that's that's amazing. Yeah, that's how you know they're the
top dog mafia. He thought just one, there's two fat
Yeah exactly. And so they do crime stuff, heroin dealing, gambling, rigging,
boxing matches, all that shit, running legal bars during prohibition
(17:44):
and after prohibition. And they are like more complicated morally
than I can easily get into one day, we'll do
an episode about how the mafia and the US government
like work together to fight fascism or whatever. Oh yeah,
you gotta teach me about that suit. Yeah, I'm I'm
I'm excited to learn more about it. There's this Jewish
gangster named Meyer Lanski who like organized mafia Jews to
(18:08):
go beat up Nazis in the US with like crowbars
and shit. Why do we learn about that stuff? That's
what I fucking that's right. Interested in fucking history with
gold Rush or whatever? The ship? Yeah, yeah, totally. And
if you get tell the story of the gold Rush,
you need to tell the story of all the like
gay lesbian prostitutes who like fucking make all their money
(18:29):
and like run their own bars and like don't have
pimps because you know, like yeah, another So we'll get
to I need to look that up as soon as
we're done. But that sounds incredible, and you're right, you're right. Yeah. Overall,
I'm not a big fan of the mafia or whatever,
but we all got to accept everything's complicated in the
in the fifties and the sixties at least, and I
think actually earlier than that, the mafia is running the
(18:51):
gay bars in New York. Mostly they do it for money.
They can charge a ton for water down, bootleg, homemade, stolen,
et cetera, liquor the radically at the Stonewall there was
like literally not a drink that wasn't watered down. I
read one thing that was like, if you knew the
right people, they'd go out back and get the like
they'd have like the bottles of liquor, and they'd be
like labeled, but it would all be lies, you know,
(19:13):
and they like really liked you, they go out back
and get the real I don't know enough about liquor
to give you an example of a compliment fancy liquor.
And also by running gay bars, they can extort anyone
who fucks with them because the customers are gay, and
gay people are easy to extort in a time of
shame and you know, cry or it's illegal to be gay,
they're easy targets for sure. Yeah. The mafia gets away
(19:36):
with this by paying off the cops. What gets called
gayola instead of payola. Wait really yeah, at least at
the time I think it was called gayola. Yeah that's
pretty funny. Yeah, yeah, no, totally. And they pay the
cops a fucking ton of money. Stonewall was paying the
cops two thousand dollars a week, which is more than
sixteen thousand dollars in today's money. WHOA, that's a that's
(20:01):
a fat sum. That is a fat sum of money.
And how was that was possible through the mafia? The
mafia was. Yeah, it was the money that the mafia
is making both off of the overpriced drinks, but also
they were like running other crimes out of the establishment,
mostly drug dealing. There's arguments about the level of sex
(20:21):
work that was happening at the at Stone Wall, but yeah, basically,
by selling overpriced drinks to gay people, they have to
turn around and pay sixty five thousand dollars a month
in modern money. Oh well, which adds so much money,
I know, it's almost it's three quarters of a million
dollars a year. Well, and after paying the cops so
(20:44):
much fucking money, the cops still raid the mafia bars
because they have to keep up appearances or whatever. And
also the mafia people don't care if they fuck with
some of the gay people, but they do it on
week nights, they do it early in the night and
usually they and they give a tip ahead of time
to the bartenders so they'll like get most liquor out
or like kind of give heads up to the customers.
They actually like like, hey, at seven pm today, you
(21:07):
don't want to be here, you know, and cops would
raid and they would like there's a lot of different
accounts of these types of raids, but usually basically it's
like they show up and like make sure you're wearing
gender appropriate clothing is like a huge one. And who
decides that just like skirts and pants that's no whatever. Well,
(21:27):
well no, and actually this is important because the thing
that people talk about is they say that there was
a law at the time that said you have to
have three articles of clothing that matched ther your ID marker,
Like you're on your idea. It probably wasn't a law.
