chicago whispers
by Sukie de la Croix
Talking to Jim Dohr ...
Going into the
bar business ...
"In '77 I quit my job at the hotel to become the assistant manager of a bar called Den One, which was a disaster. Den One was on Wells Street and later became Carol's Speakeasy. I wanted to get into the bar business, I'd had enough of the hotel business. Stella was going to be the manager at Den One, and I decided to go work with him. Then he got fired, or he quit, or whatever, and I became the manager. I had no idea what I was doing. They let go of me within two weeks.
"So I was looking for a job and I started working for Chuck in the Renslow offices, which were in the basement of the mansion. I was doing accounting clerk work and that kind of stuff. As I got more and more involved, I took on more responsibilities. In '79 I did a lot of office work for International Mr. Leather, then from '80 to '84 I was the weekend coordinator for IML.
"But back in '81 Chuck fired his manager at the Gold Coast and the bartenders were all asking, 'Who's the manager, what's going on?' I kept telling them I didn't know, so eventually I walked into Chuck's office one day and I said, 'Chuck, things are starting to get out of hand at the Gold Coast, we need a manager down there. Have we interviewed anybody? Do we have a new manager?' He just looked at me said, 'Yes, you are.' That's how I became the manager of the Gold Coast.
"I was at a point where I was ready for another transition. When the Gold Coast downtown closed, we moved north to 5025 N. Clark St. Then, when Frank Kellas took over the bar, I told Chuck I wasn't making any money, so he made me assistant manager of Man's Country. I did that for a couple of years and then I decided I'd had enough of Chicago, so I moved to Arkansas.
"I worked on a rice farm and cotton farm there with an ex-lover of mine, until I got run out of town by his cousin and his uncle, who basically said, 'It's time for Jimmy to go back to the big city before we get out the dogs and the shotgun.'
"So I came back to Chicago and started working in hotels again. Then, since I worked nights, I would drop into Bulldog Road at 7 o'clock in the morning to see Feathers, and Thursdays was Feather's day off, and so Woody Lorenza, a friend of mine who owned the bar, was looking for a bartender just on Thursdays. It was just one shift a week so it was a hard shift to fill, but I said I could do that, so I did it for three or four years."
My 1st gay pride parade ...
"It had to be June of '76 because I remember it was the bicentennial and Wanda Lust being the Statue of Liberty on the Man's Country float."
The first time I heard about AIDS ...
"It was probably '81, '82, when people started to get sick and nobody knew why. There were reports coming from both coasts that people were getting strange lesions on the bodies, and nobody knew for sure what was causing it. Everybody was pointing to poppers and things like that. That was when they were calling it the Gay Related Immune Disease.
"The first person I knew in Chicago who got sick was Tony Lewis. He was a bartender in a number of places, including the Gold Coast, but he also performed at the Baton."
Normandy downtown ...
"I can remember the old Normandy, which was across the street from Kitty Sheon's. The Normandy was a huge dance club, and I remember when I was 19, in that summer, I was going there with kids I knew from college. My dad and his wife went with us one time, and it was just a hoot to walk into this huge dancebar with my dad and his wife. Not a lot of people mention the old Normandy but it was one of my favorite clubs."
E-mail from Bill Kelley
about the NACHO meeting ...
"It was interesting to see Billy Glover's take on the 1968 North American Conference of Homophile Organizations' meeting at The Trip. I was a member of the Mattachine Midwest delegation and think I served as secretary of the meeting, as I had done at the first one in Kansas City in 1966 and the second one in San Francisco, also in 1966. Billy Glover mentions that Foster Gunnison was the NACHO archivist. I believe I've heard that someone was able to rescue Foster's papers after his sudden death a few years ago, though exactly what's happened to them I would have to check on. I myself have a few papers from my NACHO days, and Martin Duberman used some of them for his book Stonewall.
"Billy Glover recalls that the conference's main agenda item was whether to federate or not and that the credentials process was bureaucratic. I remember it differently. I recall the meetings' agendas as being fairly broad ( including ways that organizations might cooperate on projects ) , with lots of proposals being made that have since come to pass, and with some items still being on our activist agendas today. As for credentials, there were one-person organizations then ( which still survived the credentials process ) , and there are still a few today, though fortunately most organizations today are able to attract members far beyond our abilities in the 1960s."
Future historians take note: The memory section in this column contains just that—memories —and are only to be used as a starting point for your research. Send your stories to Sukie de la Croix at Windy City Times. You can leave a message on his voicemail at 773-871-7610. E-mail sukiedelacroix@ozhasspoken.com
What A Difference
A Gay Makes
Nov. 25-Dec. 1
1996
U.S.: Tiny Tim, the falsetto-voiced singer famed for "Tip-Toe Thru The Tulips," whose strange looks and childlike manner mesmerized 1960s TV audiences, dies of heart failure aged 70-ish. One of the last songs he recorded was called "Santa Claus Has Got The AIDS This Year." Early in his career he worked in a lesbian bar in New York. * In Orlando, Fla., more than 500 fabric panels from the AIDS Memorial Quilt are displayed at Universal Studios Florida in recognition of World AIDS Day. * AIDS activists are surprised and disappointed by David Kessler's announcement that he will step down as commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Kessler, who significantly accelerated the drug-approval process during his six-year tenure, cultivated a relationship of trust and cooperation with leaders of all the major AIDS organizations. * Vatican: Pope John Paul II attacks "other forms of union" than marriage, saying they are attempts to diminish the importance of marriage and are "contrary to the initial design of God for man." * Argentina: In Rosario, the city council approves a proposal to outlaw discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion and a host of other factors. The new policy was proposed by Collectivo Arco Iris, a gay organization supported by Amnesty International and the International Lesbian and Gay Association.
