American Experience; Stonewall Uprising; Interview with Danny Garvin, 2 of 3

I really wanted all of them. Well, what was it about the stomach? Well, what was it? She's walking up the door. What's it? There's lots of noise. Okay. Do you want to ask this, sir? Yeah, we'll have a follow-up. Okay. Okay. Do you want to go back to that phrase, chicken? So what did chicken mean and did you find it at the Stonewall? Okay.

Chicken meant that you were young. You were young. You were chicken, right? You were old-handed. Or whatever you would be, right? And so chicken meant you were young, gays. So I went there and all of a sudden there were kids of my age. There were people that were in their 20s that were people like me. There were not people like me. There was a mixture. There were people in their 30s. There were people that looked like me. There were people that were starting to change because change was happening. Because you already had the summer of love. So slight things were changing. You also had your flame queens in there, which were teased hair and atomic zone shirts and hip huggers. You could get arrested if you didn't have three articles of male clothing on you.

So you really couldn't do a full drag. There were some that would push it to an extent. But the biggest thing that Stonewall meant to me was the second time I had come back there. I'd been a hustling on 30th Avenue in Bigfords. I met this guy Charlie, a bunch of guys. I went home with Charlie. And I met him, these guys, in the next day for brunch. And it was this guy, Frankie, who I thought was kind of cute. And they all took me at night to Stonewall. And Charlie asked me to dance. And I said, I don't dance with men. I was too scared. I was so scared that some other guy would see me. And see me dance with another guy. I would know I'm gay. And Charlie was saying, but you're in here and you're in a gay bar. I said, yeah, but I'm not dancing. It's OK. I'm just having a drink at the bar. It's all right. I said, but did you find any of those guys attracted?

That I was with? I said, yeah, one guy, Frankie. So Charlie walked over to Frankie. And he talked to him. And then Frankie came over to me and I was sitting on the bar. I was still. And the song was playing, let it be me. And he said, would you like to dance? And it was the first time I've had a slow dance with a man. And I haven't stopped dancing with a man since then. But that's where I discovered love. I discovered love in the Stonewall. Yeah, it was. It was good. Because it was a discovery and an opening for myself. Like I said, we're no gay or lesbian, new centers. And why? I mean, we're talking about what kind. You could slow dance. Is that right? Do you want to talk about what that felt like? And was that unique to the Stonewall?

Except it seemed to me. Your old dick had slow dance in there. But you could also do line dance. You could move to line dance. And you know, two people lined up in lines. And you go across the floor. You've been doing the mashed potato, the Boston jerk, the monkey. All the dances that were in there, we were all able to do. We were all able to do as kids. You know, that we could only do in this world with a girl. But now it would have somebody else. And those black queens, girl, they could hit it. You know, it would be going along, doing it. I know some of the scream out of hit it. They would bend down, hit the dance floor. And so, what did the Stonewall look like? What did the Stonewall look like? When you walked in, you have the drawers. It was two sets of drawers, but there was one drawer you went in. There was a book where you signed in.

And nobody signed their real name. I can't recall if you paid to get in or if you didn't pay to get in. That I can't recall. But to the left, it was a code check. My friend, Barbara, even worked. And then you would check the code, go into the bar, and it was a long bar. It was all painted black. plywood. You really wouldn't want to order a mixed drink in there because, you know, you're not going to get the real thing. So you're going to order a beer. That shelves along the side where you can keep your drinks on. And at the back, there were little tables that you could sit at and talk in a jukebox. Then they also had this doorway, in towards the center of the bar, that opened it up into a larger dance floor, where the bigger crowd would be dancing. With different music planes with a jukebox.

They had this old well, right? I mean, out of rocks, you know. That was there. That little service bar back there. The bathrooms went through to both sides of the bars or you could walk through those different questions. As times went on, I've seen them try to make money by selling hot dogs in there. They had a separate hot dog stand in there. How about the drinks? What were they like? And what the sanitation was? Clean place, dirty work? I would basically stick with beer because it'd be safe. Because I know the liquor was watered down. It was a sanitary. I don't think it was, it's not like it was today. It was not proper. But I mean, I don't think it was the cleanest place. Not necessarily, you know.

I honestly can't say on the hygiene of that aspect of it. Did you know who it was run by? Oh, yeah. Did you care? Or can you tell me who ran it? And what was the goal? It was run by the mafia. It was run by the mafia. You know what it's like. Give this wait a second before you answer because we need to have your question, not have your case boys in it. Oh, my God. Yeah. So who ran the storm wall? What was the, how did you feel about it? You and the patient. Oh, the mafia was our friends. Well, all gay bars are run by the mafia. We all know that. Frankie, who worked at Joe and Rostra in the baller. And I dated. He was one of the mafia osos nephews. You know, so that's how, you know, he got the job there, you know. It's like, yeah, we give the gay kid a job here, you know. It's like that. We give the gay nephew a job there. So.