It was probably the rule that the cops used. And
we'll get into some of the things that people did
(21:48):
to work around that. But yeah, so you mean like
three arcis of cloth if if it said, like, oh,
I'm a woman, I have to have three articles of
clothing that proved I was a woman, like quote unquote
proved Yeah, Like like who just that's so interesting to know,
like what's on each list, I wonder, Yeah, no, and
they will literally like m fondle your genitals and like
(22:12):
you know, expose you to everyone, and like they will
like you know, and they'll take people to jail over it,
and like you know, it's obviously never nice to be
in jail, and it's like extra not nice to be
a gay man in jail, and like you know, just
about one violation after the other after the other. Yeah.
And we'll talk about this a little bit more too later.
(22:32):
But and the cops did it because no one stopped them,
like they kind of like literally cops from this period.
We'll talk about how gay folks were like easy marks,
you know, because they were like ashamed and beaten down.
So Stonewall in it was originally called Bonnie's Stonewall with
A and stonewall was two words, and it was opened
(22:55):
in nineteen thirty and it claimed to be a tea room,
but it was a speakeasy. And I've read accounts to
say it was heterosexual. And I've also read accounts that
it was named after a lesbian's autobiography called the Stone
Wall from like the nineteenth century, And so I'm guessing
it started off as a lesbian bar, and it wasn't
(23:15):
too straight, and people just like to ignore lesbian's that's
my best guess, right, Yeah, that sounds about right. And
it might have eventually just stopped being a gay bar
before for a while, I don't know. In nineteen thirty
four it moved to Christopher Street, where it more famously is.
In nineteen sixty four it was the interior was destroyed
by flames and it closed down. But do you know
(23:37):
what will make you flame proof? Responsored by fiberglass walls.
That's a that's a great How did you How did
you land that one? That's that's pretty good. That's pretty yeah. Thanks.
I'm a professional podcaster. They teach you at podcasting Academy
(23:57):
how to do awkward ad transitions and try to make
them funny. Thank you, thank you. Well, actually a stone
wall would make you more fire resistant. You're not wrong.
So if the next year's ad is for a masonry company,
then it's the right one. And if it's not, you
(24:18):
should complain to Sophie. That would make me believe in God,
I think, and we're back. I hope you enjoyed the
ad for all of the bricks and brick related services, only,
of course, for making things more fire resistant, not proving
(24:40):
that cops can't fuck with you easily. It's not like
all of our rights that anyone has ever had started
with someone throwing bricks at cops. No, of course not.
But also for the folks that did the right thing.
And listen to the first two episodes, the progress from
donuts to brick is incredible to me. Yeah, yeah, totally,
(25:05):
like that's just again chef's kiss for all that. Yeah.
So the place burns, the interior is gutted in flames,
and it's destroyed, and it closes. Two years later, in
nineteen sixty six, the mafia bought it. Three mafia guys
bought it and turned it into a gay bar. And
(25:26):
they did. They phoned this in. They spent like a
couple thousand dollars repairing the place and covering up the damage.
Mostly they just painted it black and kept it dimly lit,
so just like like just concealed with darkness the damage. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
They didn't bother plumbing it. There was no running water
(25:48):
behind the bar. There was running water in the bathrooms. Okay,
let's good at least, so they kept the glasses in
a big tub of water and gave each one a
little rinsey rinse in the same gross tub. God um
before serving it to someone else. Damn. Yeah, just think
of it in COVID times. Let's just I wonder how
(26:12):
many people got sick? Well, no, I don't want to
think about it. Well, yeah, I'm gonna tell you anyway.
I'm sorry. This was blamed in a gay newsletter at
the time for a nineteen sixty nine outbreak of hepatitis
among gay men in New York City. Oh my god.
It was three mafia guys who bought the place. And
it wasn't uncontentious that they decided to do this. I mean,
(26:32):
game mafia people did own gay bars, but it was
still like a little Well, let's talk about fat Tony.
Fat Tony number primary, Okay, okay, number primary. That's a number.
