Weegee, “Girls at the Bar,” 1946. This image was captured by photojournalist Weegee in Greenwich Village and originally published in his book The Naked City. While the Village became notorious as a lesbian gathering place by the 1920s, it is often associated with middle-class feminism and groups such as The Heterodoxy Club. This photo instead reflects a working class, possibly racially integrated space, which was less likely to be documented by mainstream journalists.  The placement of the women’s hands is deceiving and while they are not holding hands, their body language and expressions suggests a closeness as well as a comfortability with themselves and their surroundings. While wearing pants and clothing associated with men became more acceptable for women during World War II, to go out in public in such outfits at the time was still a bold decision. As Alan Berubé argues in his book Coming Out Under Fire, World War II played a crucial role in the creation of gay and lesbian communities, in coastal cities specifically, bringing together men and women from all over the country who were able to enact new types of relationships away from the prying eyes of their families and neighbors. This photo captures the end of this era before the postwar turn to McCarthyism and its virulent homophobia made life for the “girls at the bar” even more repressive.  -Cookie
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Weegee, “Girls at the Bar,” 1946.

This image was captured by photojournalist Weegee in Greenwich Village and originally published in his book The Naked City. While the Village became notorious as a lesbian gathering place by the 1920s, it is often associated with middle-class feminism and groups such as The Heterodoxy Club. This photo instead reflects a working class, possibly racially integrated space, which was less likely to be documented by mainstream journalists. 

The placement of the women’s hands is deceiving and while they are not holding hands, their body language and expressions suggests a closeness as well as a comfortability with themselves and their surroundings. While wearing pants and clothing associated with men became more acceptable for women during World War II, to go out in public in such outfits at the time was still a bold decision.

As Alan Berubé argues in his book Coming Out Under Fire, World War II played a crucial role in the creation of gay and lesbian communities, in coastal cities specifically, bringing together men and women from all over the country who were able to enact new types of relationships away from the prying eyes of their families and neighbors. This photo captures the end of this era before the postwar turn to McCarthyism and its virulent homophobia made life for the “girls at the bar” even more repressive. 

-Cookie

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The Pop-Up Museum of Queer History is excited to announce the call for proposals for our next show, a scatter-site-specific investigation of the queer histories of the beloved borough where the museum got its start: Brooklyn. Entitled “HomoEconomics,” this show will investigate Brooklyn’s past and present as a site of queer cultural creation, gentrification, economic empowerment, libidinous freedom, statist oppression, excitement, fear, hope, and possibility.

HomoEconomics will Pop-Up around Brooklyn in a series of events in the late summer / early fall of 2013. We seek proposals for talks, performances, walking tours, screenings, discussions, and workshops of all kinds. The Pop-Up Museum is also seeking proposals for a series of HomoEconomics broadsides, which will extend the reach of the show by creating double-sided queer history posters which we will distribute around the country.

DOWNLOAD THE CFP HERE: HomoEconomics_CFP.pdf

Questions or concerns should be sent to queermuseum@gmail.com.

All proposals are due by Friday, April 26

Please share this call with your networks and join us on Tumblr, Facebook, or Twitter!

The Pop-Up Museum of Queer History seeks submissions for its upcoming show HomoEconomics. The show will explore the diverse histories of Brooklyn’s waterfront and will pop up around Brooklyn in Summer of 2013. This year’s show will consist of two parts: a series of broadsheets that present historical topics visually, to be posted on streets around Brooklyn’s waterfront, and a series of performances, talks, community gatherings, and related events to further explore the waterfronts and the stories they hold. We intend to start new conversations about the queer history and contemporary life of Brooklyn.

We are especially interested in proposals that investigate the connections between race, class and sexuality in Brooklyn waterfront spaces and surrounding neighborhoods; and proposals that make use of local and national archival collections at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the Lesbian Herstory Archives, the Brooklyn Public Library, the Brooklyn Historical Society, and San Francisco’s GLBT Historical Society, among others.

Individuals and teams should propose projects that are thought-provoking and engaging explorations of the history of the Brooklyn waterfront as a queer space.

This project is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC).