1991
U.S.: Amelia's, a lesbian bar in San Francisco for 13 years, closes its doors for the last time. It was the last remaining primarily lesbian bar in the city. * An exhibition of safe-sex art from the Soviet Union is shown at the Maya Polsky Gallery in Chicago to commemorate World AIDS Day. * According to a National Gay & Lesbian Task Force study, 22 American college campuses offer benefits such as married couple housing and healthcare to lesbian and gay couples. * More than 1,000 fundamentalists pack into a Milwaukee school board meeting to oppose a proposal for services for gay and lesbian teens in the city's high schools. The fundamentalists cite Jeffrey Dahmer's murder spree as "the logical result of the homosexual lifestyle." * More than 90 buildings in New York City dim their lights for 15 minutes in observance of World AIDS day. * For The Boys, starring Bette Midler, is in movie theaters.
1986
U.S.: The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force hires Boston lesbian activist Sue Hyde as director of its new Privacy Project. * A gay man in Georgia is fined $1,000 and sentenced to 10 years probation, and ordered to perform 200 hours community service after breaking the state's sodomy law. * Italy: Archeologists digging at Pompeii unearth a sailor's bathhouse where the walls are decorated with five startling wall paintings of homosexual orgies. * Australia: Gay Community News reports that the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and the "red lesbian" Cardinal Titi greeted Pope John Paul II frequently during his visit to the country.
1981
U.S.: Lotte Lenya, the German actress and singer, dies in New York at the age of 83. Lenya was for many the epitome of the "divinely decadent" cabaret scene of Berlin in the 1920s. She starred on Broadway in the original cast of Cabaret and won a Tony for her role as Sally Bowle's landlady. * In its December issue, Oui magazine features a portrait of Marilyn Barnett, Billie Jean's ex-lover. Barnett was born in Chicago to a mother who was a Depression orphan. After two marriages, her mother entered into a relationship with a another woman and ended her alcohol-soaked days in a bloodstained room under very suspicious circumstances.
What A Difference
A Gay Makes
Nov. 25-Dec. 1
1996
U.S.: Tiny Tim, the falsetto-voiced singer famed for "Tip-Toe Thru The Tulips," whose strange looks and childlike manner mesmerized 1960s TV audiences, dies of heart failure aged 70-ish. One of the last songs he recorded was called "Santa Claus Has Got The AIDS This Year." Early in his career he worked in a lesbian bar in New York. * In Orlando, Fla., more than 500 fabric panels from the AIDS Memorial Quilt are displayed at Universal Studios Florida in recognition of World AIDS Day. * AIDS activists are surprised and disappointed by David Kessler's announcement that he will step down as commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Kessler, who significantly accelerated the drug-approval process during his six-year tenure, cultivated a relationship of trust and cooperation with leaders of all the major AIDS organizations. * Vatican: Pope John Paul II attacks "other forms of union" than marriage, saying they are attempts to diminish the importance of marriage and are "contrary to the initial design of God for man." * Argentina: In Rosario, the city council approves a proposal to outlaw discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion and a host of other factors. The new policy was proposed by Collectivo Arco Iris, a gay organization supported by Amnesty International and the International Lesbian and Gay Association.
1991
U.S.: Amelia's, a lesbian bar in San Francisco for 13 years, closes its doors for the last time. It was the last remaining primarily lesbian bar in the city. * An exhibition of safe-sex art from the Soviet Union is shown at the Maya Polsky Gallery in Chicago to commemorate World AIDS Day. * According to a National Gay & Lesbian Task Force study, 22 American college campuses offer benefits such as married couple housing and healthcare to lesbian and gay couples. * More than 1,000 fundamentalists pack into a Milwaukee school board meeting to oppose a proposal for services for gay and lesbian teens in the city's high schools. The fundamentalists cite Jeffrey Dahmer's murder spree as "the logical result of the homosexual lifestyle." * More than 90 buildings in New York City dim their lights for 15 minutes in observance of World AIDS day. * For The Boys, starring Bette Midler, is in movie theaters.
1986
U.S.: The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force hires Boston lesbian activist Sue Hyde as director of its new Privacy Project. * A gay man in Georgia is fined $1,000 and sentenced to 10 years probation, and ordered to perform 200 hours community service after breaking the state's sodomy law. * Italy: Archeologists digging at Pompeii unearth a sailor's bathhouse where the walls are decorated with five startling wall paintings of homosexual orgies. * Australia: Gay Community News reports that the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and the "red lesbian" Cardinal Titi greeted Pope John Paul II frequently during his visit to the country.
1981
U.S.: Lotte Lenya, the German actress and singer, dies in New York at the age of 83. Lenya was for many the epitome of the "divinely decadent" cabaret scene of Berlin in the 1920s. She starred on Broadway in the original cast of Cabaret and won a Tony for her role as Sally Bowle's landlady. * In its December issue, Oui magazine features a portrait of Marilyn Barnett, Billie Jean's ex-lover. Barnett was born in Chicago to a mother who was a Depression orphan. After two marriages, her mother entered into a relationship with a another woman and ended her alcohol-soaked days in a bloodstained room under very suspicious circumstances.