DANNY GARVIN <gustavos@nycnet.com>
I went in the Navy when I was 17, my mother was dead, and my father decided to retire back home to Ireland. He gave me the choice of going with him or going into the Navy. I had been to Ireland as a kid and it was no New York. I was born and raised here in the Big Apple. I started to get in touch with being gay while in the Navy and had a slight breakdown, being given an honorable discharge. I was 18! I went down to Julius's Bar (that is the gay bar that the movie in which the "Boys in the Band" starts off), a very uptight older gay bar with straight bartenders. You could not stand at the bar with your back to it, or they said it would be considered soliciting and they could be shut down.
I was in Julius's on March 18, 1967, and some older person about 50 or so said to me, "Why aren't you around the corner at that new gay bar with all the chicken?" I didn't even know what "chicken" meant! So I walked around the corner to the Stonewall and was aghast to see guys dancing with each other. I said to myself this will never last. I was still coming out to myself and thought that sex with men was just a passing phase. I left New York two days later for Chicago and stayed there about two months, then came back home to New York and came out.
Back in 1969 I was a hippie on my way to the Stonewall to go dancing with my friend Keith Murdock (who was home from college for summer break). Keith and I were talking about the revolution that would be coming along some day. We thought that the Young Lords, or the Black Panthers, would start it. We had no idea of gay rights. We were both 20 and the world was changing so fast. There was now a women's movement, and Vietnam was still going on. Early that year in March there was the first "be-in" at Grand Central Station, with about 400 to 500 young people smoking pot and singing folk songs and anti-war songs. The police raided the be-in and hit many a young person with their clubs, pulling us by our long hair into the paddy wagons. Many of the people there were gay. Because of the times and the anti-war movement, most young gay people had experiences with demonstrations. The only gay movement that I knew of at the time was the Mattachine Society, and those people were over 30 . . . and most of us didn't trust anyone over 30!
As Keith and I arrived, the police cars and paddy wagon were already at the bar. It was not uncommon for gay bars to be raided. The people started yelling at the cops and throwing pennies at them. Around the corner on Seventh Avenue was a new building being constructed, and someone ran and got bricks from there and started throwing them at the police. The cops went wild! There was no way to contain the crowd because of the location of the bar. You could run down West 4th, Seventh Avenue, Waverly Place, or Christopher Street, and still end up back at the bar.
The second night (Saturday, June 28th) a lot of people did not know about the raid the night before. So a larger crowd was there. We decided to liberate the bar and reopen it so we could dance. I really don't think any of us thought that this was the start of the gay rights movement. Someone got a parking meter and smashed open the bar doors. More cops were called in. The riot started again and garbage cans were set on fire, Molotov cocktails were thrown, and it was like a war zone! The thing was that because of the night before we as gay people discovered that we would stand up and fight together, something we never knew before. We were so fragmented when it came to our own rights.
I don't recall if anything took place on Sunday night (June 29th). The first night could have been late Friday or early Saturday, and the second riot late Saturday or early Sunday. It all depends on how you look at it as to whether it was two or three days.
The Stonewall was a great place if you were young and gay. Many nights I did the Jerk or the Boston Monkey or some latest line dance craze till the bar closed. I hung out with a lot of people who worked there. Barbara Eden who worked the coat check was a good friend of mine, and I dated Frankie who worked the front door and was sometimes a bartender there.
The Stonewall changed with the times. As the 60s progressed they put in black lights and day-glow posters. The lover I had at the time, George Wright, sold Acid there. Let's face it: the place was Mafia owned!
One myth that seems to have grown about the riot was that drag queens started it. That's not true. There were what we called a lot of Flame Queens there. A Flame Queen wore hip huggers, Tom Jones shirts, and maybe eye make-up. They would tease up their hair and were very effeminate, like Emory in "Boys in the Band." Most young people's clothes at the time had become pretty asexual. You could not be in full drag at the time. You had to have three (3) articles of men's clothing on or you would be arrested for impersonating a woman. Most people were into dressing the new style, unisex. You will find that most of the Vets that are still alive will agree with me on this. David Carter <history69@aol.com>, incidentally, has been interviewing many of us vets, so look for his book.
As for your question about a person who was impaled on the fence: that was a year later, not at Stonewall. A raid took place at a bar called the Snakepit on 10th Street, an after-hours bar. The young man was an illegal alien, scared that he would be deported, so he jumped out of the second story window of the Police Station on Charles Street. He landed on the iron fence which had spikes. They got him off with a blow torch and took him to St. Vincent's Hospital. He did not die and was not deported.
So what is the chance of your work ever being performed by the Gay Men's Chorus here in NYC? I would like to hear it when it is done. I was very happy to read that you are involved in the same-gender marriage law movement in Hawaii. We still have to fight for a place at the table, but it is so different now than it was then and yet we still have far to go.
We Stonewall vets were just a bunch of kids, not heroes/ We simply wanted to dance and not be harrassed. No one knew that that night would be thought of as the start of the gay movement. It's kind of like the Boston Massacre being the start of the American Revolution. My own heroes are people like you who started GLF and GAA. You people were the real movers and shakers. (September 1998)