BACKGROUND – WATERFRONTS AS QUEER SPACE

The urban waterfront has often doubled as a fringe space. Historically, it has functioned as a kind of refuge from the more surveilled regions of the city. As a result, marginalized people and communities have found room for the expression of outlaw sexuality, non-normative genders, cross-class sociability, and transnational interaction. As historian Allan Berube’s unfinished work on the Marine Cooks and Steward Union suggests, the waterfront has also offered radicals and queers with a diversity of racial and national identities a space to organize powerful heterogeneous labor unions.

Never an uncomplicated utopia, the waterfront could also be rough and violent. Many queers who explored the possibilities of waterfront spaces found themselves the targets of intolerant individuals, as well as the heteronormative state, the scandal-hungry media—and even, on one occasion, foreign espionage. As such, the urban waterfront has historically played host to the development of a range of queer communities, identities and resistant practices.

Brooklyn’s waterfront has yet to be explored as a site of queer history in any depth. We know a lot about the queer history of the docks, piers, and waterfronts of Manhattan and San Francisco. But Brooklyn’s waterfront has a unique history, one rife with queer moments. In the 1940s, for instance, it gained notoriety when military police discovered Nazi spies working undercover at a male brothel—an episode that Walter Winchell dubbed “the swastika swishery.” Queer artists—Hart Crane, David Wojnarowicz—spent time living near, and exploring, the Navy Yard area. Lesbians found lucrative work in the factories and shipyards there. Working class and non-normative people found alternative spaces in the entertainments of Coney Island. Today, LGBTQ communities line the edges of the borough’s shoreline. Stories of the Brooklyn waterfront are ripe for the telling. They are all the more pressing given Brooklyn’s current status as an epicenter of queer cultural production—and simultaneous gentrification. 

PROPOSAL GUIDELINES

Proposals should outline the proposed topic/research that will inform the broadsheet and/or event, describe the project, and include a resume or portfolio for each artist or team member.

Proposals should be between 500 and 1000 words excluding resume/portfolios.

Preference will be given to proposals from interdisciplinary teams of between 2 and 4 people—comprised of artists, historians, writers, and makers of all sorts, either professionals or committed amateurs. Proposals that combine a broadsheet and an event will also be given preference. If you are interested in proposing a broadsheet, but do not have the capacity to design the visual element, please contact us to discuss options.

Proposals will be accepted for any of the following categories:
1.Broadsheets — two sided, full-color publications intended to function as posters on one side, and informational documents on the other. To be produced as 22x” x 30” newsprint poster/broadsheet. In any design: images of painting or sculpture, graphics, photography, multi-media, text-based, time-based, or other formats. Please note: broadsheet proposals may be combined if the curatorial committee deems it appropriate.

2. Events — walking tours, performances, lectures, talks, or workshops.

3.Artistic/Scholarly essays — Essays should address topics that illuminate the queer history of the Brooklyn waterfront and will be published on www.queermuseum.org and/or Tumblr, made available at events, and, if appropriate, partially reproduced on broadsheets.

Projects might examine any range of topics, including (but certainly not limited to):

  • the “Barbary Coast” that 19th century gay writers like Hart Crane & W.H. Auden explored;
  • queer life in the military factories and shipyards, and the gendered implications of the Navy Yard’s economic opportunities;
  • gay, lesbian, and queer communities on the waterfront;
  • Coney Island communities, entertainments, and histories (Luna Park, the sideshow, the boardwalk)
  • cross-class queer interaction on the waterfront;
  • tattoo parlors;
  • gendered practices of same-sex communities of sailors, merchant marines, shipbuilders and other seafarers;
  • violence and danger on the waterfront;
  • state repression of outlaw waterfront communities queer representations of the Brooklyn waterfront in film, photography, and music;
  • queer protest and resistance practices on the waterfront;
  • sex scandals at waterfront brothels;
  • Hubert Selby Jr’s Last Exit to Brooklyn;
  • the Marine Cooks and Stewards Union;
  • or any number of other topics.