The controlling interest was held by this guy named Tony
Lareya or Fat Tony. He was a very large man.
He weighed like, you know, four hundred some pounds. Wouldn't
(26:54):
it be funny? I just realized how funny it would
be if Fat Tony was not fat I know, right, yeah,
another level of yeah yeah, or maybe they felt pressure
being named Tony to be fat yet it might have
been you know, I don't know. It can go either way. Yeah,
more power to you, whatever size you want to be
with any name you want. But his dad was not
(27:17):
so excited about him. His dad, who was a mafia guy,
was not excited about him hanging out with the gays.
Fat Tony's roommate was an openly gay Italian guy who
bartended at Stonewall and he was the guy who was
trusted to move the money around. I haven't heard him
referred to as mafia, but he lived with Fat Tony
was Italian, bartended the mafia bar and was the one
(27:39):
who was trusted to move the money around at the
very least. He's like a middleman. Yeah whatever, like and
because like one of the things is that people want
to people want to downplay the mafia connection with Stonewall
because they want to kind of whitewash our history. But so,
because of fear of raids and such, the money was
carried home from the bar several nights a week, several
(28:00):
several times a night. Sorry, like you know, because the
cops are going to comment and still all fucking money
because they're just I mean, these are basically just two
crime organizations, the NYPD in the mafia, just trying to
figure out delicate balance together. But Fat Tony he got
very into the culture. He started shooting I know, okay,
he started doing two things. He started shooting meth and
(28:20):
he started fucking dudes. But not as roommate. That was
a very important point in the book. I was reading, Um,
they stayed platonic, him and him and his roommate. Interesting
that that was. Yeah, it was a important thing to note.
I mean, it's nice to know that friendships French ship withstood,
you know, yeah, totally, and like, I don't know, actually
(28:42):
a weird way. It is like important, and I'll be like,
whoa gay people to just be friends with each other,
you know exactly. Yeah, yeah, there's like a level of like, oh,
like I respect you, and yeah, even though I'm doing
gay things now, I still respect you. Yeah, totally totally.
Fat Tony's story is kind of tragic. A little while,
I got really confused because there is another fat Tony
(29:03):
who rises really high and prominence in the family and
lives a long and healthy life, and so I was like, yeay,
our Tony's doing good, not our Tony. His family stopped
talking to him as a result of him being gay,
or him doing drugs, or some combination of the both,
and the rumor is eventually that his family killed him. No, Tony, Yeah,
(29:25):
and I don't know. Once again, it's like when you're
a dead gay mobster, it's hard to know whether you
get killed for being gay or for being a mobster
or what. You know, Damn, this happens. His death happens
after all the events of today. Okay, but I think
his story matters because people talk about the mafia is
(29:46):
this opportunistic thing that was ripping off gay folks. But
the thing that people need to remember about any story
about anything that has to do with sexual sexuality. We're everywhere,
like pick a profession and there's gays doing it. Yeah,
you know, um for good and bad. He wasn't the
(30:06):
only game mobster in the New York scene. Big Bobby
who worked the door next Big Bobby, These are great names.
Big Bobby worked the door at a place called Tony Pastors.
He was in love with a Chinese drag queen named
Tony Lee. Everyone is fucking named Tony. You want to
(30:28):
say Tony, every bar, every person all Tony's all the
way down. It's so funny. Isn't Tony correct wrong? Isn't
it like short for Anthony? Or is that not? I
think so? Or yeah maybe I think yeah, yeah, that's interesting.
Tony is a wow. What a name? What a name?
(30:51):
I know. So everyone's named Tony except for a freelance
circulating bouncer named Pete. And Pete was the most exaggerated
cliche archetypical Italian mobster who wore black shirts and ties.
