Stonewall (51 page)

23
. Frank Esselourne, “Doorman Remembers,”
Gay Community
News
, June 23, 1979. “Bobby Shades” also slept with men, and dated Chuck Shaheen at one point (interview, Nov. 20, 1991).

24
. Interview with Ryder Fitzgerald, May 5, 1992 (Ernie and Vito);
New York Sunday
News
, June 29, 1969 (Verra); Shaheen interview, Nov. 20, 1991. According to Shaheen, it was Ernie, somewhat older than the others, who dealt with Matty the Horse. In regard to the watered drinks, Shaheen puts it this way: “We didn't throw the bottles away. We reused those bottles all the time. We kept
a
real bottle of Dewar's and
a
real bottle of Smirnoff—for special customers.”

25
. Interviews with Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt, May 2, 1992, and Martin Boyce, May 19, 1992; Scherker interview with Danny Garvin, Dec. 15, 1988 (courtesy Scherker Estate). Lanigan-Schmidt added that the police cars, which then had one large light on top of the hood, were known as “bubble-gum machines.” According to Shaheen (interview Nov. 20, 1991), there was bad blood between Fat Tony and the owners of the Sanctuary; when they took him on a tour of the about-to-open Sanctuary, Tony had Shaheen accompany him with firebombs strapped to his body. He distributed them strategically during the tour, but they failed to detonate.

26
. Interview with Joe Tish, Nov. 15, 1991. Tiffany, who had silicon breast implants, lived for a while with Fat Tony and Chuck Shaheen. She once tried suicide and had to be taken out by ambulance; Tony's father “went through the roof” (Shaheen interview, Nov. 20, 1991).

27
. The material in this and the following paragraph comes from an interview with Kohler, August 20, 1990.

28
. Will Hermes, “Summer ‘69: Sweet Stone(wall) Soul Music,”
Windy City Times
, June 22, 1989. Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt, at the time a dirt-poor street queen (in 1992, a well-known artist), described in our interview of May 2 the various hurdles he had to get over during a given night at Stonewall: getting admitted at the door; hurrying by the coat check to avoid paying the twenty-five-cent charge; evading the waiters' constant pressure to buy drinks. Many of the queens had a set routine for not having to buy drinks they couldn't afford: They would find discarded cans of beer, or glasses, and hold them; a beer can was preferable, because then you could go into the bathroom and fill it up halfway with water so that when one of the meaner waiters (“one of the vicious queens looking to throw his power around”) checked the weight of the can, it would feel half full; “Then they'd leave you alone and wouldn't throw you out.” Those with no money at all would sit along the wall, try to fade into the crowd, and when they saw one of the waiters bearing down on them, would quickly get up and dance.

29
. Interviews with Sascha L. (Aug. 26, 1991) and Shaheen (Nov. 20, 1991). Bebe Scarpi (phone interview, Aug. 22, 1990) also confirms that “a few lesbians did go to Stonewall.” The quote about “territory” is from an unidentified lesbian, one of the many “testimonies” about Stonewall recorded by Michael Scherker at the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center on May 13, 1989 (tape courtesy Scherker Estate).

30
. Testimony of Jerry [?] and an unidentified man on “Stonewall Reunion” tape made by Scherker at the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center on June 13, 1989; Scherker with Joseph Dey, June 6, 1989 (tapes courtesy Scherker Estate).

31
. Scherker interview with Harry Beard, Aug. 3, 1988; see also the reminiscences
of Beard, Gene Huss, and Don Knapp in Mike Long, “The Night the Girls Said No!”
San Francisco Sentinel
, June 22, 1989.

32
. Howard Smith, “Full Moon over Stonewall,”
The Village Voice
, July 3, 1969 (First Division); interview with Chuck Shaheen, Nov. 20, 1991; Scherker interview with Beard, Aug. 3, 1988; the time is established by the Sixth Precinct police records, obtained by Michael Scherker (courtesy Scherker Estate).

33
. Interview with Ryder Fitzgerald, May 5, 1992. Fitzgerald also heard Ernie swear that he would reopen Stonewall the very next night as an expression of “displeasure” with the local police; in his determination, he borrowed stools and glasses from other bars to replace what the police had smashed.

34
. Chris Davis interview with Ed Murphy, 1987 [?], tape courtesy Davis; interview with Sascha L., August 26, 1991.

35
. Interview with Ryder Fitzgerald, May 5, 1992. Frankie later died in a bomb “accident.”

36
. Interview with Shaheen, Nov. 20, 1991.