Contact: queermuseum@gmail.com
Deadline: April 26nd, 2013

The Pop-Up Museum of Queer History is a grassroots organization that transforms spaces into temporary installations dedicated to celebrating the rich, long, and largely unknown histories of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. In an intellectual climate where even the Smithsonian can be forced to bow to the will of homophobia and remove the work of seminal queer artist David Wojnarowicz, we create alternative venues for our art and history. By utilizing temporarily spaces, the pop-up format turns economic reality to our favor and expands our reach beyond a single location, while our online presence serves as the connecting thread between physical installations.

To date, we have organized five shows, one in Brooklyn, two in Manhattan, one in Indiana, and one in Philadelphia, with a combined total attendance in the thousands. We have been featured in The New York Times, The Advocate, Time Out NY, New York Magazine, The Indiana Daily Student, and many other locations. Our workshop for educators, “Teaching Queer Histories: A Workshop for K-12 Educators,” (a collaborative effort with the Dia Art Foundation, the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at CUNY, and the Hetrick Martin Institute) has reached over 100 participants, and spawned an ongoing queer educators reading group in New York City.

Theodore Newman, Paul Fisher & Paul Thek, Rhode Island, 1957Contemporary silver gelatin print from negative, from the Collection of Peter Harvey To be queer is to be an archeologist. In order to find our traces in a world that prefers we be hidden, we excavate, combing the cultural cannon for clues about ourselves, our elders and our ancestors. Dig we must. Enter curator Jonathan David Katz, shovel in hand, intent on unearthing a simple set of truths about visionary artist, Paul Thek, the subject of recent retrospectives at The Whitney and The Hammer museums. Its true, Thek’s wax reliquary was an antecedent of Bob Gober’s political waxworks. His dwarf processions were a premonition of Paul McCarthy’s fetishization of otherness. Trace evidence of his Untitled (Diver) can be seen in Michael Bilsborough’s recent aerial schematics of suspended desire. But what Katz asks us to dig through are the densely queer underpinnings of the artist’s most personal exploration of the meaning of selfhood, as evidenced in documentation of the doings of his closest community of friends and companions. Thek’s story, Katz is telling us, is our story. In Paul Thek and His Circle in the 1950s,at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, Katz and co-curator Peter Harvey circumnavigate any overly intellectualized or simplistically sexualized depiction of what is most clearly queer. Katz favors a more deeply intimate rendering, one that is momentary but modern. He is unveiling a queer humanism, tucked within one of the most reactionary periods of the American politics, the McCarthy years. As with all of Katz’s explorations of the queer responses to the heterocentricity of the period’s abstract expressionism, it is an exhumation that might assist any queer national in their search for a communal soul, past, present or future. -Avram http://www.leslielohman.org/
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Theodore Newman, Paul Fisher & Paul Thek, Rhode Island, 1957
Contemporary silver gelatin print from negative, from the Collection of Peter Harvey

To be queer is to be an archeologist. In order to find our traces in a world that prefers we be hidden, we excavate, combing the cultural cannon for clues about ourselves, our elders and our ancestors. Dig we must.

Enter curator Jonathan David Katz, shovel in hand, intent on unearthing a simple set of truths about visionary artist, Paul Thek, the subject of recent retrospectives at The Whitney and The Hammer museums. Its true, Thek’s wax reliquary was an antecedent of Bob Gober’s political waxworks. His dwarf processions were a premonition of Paul McCarthy’s fetishization of otherness. Trace evidence of his Untitled (Diver) can be seen in Michael Bilsborough’s recent aerial schematics of suspended desire. But what Katz asks us to dig through are the densely queer underpinnings of the artist’s most personal exploration of the meaning of selfhood, as evidenced in documentation of the doings of his closest community of friends and companions. Thek’s story, Katz is telling us, is our story.

In Paul Thek and His Circle in the 1950s,at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, Katz and co-curator Peter Harvey circumnavigate any overly intellectualized or simplistically sexualized depiction of what is most clearly queer. Katz favors a more deeply intimate rendering, one that is momentary but modern. He is unveiling a queer humanism, tucked within one of the most reactionary periods of the American politics, the McCarthy years. As with all of Katz’s explorations of the queer responses to the heterocentricity of the period’s abstract expressionism, it is an exhumation that might assist any queer national in their search for a communal soul, past, present or future.