They were making a shitload of money. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, they make a lot of money. Yeah. They make good money. You know, they pulled it in. They pulled it in. They did, you know. Tell me about the average rate. You were saying before the things that you didn't like was when the lights went on. Can you say that again? Oh, I saw one out. It was a bar call to one, two, three. And I was with this woman, very feminine woman, lesbian. And she owned a trucking company. And all of a sudden, the lights come on. And I'm sitting there with her lover who's butch, who has a dildo strapped on, who immediately, she's down. To pull that out of her, she can get arrested for that. And she is panicking. I have to get out of here. I have to get out of here. And we'll get all trancey. Stay calm. Stay calm. You're just going to ask for your identification.

She said, I have a business. I'll lose my business. My family will find out about this. I can't. You see this woman freak. She was like, oh, I'm fine. Everybody was just free. She would climb up. The lights came on. It was like stop dancing. That's it. Go against it. You know, sometimes I would rate a bar. And the following day, it's open again. So it would be like that. You know, they'd come in there. They'd take the liquor and they'd leave. They'd take the jukebox. I mean, I worked at Anna and a mafia bar. Just laid a cold to zoo. Okay. We're not going to get into that. Even though I'm sure it's interesting. Totally. But, okay. Getting to the night. But you didn't. One before going to the night. The night we wanted to cover. The names of the people in the bar. Like Barbara even in all the photos. I remember some of these. Great. Oh, sure. There was Barbara Eaton's. There was Maggie Chiggs. Maggie Chiggs had half a club foot. But always drinking out of this goblet.

Wine goblet. Okay. There was Liz. There was, let's see. Frank or Frankie. There was Bobby Shades. There was... Well, of course, my crowd. Frank Bubbles. There was another Frank Drip. They called him because he had a clap. The... Let's see. It was Liz. I can't. Why do people have different names? Some just dick names. Some were, I guess, to reinvent themselves. You know, I'd rather be that person than who I was in high school. You know? The cops look at real ideas if you were... Oh, yeah. No, no. No, no. Real ideas were looked at. Real ideas. You couldn't walk around. You know? No.

Yeah. You know what I'm going to do again? You don't care. You don't care about that. You were walking with your friend the night of the... Like Friday night. Yeah. You know, briefly about walking on what you first saw and what you thought it was. It won't happen. Okay. Well... Tell me what night of the week it was and what... Was it a cold night? What was it like? It was something. It was hot... It was a hot summer night. It was a hot summer night. I remember running to my friend Dennis that day, who early had gone up town because of Judy Garland's thing. I was like, oh, great. You know, I'll go stand on the line. None of us really cared. Well, at least my generation were upset with Judy Garland dying that day. You know, we were 20. I'd be like, my garbage strized in dying today. And I couldn't find a 20-year-old K kid upset about it. Okay. So I was like... She was an advertisement icon. But I got...

The music had changed in the Stonewall. You know, because music had changed. It wasn't as popular as it was. But I mean, it still was a place to dance. But... Like I was telling David before, I read it earlier, that the song of the year was Aquarius. You really can't dance to Aquarius. You know, you can't lie in dance. You can't do Mickey's monkey to that. Music was changing. We were more like taking LSD or all turning on, tuning in, laying back, smoking pot. Listening to music. You know, getting into a job by getting into a country of Joe and the fish. So I got... People going to bars and standing. I went into a friend of my kids while I used to date. I was home from qualification. And I invited him back to the community where I lived. And we smoked a joint. And we were walking back and we were talking about the revolution. Because I was... Earlier that March, there was a big being in Quentin Central Station, where the police had rated us. And it was gay and straight people together.

When the hippie era came around, we all kind of meshed together. You know, it was like, it was cool. It was okay. And so we were talking about the revolution happening. And we were walking up 7-1-1 and we were talking... The other thing on that was either black panthers or the young lords are going to start it. And we turned the corner from 7th Avenue onto Christopher Street. And we saw the Paddy-Wagon pull up there. So... Of course, we're 20-year-olds. We ran over to see what's happening. It was a red going on. Watching the people being brought out. And some people came out and gave him very dramatic. I can throw in their arms up in a V. You know, there's a victory sign. And, you know, uh... Then people were screaming, Pig, which was the big word back there. I... Copper. People started throwing pennies because they were made a copper. And the copper started coming after us.

