June is here! While the calendar says it’s still spring, “meteorological summer” started June 1st, and Memorial Day weekend is the “unofficial” start to summer.
Thank you for taking the time to check out my random thoughts. Have a great month ahead and be proud. I am 365 days a year!
HAPPY PRIDE MONTH!
Cheers queers and cheers to all of my “straight, but not narrow” friends.
Have you ever wondered why we celebrate Pride every June (some hotter places celebrate it in the cooler months of fall)? It all goes back to the “Summer of ’69”! Now, that should be a song!
Well, we owe a big thanks to the queens that stood up for what would be the forebearer of LGBTQ+ rights and gay pride!
Back in the day, gay bars weren’t popular like they were pre-pandemic. Those “safe havens” catering to the gay community were often targeted and harassed by police.
“The Stonewall Inn”, a bar on Christopher Street in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City, was owned by the Mafia. Its clientele were the poor and those that faced rejection by a majority of society.
In the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, plainclothes policemen, uniformed police officers, and detectives arrived at the bar and yelled, “Police! We’re taking the place!”
Well, one thing led to another. When an officer shoved a drag queen and she hit him on the head with her purse, the mood changed and people started throwing beer bottles. Word spread that people inside the bar were being beaten by police.
Within six months of that police raid on the bar, which became known as “The Stonewall Riots”, two gay activist groups were formed, and one year later, gay pride festivals were held for the first time in New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
If you want more than just that little soundbite version of “Stonewall”, here’s the original blog I posted almost ten years ago. Wow, I can’t believe it’s been 53 years now!
“COMPTON’S CAFETERIA RIOTS”
And, let’s not forget about the Compton’s Cafeteria riot in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district three years before Stonewall.
This restaurant was a popular hangout for transgender women and drag queens. Sadly, even gay bars weren’t very welcoming to trans women and Compton’s was a place where they could meet publicly.
In August 1966, police were called because the women and the drag queens were becoming unruly. After roughhousing from police, a trans woman threw a cup of coffee in an officer’s face.
At that point, the place “erupted”. Sugar shakers, tables, and chairs were thrown, the front glass window was shattered, and the violence moved into the streets on the first night.
Even some San Francisco police said “unnecessary violence” was used by the department.
“LOGICAL FAMILY”
Armistead Maupin is one of my favorite authors and one of the leading advocates in the LGBTQ community. Yes, there were trailblazers before him and many came after him.
However, by bringing his “Tales of the City” adventures to readers of the San Francisco Chronicle in the 1970s, he showed them that we’re just like everyone else. Take that Anita Bryant! (Yes, she’s still alive!)
Since Pride month is here, I want to talk about his beautiful 2017 memoir, “Logical Family”.
You probably figured out what he means by “logical family”, but Maupin says, “Sooner or later, we have to venture beyond our biological family to find our logical one, the one that actually makes sense for us. We have to, if we are to live without squandering our lives.”
The book covers his conservative upbringing in North Carolina, his “discovery” that he was different, his military service in Vietnam, and his adventures once he moved to San Francisco.
I really loved the story of his history with the virulent homophobe that hired him for his first television job in North Carolina and how one day Armistead would publicly attack this man’s hateful antigay and anti-HIV politics in his home state at Pride.
Yes, that hateful man was none other than five-term U.S. Senator Jesse Helms, who served from 1973-2003.
I also loved his stories about Bryant, his FW (occasional) B relationship with Rock Hudson, and why he “outed” Hudson as gay when it was revealed he had AIDS.
And, there’s there’s the funny story about finding chewing gum on his pants during a meeting! That’s not the kicker. The kicker is what he did on his lunch break and how the gum got there! 😉
“TALES OF THE CITY”
Maupin’s “Tales of the City”, which aired on PBS in the U.S., is still one of my favorite miniseries and my favorite book series of all time.
I watched it for the first time, in early 1994, as I was getting ready to make my big move to Chicago from small town Kentucky — just like Mary Ann Singleton did in the series, moving from Cleveland to San Francisco!
And, I was just as naïve as Mary Ann, too, also thirty years ago!
Yes, that’s a very youthful Laura Linney in the early-1990s!
If you’ve never read the nine-book series or watched the first three series, “Tales of the Cities”, “More Tales of the City”, and “Further Tales of the City”, and 2019’s Netflix “Tales of the City”, please do so.
So enjoyable! I’m going to read the books and watch it again!
“THE UNTOLD TALES OF ARMISTEAD MAUPIN”
And, there’s a documentary on the incredible man, too!
THANK YOU ARMISTEAD!
In a 2014 blog, I praised the author and activist for inspiring me to try one more time to kick off my television weather and news career in 1996.
At the time, I wrote, “Armistead, thank you for giving this small-town Kentucky boy the motivation and the courage to move to Chicago just four months shy of my 30th birthday, just as you allowed Mary Ann Singleton to leave Cleveland, Ohio, for San Francisco.“
Here’s Laura Linney as Mary Ann Singleton in the 1994 “Tales of the City” miniseries, almost 25 years before Ozark’s incredible Wendy Byrde!
Click here if you want to read that blog about my inspiration (it should open in a new window):
https://anthonypeoples.wordpress.com/2014/03/11/armistead-maupin-thank-you-for-motivating-me/
Here’s Armistead and his husband, Christopher Turner. They still live in San Francisco.
Oh, by the way, Happy Belated Birthday Armistead!
“SUMMER OF ’69”
Since I mentioned the Stonewall Riot and the “Summer of ’69”, why not share the incredible hit song from one of our LGBTQ allies.
Canadian rocker Bryan Adams cancelled a concert in Mississippi in 2016 over an anti-gay discrimination bill.
“Summer of ’69” was Adams’ seventh hit on the Billboard Hot 100. It reached #5 in 1985.
Now, in full disclosure, Adams isn’t perfect.
As the COVID-19 pandemic was sweeping the world in the spring of 2020, he made a very racist social media post about having to cancel his shows.
He blamed it on “some fucking bat eating, wet market animal selling, virus making greedy bastards”!
He apologized for his insensitive comment and the post was deleted.
“THE REACH OF A CHEF”
Last week, I posted a few interesting things from Michael Ruhlman 2006 “The Reach of a Chef”. Here are a few more just about my favorite city, Las Vegas.
When Vegas became a hot spot for famous chefs to open restaurants in casinos and hotels, the money started rolling in.
Rob Valentino, then president of the Venetian, which features many famous chef-fronted eating establishments, told Ruhlman that in 2005, they did $175 million in restaurant sales and another $100 million in banquet and bar sales.
Valentino says, “I don’t know another hotel in the world that does $300 million dollars in food and beverage.” On top of that, the casino and hotel brought in another $1.2 billion (that’s billions with a “B”), for a total of $1.5 billion!
HAPPY PRIDE MONTH!
Here’s my favorite picture from the last Chicago Pride I attended. I can’t believe it’s been ten years!
THAT’S IT
With all the craziness in the world, make it the best in your little part of it!
Anthony
What's Peeps Thinking About Now? It's Probably Random! 