Sally’s Hideaway and Sally’s II - nightclub

In the mid 1980s, after the coming of AIDS, the masculist gay sex bars in New York, the Anvil, The Mineshaft, the Toilet, went out of business, either voluntarily or under pressure from the city. The Anvil had in its early days featured Felipe Rose who dressed as a Native American (he was Lakota on his father’s side) and was later recruited for the Village People disco group. The Anvil also put on drag shows. It closed in November 1985, and Conrad, its manager, moved to Blues, a nightclub at 264 W 43^rd Street, between 7^th and 8^th Avenues. Blues was popular with those working in the sex trade around Times Square. This did not work out, and late 1986 – the year that Harry Benjamin died – the nightclub was re-opened as Sally’s Hideaway, managed by two femme queens: Sally Maggio and Jesse Torres, the hostess manager.

Sally and Jesse had worked in the early 1970s at the trans/gay 220 Club, at 220 West Houston Street, where Lou Reed drank and was presumed to have named his album and track, Sally Can’t Dance, after the manager (although it was photographs of his trans lover, Rachel, which appeared on the inner sleeve). Sally and Jesse then worked at the Greenwich Pub, at 8^th Avenue and 13^th Street, which attracted gay trans and their admirers.

Sally’s Hideaway put on go-go boy contests, male stripping and drag shows – some by transsexuals. Trans entertainers such as Dorian Corey, Jayne County, Angie Xtravaganza performed.  The customers were a mix of pre-op transsexuals, drag queens, cross-dressers, transvestites, chasers, male strippers and all kinds of hustlers.

Monica Mugler outside Sally's II

There was a serious fire in 1992. Sally moved the club a few doors away to 252 West 43^rd Street, which was attached to the Carter Hotel. It was now known as Sally’s II, or simply Sally’s. The bar was circular, two flights up from the street, and there was also a small lounge, up another flight of stairs at the side of the bar. Behind the bar there was a wall of doors permanently closed until one day Sally discovered the unused theatre of the Carter Hotel, only another set of doors away from the hotel lobby. Sally’s II expanded into this space and used the stage. Drag pageants and drag balls were held, usually hosted by or in homage to the ballroom legends of the day: Octavia St. Laurent, Pepper LaBeija, Avis Pendavis. Paris Dupree’s “Paris is Burning” ball was held here in 1992, and the subsequent 1990 film included opening and ending sequences shot outside Sally’s, and strongly featured Dorian Corey and Angie Xtravaganza.

Grace

There was also the Amazing, Electrifying Grace, lip synch performer and comedienne, who had started in the Anvil, and when that closed she emceed and performed at Greenwich Pub for Sally Maggio, and then at Midtown 43 where she did a Sunday Night drag revue. Midtown 43 closed in 1989, by which time Grace was also working at Sally’s. After the fire and the move she was given a steady gig emceeing Sunday and sometimes Monday night. At Midtown 43 Grace had had a following among the butch queens of the ball house crowd, but these did not feel at home in Sally’s.

Trans musician Terre Thaemlitz dj’d there in the early 1990s, until fired for refusing to play the music that was in the charts. The Transy House people, Rusty Mae Moore, Chelsea Goodwin, Julia Murray, Sylvia Rivera, Kristiana Th’mas, went as a group and were regarded as a ‘house’ in the Paris is Burning sense. Self-described tranny-chaser Jonathan Ames was also found there, and the club is featured in his bildungsroman and the subsequent film, The Extra Man.

Sally Maggio died in October 1993. Jesse Torres continued the club, although Mayor Rudolph

Jesse

Giuliani, real estate interests and the Walt Disney Corporation were changing the character of the Time Square area. Jesse died, unexpectedly, in September 1996 while attending the Miss Continental Pageant in Chicago. Giselle, a long-time Sally’s barmaid, took over, but business was waning. After a series of police busts, Sally’s closed in November 1997.

• Lou Reed. Sally Can't Dance. RCA Records, 1974.
• Jennie Livingstone (dir). Paris is Burning. With Dorian Corey, Paris Dupree, Pepper Labeija. US 71 mins 1990.
• Jonathan Ames, The Extra Man. Scribner, 1999: 91-9, 107-110, 144-5, 157-9, 209-210.
• Brian Lantelme. “Sally’s Hideaway”. LadyLike, 46, 2001: 17-21. Online
• Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini (dirs) The Extra Man. Scr: Robert Pulcini & Jonathan Ames, based on the novel by Jonathan Ames, with Paul Dana as Louis Ives and Gisele Alicea as Miss Pepper. US 108 mins 2010.
• Jeremy Reed. Waiting for the Man: The life and Career of Lou Reed. Overlook Books, 2015: 82.

www.sallys-hideaway.com  
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The one and only account of Sally's is at www.sallys-hideaway,com, The author is identified only by email address as Brian Lantelme, which explains why the Ladylike, 46, 2001 account is virtually the same.   However Lantelme does not mention Lou Reed, Jonathan Ames, Terre Thaemlitz  or Rusty Rae Moore.