He exaggerated his like Italian accent, which I saw referred
to as a street Italian accent, which made me realize
(31:14):
that the Italian accents of New York City are not
necessarily I'm from Italy Italian. It's like Italian American accent
that is a New York accent. You know. Pete was what,
at least in the nineties, we called a two beer
queer because he was a straight man who would then
get drunk, and he slept with both gay men and queens,
(31:35):
which were sort of seen as two different sort of
genders of people to sleep with in a lot of ways,
much like you would now when we say queens, we're
talking about drag queens, but we were talking about a
culture in which drag queen, trans vestite and trans women
are very um. There is a spectrum there, and it
is a spectrum that people are often moving around inside of. Yeah,
(31:55):
and like a lot of the queens would later come
out as trans women once. The sort of way we
talked about these things changed, but not all of them
right And for a long time Pete was sweet. He
would get his partners better jobs and shit with all
his connections. Later he runs off out of the city
with a queen and they lived as a heck couple
until he freaked out and killed her. No, yeah, it
(32:20):
pet which is why trans women have trust issues to
say yeah, to say the least, wow that pet Yeah.
It's also just weird that this guy saying Pete, I
can feel like, seriously, you know what, you'd have to
take him seriously. That's kind of crime guy. Yeah. And
(32:44):
I also think it's telling that some of the power
players in early gay history were either revolutionists like the
lesbian anarchists who opened the first bar or the gay
communist who set up the first organization, or they were
professional criminals like Tommy the lesbian of Fedora and a
Bar in San Francisco or Poor Fatony in New York.
So Stonewall, let's talk about Stonewall it self. Okay, it's
(33:05):
big standout feature versus all of the other gay bars,
including the crime bars. While all the gay bars were
crime bars, it allowed dancing. It allowed same sex dancing.
All the other gay bars no same sex dancing, um,
because that was for fear of like like a police action, yeah,
getting shut down, getting alled at and all this shit. Um.
(33:27):
Within Stonewall, there were two dance rooms. One was called
the White Room and one was called the Black Room
in a bad way. Um, so like segregated, segregated way,
so yes, but with like a little asterisk or something
to make it really obvious as a race thing. The
black room is also called the Puerto Rican Room. Okay,
both both rooms are painted black because they're hiring fire damage.
(33:50):
But it wasn't formally segregated. It was kind of culturally segregated,
and it was culturally segregated along race lines. But even
more than that, at least as it's been presented it
as I see it, as I've seen it, it's segregated
between like different like vibes, where like the white room
was like couples dancing mostly, and the black room was
like everyone trying out the new big group dances and
(34:12):
all the devil Yeah, like I'm being monogamous and normal
versus like I'm going to be a devil today. Yeah exactly,
And so yeah, whatever the latest dance craze was happening
in the black room and then the white room I'm
standing or whatever, and it and the white room skewed older,
(34:35):
it's skewed more cusgendered, it scwed whiter. And I don't
know that these were official names or these were like
what people just called them. There's a lot of different
reports about the clientele because everyone wants to own Stonewall
because it fucking what happens here rules, right, And everyone
like argues about Stonewall because yeah, because they want to
(34:58):
own it. Um. Yeah, it seems likely that the clientele
shifted over time and was constantly in flux. It was
almost exclusively gay men and or people assigned mail at birth,
but gay women started showing up too. The way I've
heard it said is that it started off all men,
and then they started letting in women, and then they
started letting in drag queens. Okay, and there were exceptions
(35:21):
all along to the drag queen thing, but like, for
the most part, if you showed up and you were
like in address, they'd turn you away because in order
to get in, you have to show up and there's
like this big, thick, fucking crazy door and there's a
gangster on the other side who's like looking through the
people and like trying to figure out whether to let
you in or not. You know, password, Yeah, it's like
if he recognizes you from having been there before, he'll
(35:43):
let you in. So you kind of kind of go
your first time. You have to go with your friends
who've been there before. But so eventually they start letting
in people in full drag, but for the longest time
they don't. And when women showed up and lesbian showed up,
they were kind of perceived, as I got told or
as I read, they're perceived as like honored guests, so
(36:05):
it wasn't their space, but everyone was like, what the
fuck was that lesbian doing in here? Instead everyone's like,
oh my god, you know that rules, thanks for coming,
you know. It was still kind of like also segregrade
in that way probably too, just like totally yeah, yeah,
I mean It's like, and if the point of the
bar is getting laid, then it sort of makes sense,
(36:27):
right that lesbians go to the lesbian bar and the
game I go to the gay bar. Yeah, that's true.