37
. “Queen Power: Fags Against Police in Stonewall Bust,”
RAT
, July 1969 (for guy in T-shirt);
New. York Times
, June 29, 1969; Lucian Truscott IV, “Gay Power Comes to Sheridan Square,”
The Village Voice
, July 3, 1969.

38
. Bebe Scarpi (phone interview, Aug. 22, 1990) confirms Sylvia's description: “Tammy hit the cop and was so stoned she didn't know what she was doing—or didn't care.”

39
. Though Harry Beard seems in general to be a reliable witness with a precise memory, there are some small discrepancies between his interview version (with Michael Scherker, Aug. 3, 1988; tape courtesy Scherker Estate) and his printed version (Mike Long, “The Night the Girls Said No!”
San Francisco Sentinel
, June 22, 1989). In the printed version, for example, Beard says the cop “slapped her upside the head with something—I can't recall if it was a blackjack or a nightstick or what it was”; in the interview version he describes the cop as “hitting her over the head with his billy club.”

Section 887 (7) of the New York State Criminal Code was the one traditionally invoked by the police against transvestites. The law was supposedly ignored on Halloween, though the police department handbook specified that even then, someone dressed in costume had to be wearing a certain number of garments “appropriate” to their sex. Mattachine received a number of reports of people being arrested on Halloween (Leitsch to Chief Inspector Garelik, Oct. 11, 1966—IGIC Papers, NYPL).

40
. Bob Kohler (interview Aug. 20, 1990) is another who denies the involvement of a lesbian, but Kohler does add that Tony Lightfoot, “a lesbian who people thought was a drag queen,” used to hang out with the queens in the small park opposite the Stonewall bar.

Of the printed sources that give the credit to a lesbian, see
Gay Community News
, June 23, 1979;
Windy City Times
, June 22, 1989;
BLK
, June 1989; and the
San Francisco Sentinel
, June 22, 1989. But these offer no concrete evidence and seem to be merely repeating the assertions by Howard Smith and Lucian Truscott IV in their firsthand accounts in
The Village Voice
, July 3, 1969 (Truscott: “A dyke … put up a struggle—from car to door to car again”). But, the Truscott
article, especially, is hardly incontrovertible: It contains a number of disputed points and is in places markedly homophobic in tone. Moreover, except for Truscott's and Smith's, no contemporary newspaper accounts of the riot mention the involvement of a woman
(New York Times
, June 28, 1969;
New York Post
, June 28, July 6,
Sunday News
, June 29, 1969). The eyewitness account in
RAT
(July 1969) specifically credits “one guy” (not a lesbian
or
a queen) for precipitating a scuffle by refusing to be put into the paddy wagon.

Of the accounts that specifically credit a queen with initiating the riot, the most important are unprinted sources: Chris Davis's interview with Ed Murphy (1988?, tape courtesy Davis); my interview with Sascha L. (Aug. 26, 1991) and the testimonies of Robert “Birdie” Rivera and Deputy Inspector Seymour Pine, recorded for David Isay's 1989 NPR show
Remembering Stonewall
.

In his interview with Chris Davis (1988?, tape courtesy Davis), Murphy claimed that he stepped between the cop and the queen being pushed and said to the cop, “Why don't you leave us alone. Didn't you do enough fucking damage, asshole?” But there is no corroboration for Murphy's claim, and other accounts (for example, Ivan Valentin, interview July 5, 1991) have him quickly leaving the scene.

At least two people credit Sylvia herself with provoking the riot: Jeremiah Newton
(New York Native
, June 25, 1990) has her throwing an empty gin bottle that smashed in front of the Stonewall door; and Ivan Valentin (interview, July 5, 1991) insists that Sylvia actually jumped a cop and thereby “started the Gay Liberation movement.” But I've found no corroboration for either account and Sylvia herself, with a keener regard for the historical record, denies the accuracy of both versions. She does remember “throwing bricks and rocks and things”
after
the melee began, but takes no credit for initiating the confrontation.

41
. Interviews with Joe Tish, Nov. 15, 1991, and Martin Boyce, May 19, 1992; Rivera and Pine testimonies on Isay's show
Remembering Stonewall
. The Pine quote is from Howard Smith, “Full Moon,”
Village Voice
, July 3, 1969. Seymour Pine had been assigned in 1968 as deputy inspector in charge of enforcing public morals (that is, enforcing all laws relating to vice, gambling, prostitution, narcotics, and homosexuality) in the police department's First Division, which ran from Thirty-eighth Street in Manhattan to the Battery. According to Sascha L., Pine “worked both ways … he used to have his friend pick up money [from gay bars] in a patrol car” (interview, Aug. 26, 1991).

