Bambi was a natural beauty, unable to be taken as a man, even if she tried. She had been given the name Bambi because of her large eyes. She was almost never seen without a bottle and a bag. Once, in male garb, she was attacked on the subway “for being a dyke”.
After the Weinstein Hall occupation in August 1970, Bambi, along with Sylvia Rivera, Marsha Johnson, Bebe Scarpi, Bubbles Rose Lee, was a founder of Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR). She would often be with Sylvia when they zapped gay or student organizations.
She was part of the commune at the mafia-owned 213 East Second Street. Her method of pan-handling was rather dramatic: she would stand in the street to stop traffic, and then bang on car windows to demand change.
Her age is not specified in any of the accounts, nor what happened to her after 1971.
- Martin B Duberman. Stonewall. Dutton, c1993. Plume, 1994: 123-4, 192, 252, 254.
- David Carter. Stonewall : the riots that sparked the gay revolution. St. Martin's Press 2004: 56. Griffin 2005.
- Stephan L. Cohen. The Gay Liberation Youth Movement in New York: "An Army of Lovers Cannot Fail". Routledge, 2008: 91, 104-5, 106, 122, 127, 128, 132, 147.
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Was Bambi at the Stonewall riots? Duberman p192 has a very brief mention that she was, but as part of Sylvia's perception of what was happening at Stonewall, That is in the most dubious part of his book, as others maintain that Sylvia was not in fact there. Therefore, we don't know if Bambi was there. Maybe.
Hi, I run the online archive for the Randy Wicker & Marsha P. Johnson Papers (physically archived at the LGBT Center National History Archives). When I cleaned out Marsha's old bedroom in Hoboken at Randy's apartment, we discovered a news clipping she saved about Bambi. I'm not sure what publication it came from, but you can see it at the link below. When Bambi died, likely around the early 1970s, her body was claimed by Ed Murphy, a Village community organizer and former bouncer/mob affiliate who worked at the Stonewall. Her obit says that Bambi rescued Ed from arrest during the Stonewall riots by shoving dog shit in a pig's face. The obit also says Ed, Marsha, Eve from Gay Liberation Allows Drag, and other friends met on Christopher St on June 28 at 3pm (year unclear) to scatter her ashes down Christopher. Check out the clipping at the link below & feel free to reference it in any works about Bambi.
ReplyDeletexo Devlyn Camp
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FXENgPido8NgIVqL1vKdk9rI_iV_ugRh/view?usp=drive_link
Looks like it would've been early 1980s -- Gay Liberation Allows Drag was a new org in 1980 per The West Sider, and Eve Adams was the president.
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