There is no mention at all of Sally's in Julian Fleisher's The Drag Queens of New York, 1996.  There is no mention at all of Sally's in Laurence Senelick' The Changing Room: Sex, Drag and Theatre, 2000,

I would have liked more information about the Amazing, Electrifying Grace, and her transfer from the Anvil to Midtown 43 to Sally's.   Was her act the same, or did it change to reflect the audience?

The Anvil was, in effect, a gentleman's club: women, cis or trans were not usually admitted as customers, although it is said that  Lee Radziwill, sister to Jackie Onassis, frequented the place in male drag.

Recurring untruths: Marsha P Johnson’s birthday

“The story’s told/ With facts and lies”. Leonard Cohen.

A new series of untruths, canards, lies and misinformation that are repeated with regard to trans history.

_________________________________


 
We know how this canard started.

Martin Duberman. Stonewall :190-2.

“Sylvia Rivera had been invited to Marsha P. Johnson’s party on the night of June 27, but she decided not to go. … No, she was not going to Marsha’s party. She would stay home. … But then the phone rang and her buddy Tammy Novak – who sounded more stoned than usual – insisted that Sylvia and Gary join her later that night at Stonewall. Sylvia hesitated. If she was going out at all … she would go to Washington Square [bar]. She had never been crazy about Stonewall. …. But Tammy absolutely refused to take no for an answer and so Sylvia, moaning theatrically, gave in. …. Rumor had it that Marsha Johnson, disgusted at the no-shows for her party, was also headed downtown to Stonewall, determined to dance somewhere. Sylvia expansively decided that she did like Stonewall after all …. When the cops came barrelling through the front door.”

Note that Duberman says Marsha’s party – not birthday party!


This altered somewhat in the retelling.

Here is part of the IMDB summary of the plot of the recent film, Happy Birthday, Marsha! :

“It's a hot summer day in June, 1969. Marsha throws herself a birthday party and dreams of performing at a club in town, but no one shows up. Sylvia, Marsha's best friend, distraught from an unsuccessful introduction between her lover and her family, gets so stoned she forgets about the party. After encountering a series of micro-aggressions from street harassment to tense encounters with the police that day, Marsha and Sylvia eventually meet at the Stonewall Inn to finally celebrate Marsha's birth. When the police arrive to raid the bar, Marsha and Sylvia are the first to fight back.”

Happy Birthday, Marsha! is of course a lot more trans positive than Roland Emmerich’s Stonewall that came out a few month’s earlier.

However, there are two problems:

A) Was Sylvia Rivera even at Stonewall on the first night of the riots? David Carter in his Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked The Gay Revolution, 2004, does not even mention Sylvia. Very annoyingly he does not give any reason in the book for Sylvia being missing. However he was interviewed by Gay.Today on this very question and answered:

"Yes, I am afraid that I could only conclude that Sylvia's account of her being there on the first night was a fabrication. Randy Wicker told me that Marsha P. Johnson, his roommate, told him that Sylvia was not at the Stonewall Inn at the outbreak of the riots as she had fallen asleep in Bryant Park after taking heroin. (Marsha had gone up to Bryant Park, found her asleep, and woke her up to tell her about the riots.) Playwright and early gay activist Doric Wilson also independently told me that Marsha Johnson had told him that Sylvia was not at the Stonewall Riots.”

B) The consensus is that Marsha Johnson’s birthday was 24 August 1945. It could well be that she proposed a party on 27 June, but it was not a birthday party!

The following sites say that her birthday was 24 August: EN.Wikipedia,   IMDB,   Sexual History Tour,   Revolvy,   Making Gay History,   Black Revolutionary Theatre Workshop,


On the other hand, some sites seem to have worked backwards and assumed Marsha’s birthday from the date of the Stonewall riot (they also for some reason add one year to her age):

The Radical Notion says: “Marsha P. Johnson was born on June 27, 1944”.

Transgender Equality says: “Disappointed that no one had shown up for a party to celebrate her 25th
birthday, Marsha P. Johnson headed to the Stonewall Inn on the evening of June 27, 1969”.