It's true. It's true. That's true. But I mean I like, well,
I mean, you know, it's complicated for me to fit
in and anywhere, but like, you know, I would like
us all just hanging out. But yeah, same. That's why
I like the word queer because and I yeah, I
mean too, I love the word queer totally. But also,
(36:49):
I mean when it's co mingled, if separately, it feels safe,
but commingled also feels safe too. Does that make sense?
Like it's still not like like, uh, there's you're you're
amongst Yes, exactly exactly. So I feel like, yeah, yeah,
I mean it makes sense back then that maybe they
were like m for us only. Yeah. And so one
(37:13):
of the main clientele at this place um at Stonewall
was street queens, and street queens was a specific youth
subculture of homeless queer youth, most of whom many of
whom all of them I don't know, did sex work.
A bunch of them lived in the park across the
street and were protected by some of the older queers,
one of whom will actually talk about. And this is
(37:34):
where a lot of the more famous characters around Stonewall
come from this culture. But you know what culture you
can belong to buy consuming stuff capitalism, the culture capital yeay,
(37:56):
everything's the same capital see for culture and capitalism. I
know they come from the same root word. See that.
Yeah it's actually really true. I never thought of it
that way. Yeah, yeah, I learned so much on this podcast. Yeah,
true things, much like the True Deals. Here you go,
ads and we are back. I'm talking about the street queens,
(38:21):
who I want to give their own episode one day probably,
But I will say the podcast Queer as Fact did
an episode about Stonewall that's really worth listening to, and
it talks more about the bar itself and the culture there,
and it draws from a bunch of firsthand accounts. So
if you want to hear people talking about like what
their time was like at Stonewall, Queer as Fact is
a fucking awesome podcast. And since amab folks assigned mail
(38:44):
at birth, folks weren't allowed to come in dresses, they'd
come in quote scare drag, which is a sick name. Yeah,
that's amazing. Yeah, so since like if it was rated,
you're supposed to know as illegal, do not of at
least three articles of clothing that matched the idea you
sex or id or whatever it was. Again, probably a guideline,
(39:05):
not a specific law. But so scare drag is dragon pants.
You get some tight fitting pants and a wig and makeup,
and you tie a men's shirt around your waist, so
if you need to transform, you just rip off the
wig and button up your shirtbook. I know. It's also
a fucking sick look. It's like a superhero like just
like it's time to go not Poka anymore, Ye Superman.
(39:29):
That's so cool, I know. But I think a great loophole. Yeah, totally.
And so they have this whole culture that they built
around scare drag and or aesthetic that they built around it.
And I like it because this black block. But for
nineteen sixty street queens, you know. Yeah, and while some
of the well the street queens were hustlers, right, they
(39:49):
generally weren't at Stonewall for work but to hang out. Um,
I'm sure some of them did do work there. Like
everything is like Oh, sex work wasn't a big thing there,
and I think it wasn't the people. I think the
people saying that aren't trying to downplay sex work. They're
literally being like, this is where people go to like
let loose rather than get work. But there is a
guy who connects them to sex work very directly, and
(40:10):
he is one of the most interesting characters in this
whole story. Oh, the bouncer at Stonewall is an Irish
Italian Catholic man named Ed the Skull Murphy. Wow. Wow,
what name. Wow. I wonder how he got that name.