And then we would run around the... And then we would come back to the area. Around the corner, the village voice was right on the corner at 7th Avenue and Christopher Street. And down the block on the... East side of the street, 4th-10th Avenue, there was a building being built. And there were bricks there. And so, somebody would run and grab bricks. And we would start throwing bricks. And the thing is, when you throw a brick, you know, measure a rod. It's going into a crowd. And it's hitting you. And then people were banging on the paddy wagon. As people were coming in there, right? And shaking it and telling it... The cops started to fight back with us, definitely. And we would run. And there was no way to keep... It was the perfect location to have a disorganized raid

because there was no way... with Wavley Street coming in there, West Fort coming in there, 7th-10th Avenue coming in there. Christopher Street coming in there. There was no way to retain us. Later on, the bricks all of a sudden started smashing the windows. And I started getting scared, you know? And this is like... This is right, you know? I'm pacifist, you know? It's like... I'm kind of more like the kids that went to the demonstration, you know, instead of flowers in the National Guard. You know what I'm saying? So I couldn't believe in fighting back other people here. I mean, I wish I could have been that kind of activist that went out there and said, yeah, okay, let's go get him. I'm not. I can't even kill a cockroach today. Maybe some hidden Buddhism thing with me or whatever. But... It's just scary. I ran.

I was ran. I was trying to police. When a police would come in and say, they were trying to me. I eventually ran up on top of a roof, a building, of course, street from... From the stone wall, from the shore, and so we were parked. I got on top of the ring of the bell, got in the building, got up there. I was able to get a great view of the whole street. The virus has taken place. And at the corner of Waveling, a bunch of queens rose up there, their pants like the niggas, and put their arms around each other. And so all the cops stand. They were the nice sticks. And they decided to hunt them. And they had their arms around each other. I'm going, you know, we are the stone wall curls. We were our hair and curls. We were our jungle bees. A bug of our baggy knees. And the cops just charge them. And they start smashing their heads with the clubs. And at that point in me, something snapped.

It's like, this is not right. What are we being beat up for? For wanting to dance? You know? It's not a harm anybody else, you know? I never thought of key rights for myself at the time. We had thought of women's rights. We had thought of black rights. We had thought of Hispanic rights. We thought of all kinds of human rights. But we never thought of key rights. And whenever we got kicked out of a bar before, we never came together. And this was the first time that you would see another gay person. And they didn't necessarily have to be a drag queen or a street person. We really got some traffic noise coming in to harming the kick-line. I looked down for the roof. And I saw the police all lined up on one side, a wavily street crossing of Christopher,

holding their police batons, standing out there straight. And they had a bunch of young flame queens, basically young kids, and mostly in their 20s. And they rolled up their dungarees, above their knees. And they put their arms around each other, and they formed a kick-line. And they started seeing, we are the stonework girls. We were our hair and curls. We were our dungarees, above our nodding knees. And the cops just took care of beating these kids. Just beating them. And I don't think there would be a beating because there would be a trauma to it. There would be a beating because these were gay kids. You know, we would have scum. You said you hadn't even felt that there was, you know, the potential of a gay revolution. Did you, before,

there were these other civil rights groups running around? Well, there was a Managing Society, which I was aware of, right? And most of the people, or the older in there, and I was more towards the left. You know, we used to say, don't trust anybody over 30, you know. And I don't want to go protest in a tiny suit, you know. That was not for me. I mean, I was more towards flower power. That was the... So, what happened next after this year? Up in the room, did you ever go back down into the fray? Well, I went back down, right? No, for key. Couldn't find keyed again. We got separated from the ground entirely. What were the dramatic highlights of that? Well, then... I remember the parking meter being knocked open. I got to the bricks, right?

The expansion opened out of the bar drawers. And that was like, oh my god, you know. This is like, okay, we're destroying public property now. We're smashing it in, you know. We're going to get the bar back open. And I thought it was going to be like, some big, fun thing. We're just going to go in there. And take a little, we'll start dancing again, you know. The fire hose got turned on us, you know. Garbage cans got turned on fire, you know. I remember just going on to around... maybe three or four in the morning, eventually crowd dispersed. The next night, then, I remember being a mom's chicken rib, which was a restaurant in Greenwich Avenue. And people were talking about sorry. Stonewall got raided. And it was just like talking about any place else that got raided. But the thing was that it hadn't gotten out through all the gay community.

So people did come down there. And during the day, when I walked by there, there were blackboards painted over the smashed windows. And there were signs on there for the massings to sign in there. And they were handing out pamphlets saying, please, this is not the way we want to go. This is not the right way to take it. We should work from within, you know, civil disobedience, not the way to do it. And what happened was, I believe the Stonewall was open. I remember calling it right. The Stonewall was open. The people wanted to get back in. I remember that. Pulling a little bit of pancake, sorry. The first night was the door actually shoved in. What was the damage that was done? Oh, it was broken in.