Once again, there are confusions and contradictions in the evidence. For example, in Blond Frankie's printed account (Frank Esselourne, “Doorman Remembers,”
Gay Community News
, June 23, 1979), he credits only himself with engineering the escape from the van, and has the arrested queens
following
him out.

42
. Scherker interview with “D.D.,” Dec. 24, 1988 (Puerto Rican), and Robert Rivera, June 10, 1989 (mashed cop); Isay show,
Remembering Stonewall
.

43
. Interviews with Shaheen, Nov. 20, 1991 (Zucchi) and Sascha L., Aug. 26, 1991 (dog shit); Scherker interviews, courtesy Scherker Estate, with “D.D.,” Dec. 24, 1988 (dog shit), and Beard, Aug. 3, 1988 (overheard Zucchi); my phone interview with Marty Robinson, Oct. 10, 1990 (Timmy).

44
.
Frank Esselourne, “Doorman Remembers”; Pine's testimony on Isay show,
Remembering Stonewall
.

45
. Mike Long, “The Night the Girls Said No!”; Pine testimony on Isay show,
Remembering Stonewall
. Martin Boyce (interview May 19, 1992) credits “the demented” “Miss New Orleans” and two other queens with tearing up the parking meter.

46
. Howard Smith, “Full Moon over the Stonewall”;
Sunday News
, June 29, 1991;
New York Times
, June 28, 1969.

47
. Phone interviews with Jim Slaven
(sous-chef at
the Lion's Head), Sept. 3, 1990, and Nick Browne (bartender at the Lion's Head), Sept. 12, 1990; Smith, “Full Moon over the Stonewall.”

48
. Smith, “Full Moon over the Stonewall.”

49
. Smith, “Full Moon over the Stonewall”; police records, June 28, 1969 (time; signal; courtesy Scherker Estate).

50
. Police records (courtesy Scherker Estate) give the names of the TPF squad members. They came from three different precincts, the Fourth, Fifth, and Tenth. Sad to report, none of Craig Rodwell's photos came out.

51
. Marty Robinson, “I Remember Stonewall,”
San Francisco Examiner
, June 4, 1989; Maida Tilchen, “Mythologizing Stonewall,”
Gay Community News
, June 23, 1979.

52
. The incidents described in this and the following paragraph are from Dick Leitsch, “Police Raid on New York Club Sets Off First Gay Riot,”
The Advocate
, Sept. 1969, p. 3. According to Ryder Fitzgerald (interview, May 5, 1992), Blond Frankie told him that he had himself smashed the windshield of a police car.

53
. Interview with Ivan Valentin, July 5, 1991; Scherker interview with Rivera, June 10, 1989 (Lenny); “Stonewall Reunion” tape made by Scherker at Gay and Lesbian Community Center, June 13, 1989 (“feminine boys”).

54
.
New York Times
, July 29, 1969. The injuries are detailed in the police records, June 28, 1969 (courtesy Scherker Estate).

55
. Interview with Ryder Fitzgerald, May 5, 1992; Truscott, “Gay Power”; Donn Teal,
The Gay Militants
(Stein & Day, 1971), p. 20; Leitsch, “Police Raid,”
The Advocate
, Sept. 1969 (pocketed money).

56
. Scherker interview with Lorenzo Rodriguez, June 3, 1989 (tape courtesy Scherker Estate).

57
.
New York Times
, June 30, 1969. Truscott, in his
Voice
article (July 3, 1969), agreed with the
Times's
view.

58
. Copy of the HYMN flyer courtesy Rodwell.

59
. Mel Home, “20 Years of Changing Clothes,”
Gay Community News
, June 23, 1979; Scherker interviews with “D.D.,” Dec. 24, 1988 (courtesy Scherker Estate).

60
. Scherker interview with Wicker, Aug. 8, 1988; John Wilben to Scherker, July 4, 1989 (sleaze joint—courtesy Scherker Estate); interviews with Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, May 2, 1992 (“good girls”; Julius') and Martin Boyce, May 19, 1992 (Julius'); Rex Wockner, “It Was a Hot Night in June,”
Gay Community News
, May 22–24, 1988 (Julius'). Wockner also claims (without citing sources) that some members of Mattachine “fingered people out to the police.” This same view of Stonewall continued to be expounded in the early seventies by the Los Angeles Homosexual Information Center—Don Slater's renamed Tangents group
(“Tangents” was found to be legally reserved by a Nevada company). HIC called the Stonewall uprising “a defensive reaction by a group of jaded, role-playing bar queens who had rejected society … emotionally immature, self-ashamed patrons of a gay club …” (HIC
Newsletter
no. 21, January 1972, courtesy Scherker Estate).