(40:32):
First of all, ill, okay, great, Yeah, we're gonna talking
about We're talking about Skull Murphy. Yeah, there are so
many great names. I know gay history. I know when
the Skull was like eleven or so, he probably wasn't
named the Skull yet. He bashed a cop in the
head with a milk bottle for trashing his shoeshine. Stand. Wow,
(40:54):
out of all the skulls to bash, that is the
one I would want to to bash. To be named
the skull, Yeah, that's amazing. Okay. But so he fought
in World War Two and then he come back and
he becomes this professional wrestler where he got the name
the Skull right, and he's a big fucking guy. He's
like taking steroids and his signature fight move is that
(41:15):
he head butts people um ed. Oh yeah, I love that,
and it's between bouncing gigs for gay bars is the
other thing he starts doing for the mafia when he
comes back from the war. He also has another job.
Oh he shows on the ad transition here because of
the next part's about gold. But if you want some
(41:35):
gold and you don't want to buy it, the joke
here for anyone who's listening is that sometimes we get
ads for gold buying gold, and then usually make fun
of that because he's usually a bad investment. Yeah. Also
people I don't know people listen to I can happen here. No,
I'm allergic to gold, so that's another that's right, I
have gold teeth. Yeah yeah, allergy can't. Yeah, stay away.
(41:58):
So he liked to rob dentists. That was his other hobby.
This guy is so cool, so not from dentists. He
does some sketchy stuff, like some bad stuff, but yeah,
but he is. He is one of the most complete
characters of like Good and Bad. All Yeah, I'm just
(42:22):
really excited to hear what you would take make of him. So,
okay him and is one of his gay friends. I
don't know if they are lovers or not. Um. So
the gold thing was because he would steal stuff from
dentists and sell them, like the steal gold teeth from
dentists and sell them. Yeah. Yeah, that was was making
that trance. Like literally he would go and he's he's
steal their stash of gold teeth or like the gold
that they used to make crowns. Honestly genius move, no,
(42:45):
I know, And it worked for a very long time. Um.
One time they go rob this dentist and the dentist
is like, please don't take my diamond ring. It was
a gift. It was given to me by my father
for his buff for my bar mitzvah. And so they
let the guy keep his diamond ring because they're classy, right,
And so they just steal the gold teeth and then
they leave. But the next day there was a news
(43:06):
headline that reads, quote dentist CON's robbers out of ring.
So they go back. Yeah wow, so he like mis
represented of the story. Yeah yeah, So it's like he
convinced them to let me keep this. Yeah, because a
bunch of suckers. So they go back and they beat
him up and they take the diamond ring. That's hilarious.
(43:31):
On their seventy third dentist robbery. He gets caught a
lot of robberies before you. I know, I would say
the lesson here is that make sure you only rob
like seventy dentists or fifty if you want to play.
It's safe. It is completely safe to rob. The more
you rob, the higher the probability goes that you're doing
(43:54):
a caught. So just keep my mind when your numbers
go up. Yeah, totally. So he gets caught and he
does ten years. He gets out, he starts bouncing for
the mafia gay bars again, and he's perfect for it.
He's a crook, he's part Italian, he's scary as fucking hell.
He's the huge. Yeah, he earns a new nickname. Okay,
(44:15):
his new nickname. It was pretty good, so I know
this one's somehow even better. The two go really well together,
not like in the same word, but mother mother, because
he looks after and makes work connections for all the
street hustling youth. Mother is such an interesting name for
that kind of person. I know, I know, that is
(44:36):
so cool. And now here's where he gets messy. Oh no,
he starts in a new crime ring. And this new
crime ring they extort gay rich men. The scam is
called the Chicken and the Bull, and it's a reasonably
simple scam. You get a rich gay man to take
home a young sex worker who's called the chicken to
(44:59):
a hotel room. Then and either the worker the chicken,
just grabs the guy's wallet and runs and then you're
just like done, you know. Or the bull, who's either
a corrupt cop or someone like our man ed pretending
to be a cop, comes into the room and it's like,
I'm going to arrest you unless you give me a
bunch of money, and if the target is important enough,
(45:21):
like they come in and they're like, oh sha, that's
a fucking senator, because this absolutely gets some senators and shit,
they're like, actually, you know what, we're actually going to
blackmail you now and basically hold this over your head
that we know that you're game. We have pictures and shit,
you know, yeah yeah yeah, And so this isn't like blackmail, yeah,
and so this isn't just Ed doing it as this
whole extortion ring and it's mostly run by cops, including
(45:43):
a Chicago cop who was taking ten percent of every
extortion and was providing the fake police credentials and all
that shit. Well, okay, and this scam was fucking huge.