Femmes Fatales at Penn State University says: “Marsha P. Johnson was celebrating her 25th birthday at Stonewall during the early morning hours of June 28th, 1969 when the police began a raid of Stonewall”.

Mary Baker (1911 - ? ) chorine, housewife

At age 16 William Richeson became Mary Baker and found work as a chorus girl in New York theatre.

She later worked as nurse, waitress and chambermaid. In 1931 she married.

In 1937 she was outed, much to the surprise of her husband.

• “Posed Ten Years as Woman, Danced in Chorus, ‘Married’ “. The Daily Mail, 12 October 1937, reprinted in George Ives (ed Paul Sieveking). Man Bites Man: The Scrapbook of an Edwardian Eccentric. Penguin Books, 1981: 128.

Lauren Jeska (1974 - ) fell runner

Jeska, originally from Lancashire, studied physics at Oxford University, and then gender studies at Leeds University. She transitioned in 2000.

Jeska took up fell running, and was the women’s 2010, 2011 and 2012 English champion, and won the British Championship in 2012. She became a familiar winner. It was an open secret among the runners that Lauren was trans, and she had told some officials.

In 2015 she was told that she would not be able to compete and her racing results would be declared null and void as she hadn't provided blood samples to prove her testosterone levels had lowered significantly, and following this UK Athletics was considering a review into her status as female. All athletes were required to take a blood test but Jeska took exception to this and feared being unable to compete. As a result she risked having her championship results declared void.

She twice asked for NHS psychiatric help, but was not referred to a specialist.

Jeska drove more than 100 miles from her home in Machynlleth, Powys, Wales, to the British Athletic headquarters in Perry Barr, Birmingham. She was carrying three knives, including a 13cm kitchen knife. She asked to speak to Ralph Knibbs, UK Athletics human resources and welfare manager (and former rugby player). She walked up to him and stabbed him several times. Two other men who intervened were also injured. This was capturd on CCTV. The presence of a former Royal Navy paramedic helped to stabilise Knibbs. Although he suffered a stroke during the attack, resulting in partial sight-loss.

Jeska plead guilty at a hearing at Birmingham Crown Court in September 2016. After delays waiting for psychiatric reports, Jeska was jailed in March 2017 for 18 years, and an extended licence of five years to be served after release.

• Lydia Willgress. “Fell-runner Lauren Jeska tried to kill British athletics official because she feared the body would revoke her titles over transgender status”. The Telegraph, 22 September 2016. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/22/fell-runner-lauren-jeska-admits-attempted-knife-murder-of-britis.
• “Powys fell running star Lauren Jeska who admitted attempted murder set for hospital order”. News North Wales, 17 November 2016. www.newsnorthwales.co.uk/news/169215/powys-fell-running-star-lauren-jeska-who-admitted-attempted-murder-set-for-hospital-order.aspx.
• Frances Perraudin. “Champion runner jailed for attempted murder of UK Athletics official”. The Guardian, 14 March 2017. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/14/champion-runner-lauren-jeska-jailed-for-attempted-of-uk-athletics-official-ralph-knibbs.
• Richard Spillett. “Champion fell-runner is jailed for 18 years for trying to stab a UK Athletics official to death after it was revealed she was born a MAN and could lose her titles”. The Daily Mail, 14 March 2017. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4312594/Fell-runner-jailed-trying-murder-athletics-official.html.

-----------------------------

The newspaper accounts leave much unexplained. Did Jeska merely study at Oxford and Leeds, or did she have a degree (or 2)? What did she do for a living? In a small town in Powys, one would expect a physics graduate to be a teacher, but Machynlleth is only a short distance from the university town of Aberystwyth.

Why, 15 years after surgery, would a trans woman decline a blood test? Yes it would reveal that she had XY chromosomes, but that was admitted. Her testosterone level should be well below the required level.


There was no way that her attack on Mr Knibbs was going to solve the problem

Bubbles Rose Lee (194?–?) activist

Bubbles, as a child, had undergone periods of of hunger and starvation. Later, when a friend talked to her about over-eating, she replied: “if you have ever gone hungry like I have, you would understand that there is no such thing as eating too much”.

In August-September 1970, the Gay Activist Alliance and then the Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee booked the basement of Weinstein Hall, a New York University residence building for fundraising dances. In the eve of the third dance, to be held 21 August, the administration attempted to cancel the rest. Although the two remaining dances were held, the situation escalated and the Hall was occupied. Among the volunteers were Bubbles Rose Lee, Sylvia Rivera, and Marsha Johnson. A further dance was planned for 25 September. However the administration called the New York City Tactical Police Squad, which gave the occupiers 10 seconds to vacate the Hall.