Definitely broken in with the paulchymeter. What did they ask for? We couldn't save the door with paulchymeter. I'm doing that. It's smashed. Can you say what they actually did with the paulchymeter? Oh, yeah. It was like a batting ram. You know, it was at the whole meter head. God bless the people who had the strength to break it off. But it was a sman. Bam, bam. You know, and bash. It was open. And they were like, whoa! And they were like, no, we got open. It was like, what happens now, you know? You got the police inside there. We're out here, you know? I know garbage cans were in the fire. I'm not sure of that night. They started throwing them all on top of cocktails. Or it was a second night. They started throwing them all on top of cocktails. Next morning, thought it was over? What did you think? And were you surprised that it kept going that week? Well, yeah. I found it. Yeah, yeah.

Because people... Can you tell me what I said? I'm sorry. I won't be in. How did you feel when I said... Next day? Next day, I figured nothing. That was it. It was all over. I mean, I've been to demonstrations before. You know? Then tear gas before. So it was over, you know? Figured the bar would be open. Figured you know the crowds will be brown there. But there was a... There was a darkness that hung over it. You know? Something had changed. There was a darkness there. I remember more people coming now, because it was Saturday night, and hadn't heard about it. And if you wanted to dance, this is where you went, or if you wanted to meet people, or if you wanted to cop some drugs, this is where you go. And... Basically, the cops came again.

And now there's more people. Now there's more riots. Now I believe this is when people had enough sense that we had organized the night before. So there was more of a fight back. More of a toy and more of a raging. The squad that... You talk a little bit about a mix was a rage and camp. I mean, did you talk about the second night? Raging camp. Oh yeah, because there'll be really a lore. There'll be 20 of the police. You know? Miss thing. You know? Girl, that's my husband. There was... The street queens were the ones that were really out there, because they had nothing to lose. I mean, you're not going to find a Columbia student or an M.I.U. student going to be out there doing this at the time.

So basically, the street queens and things like that had nothing to lose. The ones that were out there that were trying to police the most. You know? Second, there were also leaflets that were passage. You know, including... I was... I know it was... I really came at the Managing Society. Actually, he was... There was a group that wanted... You know, to use this as a more like... You know, a violent fighting back, not just the jacket and tie thing. You want to wear it out? No, I didn't get that. I got to the other hand out. Can I make a suggestion for the first night? Could you tell the story about the... The petty writing didn't rock back and forth. The north is that made. Oh. But what they said... Yeah. Just to add to that, maybe you could tell a story... How did you feel? How did the street queens... How many were there? A hundred people, fifty people. Are we talking in little streets or big streets? And how did, you know, paint me a word picture of it? Okay, it was about 150 people there the first night. Okay?

And... When the bricks were stolen... When the fire cans were lit... When you didn't know which direction you were going to be hit... When a club or a bat... It was panic. You felt like you were in a war zone. It was a riot. It was an actual riot. There's no other way to describe this. You know, you look a footage of a riot that took place in Detroit or Newark. This was a riot on Christopher Street. You know? It was not being covered. You know? It was... You know, your children are being beat, you know? People bleeding. People running down the street, you know? What were the faces? What were the blood, you know? How did you feel? I was like... Well, first of all, I was like...

It was like the fucking establishment. I mean, this is what I was going to... You know, they're doing this to us again. And then I felt that... All of a sudden, it became my rights. I wasn't standing up for other people's rights. It became more my rights. I think, for me, it becomes more of a personal feeling, you know? I owned it. I owned it, you know? This was my right. I have this place. I should be allowed to dance here. You don't have the right to take that from me. You know? I shouldn't have to be shaking down. That noise is bleeding. It just is bleeding. It's not going to be subtle. You're saying what you're saying... If you could just free use time. Sure.

Damn truck goes away. Sure. How about them? How about them? Cool. Yeah, what you're saying is really critical. It sounds like before you were thinking of social revolution, something shifted after the riots. Something shifted when you saw that these, you know, establishment, smash head-to-head... It becomes personal. It becomes personal. Can you put that in a whole, like, what the riots meant to you? And its own sentence without my words. Two-fold-less, every step being a lot of noise. You thought about your rights, versus what did the Stonewall and the riots shift? When the shift, when all of a sudden you realize that you're not categorized, okay? They're not drag queens. They're not street queens. They're not middle-class people. All of a sudden, you're gay. Or whatever we were.

You know, I don't think I even heard the word gay until a few days later. You know? We were homosexuals. You know? This was like... We were the same. We became a group. We became a power movement. We became... We became something I, as a person, could all of a sudden grab onto? Like, I couldn't grab onto when I would go with some way to be real as a kid, or a 42nd Street movie theater. You know, or being picked up by some dirty old man. You know, all of a sudden I had brothers and sisters. You know, which I didn't have before. So, yeah, that's what I got out of there. I'm sorry. Did you go through that muster syndrome that was horrible?

Yeah, you know, yeah, I took a... I took a little while, I said, and you know, I'm going to miss a bit. You're not necessarily being philosophical as you are. And then, for the rest of the nights, no, I didn't have to spend the rest of the night by its... You know, it just became home war riots, war riots. You know, there were riots in Washington DC.