It's actually the same scam run by veteran of the Pods,
Sophie Lions, who is Ueen of the Underworld. If you
want to hear my episode about her from last fall.
(46:04):
Hers was straight and she did it alone, and she
didn't somehow manage to entrap some of the most powerful
people in the country because they did this to a
bunch of prominent people, including Liberaci, whoa an admiral and
a congressman. Oh shit, the Admiral William Church killed himself
when the whole thing was uncovered and he was revealed.
(46:25):
And it's interesting. It's when the crime is uncovered, when
the criminal ring goes down, it drags all the blackmailed
people into the limelight and it outs them. It's the
thing that they'd been paying to have not happened. The
government then does to them, right. That sucks. Yeah, And
it actually parallels some one of the things that we
(46:46):
talked about you and I when we talked about the
gay resistance to Nazis. How early German gay rights activists
in the nineteen tens and twenties used to out prominent
closeted people, which led to a bunch of suicides. It
was there like activism. It's like fucked up. But yeah,
and so I don't think this is good, but this
is what happens. The Mattachine Society that we talked about
them last time, the sort of more reformist organization. They
(47:09):
actually help with the government's investigation of this because they
want to stop this extortion ring, this targeting gay men,
and they serve as the go betweens between the victims
and the cops because the cops don't want to talk
directly to the Sorry, the victims don't want to talk
directly to the police. So ed the skull Murphy. When
the ring gets busted, he starts snitching. No mother, I know.
(47:32):
He still gets five years, but he didn't serve at all.
Rumor has it, which does not mean this is true.
Rumor has it he has blackmail photos of FBI director
j Edgar Hoover, and he held for the rest of
his life. He held that Hoover was gay. And liked
a cross dress and is later It's later been claimed
that the reason Hoover didn't go after the mafia was
(47:52):
because of these photos. Oh we shit, right, I mean
I thought the other as you mentioned, we're big fish.
But that's the biggest fish. Yeah, I know. Wow, that
is I mean I kind of believe him. Why would
he lie about that? Yeah, I see no particular reason.
Like my gut instinct is that this is true, but
(48:14):
I haven't really looked into it, and I'm not trying
to like specifically say I know that this is true, right, Yeah,
but just like all all science point to Yes, that's
so interesting. Yeah. Well so he gets out of prison. Yeah, yeah, no,
and he goes back to bouncing gay bars. Um, he's
the main doorman at Stonewall and he's there the night
of the riots. He sells drugs, he's pimping, or rather
(48:37):
he's making introductions for which he took tips. And he
also protects young sex workers. Like there's like a story
about like, um, the street queens love him, right, and
so I think that's telling about his relationship in the
work environment for them. When when customers try to assault
the young sex workers, there's mother showing up and he's
(48:58):
fucking scary, right is he sorry if you mentioned this?
Is he gay? Yes, but he's not out? Oh shit,
yeah yet? Okay, yeah he's gay the whole time. Yeah, okay,
I just wanted to make sure. Yeah. Yeah. He also
at the bar, he's running a ring of street queens
stealing wallets. I don't know if this is directly related
(49:19):
to the chicken extortion or not, but or if he's
just still like, yeah, what's up, Like if you ever
want to steal a wallet, I'll like move it for you,
you know, I don't. I don't know exactly. He's also
snitching to the mafia about which patrons are so rich
that they can be extorted. He's also maybe informing the
cops about what's happening at Stonewall. And this is the
(49:41):
one thing that I feel is like contentious and we
don't know, I've read both things. He also very adamantly
is like I ain't no snitch or kind of like
one and done. You know that he and he had
also snitched on cops, so it's like a little bit
right MESSI he also was and he's this white guy
and he's specifically known for defending people of color, and
(50:03):
after Stonewall, later bars sometimes wouldn't hire him because they
were convinced he'd quote turned the club black because he,
like you know, was friends with all people. Yeah, it
was an ally, yeah, yeah, I mean he was also gay,
but as far as race, yeah, damn. I mean it
(50:25):
is messy though, You're right, because he sounds like he
was a really good person that people respected in the community, right,
even though he's doing these things that are actually unconsciousable. Yeah,
and we're going to talk about his like I think
probably next episode. This isn't me skipping to next episode.