Cohen p117

After the ensuing demonstration died down, Bubbles, Sylvia, Marsha, Bebe Scarpi, Bambi L’Amour and others founded Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) which attempted to provide shelter, food and legal support for street queens.

Their first home was a trailer truck seemingly abandoned in a Greenwich Village outdoor parking area. This was a step up from sleeping in doorways, and a couple of dozen young street transvestites moved in. One morning Sylvia and Marshe were returning with groceries, and found the trailer starting to move. Most of the queens were woken by the noise and movement and quickly jumped out, although one, stoned, was half-way to California when she woke up.

Bubbles knew a Mafia person, well-known in the Village, Michael Umbers, manager of the gay bar, Christopher’s End, operator of various callboy and porno operations and also a friend of future Dog Day Afternoon bank robber, John Wojtowicz. Bubbles spoke to him and for a small deposit, the STAR commune was able to move into 213 East Second Street. There was no electricity or plumbing, not even the boiler worked, nor did the toilets. However with help they got the building working and it became STAR House.

Eventually Mike Umbers came around about the three months rent that he had not received. Bubbles mumbled something about the cost of repairs. Umbers said that if he didn’t get his money, Bubbles was as good as dead. Sylvia screamed that if he killed her, she would go to the police. “That bitch can’t make no money”, Umbers said, “That bitch is fat”. Bubbles skipped town soon after, possibly for Florida.

Umbers decided against violence and simply had STAR put out on the street for non-payment of rent. Sylvia and the others reversed the improvements and threw the refrigerator out of the back window.

Arthur Bell wrote an article for the Village Voice about STAR House and perhaps said too much about how the inhabitants hustle. Its publication was followed by a flurry or arrests on 42^nd St.
Umbers was arrested in December 1971 on child pornography charges.

Later it was said that Bubbles had been extradited to Louisiana to face serious criminal charges, possibly murder.

• Arthur Bell. “STAR trek”. Village Voice, July 15, 1971. Online.
• Martin B. Duberman. Stonewall. Dutton, c1993. Plume, 1994: 252, 254.
• Stephan L. Cohen. The Gay Liberation Youth Movement in New York: "An Army of Lovers Cannot Fail". Routledge, 2008: 89, 91, 97, 98, 111, 112, 113, 117, 128, 132-3, 147, 252n186.

__________________________

Bubbles was sometimes known as Bubbles Rose Marie.

The occupation of Weinstein Hall is notable, in retrospect in that the lesbians and the transvestites got on with each other.

Camille Bertin (18?? – 1937) of independent means

In 1897, Camille Bertin, “of independent means” arrived in Juan-les-Pins, on the Côte d'Azur between Nice and Cannes. He was accompanied by Hilda Scott, his fiancée, whom he had met in London. Hilda came from Cambuslang, a suburb of Glasgow.

In due course they married, and within six years of marriage they had three daughters. They were noted for their entertaining, although it was noted that they only ever invited women.

They had almost 40 years of conjugal bliss, until Madame Bertin died in 1936. Her husband died 11 months later. The suddenness of his death resulted in a judicial enquiry, during which documents lodged with the family lawyer revealed that Camille was female-born – which was a surprise to the three daughters. The estate was left to the daughters, on the condition that they did not marry.

• “’Darby and Joan’ Who Were Not: Two Women ‘Wedded’ for Foty Years: Death Reveals Their Secret”. News of the World, 25 March 1937. Reprinted in George Ives (ed Paul Sieveking). Man Bites Man: The Scrapbook of an Edwardian Eccentric. Penguin Books, 1981: 126.
• The Sunday People, 28 March 1937:9.
• Rose Collis. Colonel Barker's monstrous regiment: a tale of female husbandry. Virago, 2001: 204-5. 
• Alison Oram. Her Husband was a Woman!: Women's gender-crossing in modern British popular culture. Routledge, 2007: 92-3.

_________________________________________

‘Camille’ is, of course, a unisex name in France.

Apparently, in French law, restrictions on marriage and procreation are regarded as against public policy, and therefore the three daughters were not so bound.

It is in Juan-les-Pins, a mere 20 years later, that a second Le Carrousel was opened, and Toni April (April Ashley) and Bambi were seen in all the best places.

It is not unusual that at the end of a long and loving marriage, that the second partner passes on only a few months after the first.