Windy City Media Group Frontpage News

THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

home search facebook twitter join
Gay News Sponsor Windy City Times 2023-12-13
DOWNLOAD ISSUE
Donate

Sponsor
Sponsor
Sponsor

  WINDY CITY TIMES

chicago whispers/What A Difference A Gay Makes
2001-11-28

This article shared 1368 times since Wed Nov 28, 2001
facebook twitter google +1 reddit email


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.


This article shared 1368 times since Wed Nov 28, 2001
facebook twitter google +1 reddit email

Out and Aging
Presented By

  ARTICLES YOU MIGHT LIKE

Gay News

Chicago History Museum announces "Designing for Change: Chicago Protest Art of the 1960s - 70s exhibition 2024-03-14
--From a press release - CHICAGO (March 14, 2024) — The Chicago History Museum is thrilled to announce its upcoming exhibition, "Designing for Change: Chicago Protest Art of the 1960s—70s." Set to open on Saturday, May 18, 2024, this exhibition is ...


Gay News

Women's History Month doesn't do enough to lift up Black lesbians 2024-03-12
- Fifty years ago, in 1974, the Combahee River Collective (CRC) was founded in Boston by several lesbian and feminist women of African descent. As a sisterhood, they understood that their acts of protest were shouldered by ...


Gay News

SAVOR Eldridge Williams talks new concepts, Beyonce, making history 2024-03-08
- One restaurant would be enough for most people to handle. However, this year Eldridge Williams is opening two new concepts—including one that will be the first Black-owned country-and-western bar in the Midwest. Williams, an ally of ...


Gay News

SAVOR Let's Talk Womxn's 'More Than March'; Adobo Grill's tequila dinner 2024-03-06
- I was fortunate enough to be invited to a culinary event that celebrates the achievement of women—and, fittingly, it happened during Women's History Month. On March 1, Let's Talk Womxn Chicago held its annual "More Than ...


Gay News

Without compromise: Holly Baggett explores lives of iconoclasts Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap 2024-03-04
- Jane Heap (1883-1964) and Margaret Anderson (1886-1973), each of them a native Midwesterner, woman of letters and iconoclast, had a profound influence on literary culture in both America and Europe in the early 20th Century. Heap ...


Gay News

Anti-LGBTQ+ Republican McConnell to step down from leading U.S. Senate 2024-02-29
- U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) will step down from Senate leadership in November, having served in that capacity longer than any senator in history, The Advocate noted. McConnell has been a senator since 1985 and has ...


Gay News

ELECTIONS 2024 Raymond Lopez talks congressional run, Chuy Garcia, migrant crisis 2024-02-26
- Chicago Ald. Raymond Lopez has been a member of City Council since 2015, representing the 15th Ward and making history as one of the city's first LGBTQ+ Latine alderman. Now, he is setting his sights on ...


Gay News

Samuel Savoir-Faire Williams's violin stylings help COH mark Black History Month 2024-02-23
- As part of its celebration of Black History Month, Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted St., presented a solo jazz performance by violinist Samuel Savoir-Faire Williams on Feb. 21. The two-hour long performance presented a showcase ...


Gay News

SHOWBIZ Raven-Symone, women's sports, Wayne Brady, Jinkx Monsoon, British Vogue 2024-02-09
- In celebration of Black History Month, the LA LGBT Center announced that lesbian entertainer Raven-Symone will be presented with the Center's Bayard Rustin Award at its new event, Highly Favored, per a press release. She joins ...


Gay News

On 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Mayor Brandon Johnson reaffirms commitment to reproductive rights 2024-01-22
--From a press release - CHICAGO — Today marks the 51st anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, which preserved the constitutional right to choose. Chicago has a long history of advocating for women's rights and is considered ...


Gay News

Chicago Red Stars sign Mallory Swanson to historic contract 2024-01-16
- CHICAGO (January 16, 2024) — The Chicago Red Stars have signed Mallory Swanson to a historic long-term contract, making it the most lucrative agreement in the history of the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) and seeing ...


Gay News

Gay political trailblazer Ken Sherrill passes away at age 81 2023-12-30
- Kenneth Sherrill—a pioneering political scientist who was also the first out gay elected official in New York history—died in early December at age 81 from surgical complications, Gay City News reported. He is survived by his ...


Gay News

SHOWBIZ Alex Newell, Joe Locke, 'Bad Together,' Raven-Symone, Limelight club 2023-12-14
- Alex Newell—who made history as one of the first two out nonbinary Tony Award winners—was named Time's Breakthrough of the Year for 2023, The Advocate reported. Newell won the Tony this year as Best Featured Actor ...


Gay News

Bradley Cooper conducts a symphony of queer history in Maestro 2023-12-13
- Composer-conductor Leonard Bernstein was one of the most important musicians of his time, receiving many accolades—the Kennedy Center Honor among them, in 1981—before passing away in 1990. Behind the scenes ...


Gay News

Santos voted out of Congress 2023-12-01
- Now-former U.S. Rep. George Santos (R-New York) was voted out of Congress on Dec. 1. Santos is the sixth House member in U.S. history to be booted from Congress, and the third since the Civil War, ...


 


Copyright © 2024 Windy City Media Group. All rights reserved.
Reprint by permission only. PDFs for back issues are downloadable from
our online archives.

Return postage must accompany all manuscripts, drawings, and
photographs submitted if they are to be returned, and no
responsibility may be assumed for unsolicited materials.

All rights to letters, art and photos sent to Nightspots
(Chicago GLBT Nightlife News) and Windy City Times (a Chicago
Gay and Lesbian News and Feature Publication) will be treated
as unconditionally assigned for publication purposes and as such,
subject to editing and comment. The opinions expressed by the
columnists, cartoonists, letter writers, and commentators are
their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Nightspots
(Chicago GLBT Nightlife News) and Windy City Times (a Chicago Gay,
Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender News and Feature Publication).

The appearance of a name, image or photo of a person or group in
Nightspots (Chicago GLBT Nightlife News) and Windy City Times
(a Chicago Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender News and Feature
Publication) does not indicate the sexual orientation of such
individuals or groups. While we encourage readers to support the
advertisers who make this newspaper possible, Nightspots (Chicago
GLBT Nightlife News) and Windy City Times (a Chicago Gay, Lesbian
News and Feature Publication) cannot accept responsibility for
any advertising claims or promotions.

 
 

TRENDINGBREAKINGPHOTOS







Sponsor


 



Donate


About WCMG      Contact Us      Online Front  Page      Windy City  Times      Nightspots
Identity      BLACKlines      En La Vida      Archives      Advanced Search     
Windy City Queercast      Queercast Archives     
Press  Releases      Join WCMG  Email List      Email Blast      Blogs     
Upcoming Events      Todays Events      Ongoing Events      Bar Guide      Community Groups      In Memoriam     
Privacy Policy     

Windy City Media Group publishes Windy City Times,
The Bi-Weekly Voice of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Trans Community.
5315 N. Clark St. #192, Chicago, IL 60640-2113 • PH (773) 871-7610 • FAX (773) 871-7609.