There still a bit more in this episode, but he's
going to come back into the story after Stonewall, and
(50:47):
he has a really interesting arc from there too. Okay,
cool the acid dealer at stone Wall, it's talking about
someone else. There is one of the bartenders, and she's
a queen named Maggie Jigs. These names I know. So
here's to the Maggie's of the world. I will say YEA.
Her partner, Tommy Um I think both romantic and um
(51:08):
and business kept a toy duck on the bar and
would quack it anytime someone left a tip. I love
I know, I love that it's like this sketchy crime bar,
but everyone's like kind of having fun and quack in
the duck and it's simple community where people feel safe
and yeah, so if like, yeah, you're gonna get a
wallet's stolen, but no one's gonna fucking treat you like
(51:28):
ship for being gay. Everyone loved Maggie even though shecasonally
stole shit from you. Her attitude towards money was two
for the bar, one for myself. I respect that she
was really good at setting up three ways. Okay, fucking
hero Maggie Jigs And I almost am certain this is
an independent investigation. This is a kai googled Maggie jigs Um.
(51:50):
She gets her name from a comic strip at the
time called Bringing Up Father, which is this Irish American
couple Maggie and Jigs and they're like dealing with class
stuff where like they they suddenly become rich rich, but Jigs,
the husband wants to like still like stay down and
dirty and hang out with all his poor friends, whereas
like Maggie is like a nag and wants to be
(52:10):
like rich or whatever. Also at the bar, a nearly
naked go go dancer dance in a gilded cage on
the bar m Risque. Yeah, it's a really interesting place.
Some people loved it, some people hated it. It had
a reputation, like there's a lot of his there's a
lot of the people who are involved, even in the
Stonewall riots. A lot of them were like, I don't
(52:31):
go to fucking Stonewall. Fuck that place, right because it
was just like too risky. So no, because it well,
like one, it was like too crimy I think for
a lot, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, And it also had
a place sense. It's kind of intense, I know. And
it had a reputation as a place where chicken hawks,
older men cruising for younger boys hung out. And so
(52:53):
I think some people are a little bit like, nah,
that's sketchy, right no, right, yeah, so that's the bar.
And let's hear about the riots. So on Wednesday, whoa
we did it? Wow? Yeah, that's so interesting, so many
good names. I know. I can't wait to hear about
the end of the skulls arc. It's so good. I'm
(53:16):
so excited. Yeah. No, there's like, well, y'all just gonna
have to wait for part four. Cliffhanger, I know, So
what else people don't have to wait for is to
connect with you with your You can follow me on
the internet if you want to. You don't have to.
I get it, but I'm Shiro Hero on Instagram a
(53:39):
Shiro Hero six six six on Twitter. They will follow
you wherever you make up. I actually don't know the
legality of me singing songs on here um from a
like copyright point of view. I know I saw you
were singing, but it reminded me of the Gilmore Girls song.
Yeah great, whatever, some old I don't fucking shit about
(54:00):
what I'm singing at any given time. If you want
to follow me on the internet, I'm at Magpie Killjoy
unless you have something that you disagree with about what
I said, in which case I'm on Twitter at I
write Okay, and I'm on Instagram at Margart Killjoy and
we'll see you all Wednesday. Cool People Who Did Cool
(54:24):
Stop is a production of cool Zone Media. For more
podcasts on cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia
dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Margaret Killjoy
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.