-Avram

http://www.leslielohman.org/

THE LOST GAY BARS OF SAN FRANCISCO

Looking through now defunct gay magazines of the sexual revolution — Vector, After Dark, David — is a bit like finding a ticket to Atlantis (the sunken continent, not the gay cruise). But it’s not just the hand-drawn ads or 50 cent drink specials or the names (Well maybe the names! The Purple Pickle, the Elephant Walk, the Gilded Cage, the Giraffe. Peke’s Palace, Connie’s “Why Not?,” Cissy’s Saloon. Mona’s Candlelight.  Paper Doll, Paradox, Old Crow, Nothing Special. Nothing Special??) It’s the mix and the clash that I like. Old queens and young bucks. One tradition ending with liberation, another falling in revolution. But in the meantime, dancing.

I recently began a mapping project of lost San Francisco gay bars using ads from magazines, matchbooks from archives and mentions in gay papers to try and reconstruct San Francisco in the years before the epidemic. What struck me most is that —in a far more hostile era there seemed to be far less ghettoization. Certainly the Castro, Polk and South of Market were still gay centers — but there were also bars in traditionally “straight” neighborhoods as well — North Beach and the Haight, the Marina and the Presidio. The Financial District boasted nearly a dozen. I don’t have a good explanation, although I’d love to hear theories.

Recently, two historic San Francisco bars — Marlena’s and the SF Eagle threatened to close. In New York, the Rawhide just went belly up. In Los Angeles, La Barcita and the Other Side. With greater social acceptance (and Grindr) we’re losing the crucial spaces that helped define us our culture. It may be inevitable, but forgetting them is not.

You can view a Google Map of the Project below.:


View Lost Gay Bars of San Francisco in a larger map

(I’ve opened it up for other collaborators to add them in. Where possible, I’ve added the date the bar opened.)

Sources: Matchbooks of the GLBT Historical Society, the Cinch List of Taverns, old issues of Vector, After Dark, QC and David, this piece on Found SF.

—Mike

Above is the trailer for the 1993 MIX Fest, New York City’s queer experimental film festival. I find the ancillary materials produced at the time of an event can often give us a clue as to what things in the event were seen as most “representing it” or as most in touch with the times, interesting, new.

MIX actually has a great archive of their trailers available on their YouTube site. They make for fun viewing!

Queer African American Women and the History of Marriage  This photo and headline accompanied an article from the October 15, 1970 issue of Jet magazine. They reveal that long before the recent struggle for marriage equality began,  African American women who love women have engaged with the institution of marriage and have fought to make it their own. Edna Knowles, on the left, and Peaches Stevens were wed in Liz’s Mark III Lounge, a gay bar on the South Side of Chicago, “before a host of friends and well wishers.” The article ended by noting, “although the duo has a type of ‘marriage license’ in their possession, the state’s official marriage license bureau reported it had no record of their license.” This ending serves to remind Jet readers that Knowles and Stevens’ union was not legitimate in the eyes of the state, as does the use of quotes around the word “married” in the headline. However, decades prior to this bold public display of queer affection, African American female couples in New York strategized alternative ways to obtain marriage licenses in the 1920s and 30s: “Marriage ceremonies were held with large wedding parties which included several bridesmaids, attendants, and other wedding party members. Actual marriage licenses were obtained by either masculinizing the first name, or having a gay male surrogate obtain the license for the marrying couple. These marriage licenses were placed on file with the New York City Marriage Bureau.” - Luvenia Pinson, “The Black Lesbian: Times Past-Time Present,” Womanews, May 1980  p. 8. Also during the 1930s, popular performer Gladys Bentley was making a living singing bawdy tunes and playing piano late into the night at various clubs all over New York, including one named after her. Bentley married her white girlfriend in Atlantic City in a ceremony to which she invited friends in the entertainment industry: “Columnist Louis Sobol remembered Bentley coming over to his table one night and whispering, ‘I’m getting married tomorrow and you’re invited.’ When Sobol asked who the lucky man was to be, she giggled and replied, ‘Man? Why boy you’re crazy. I’m marryin’ ——’ and she named another woman singer.” - Eric Garber, “Gladys Bentley: The Bulldagger Who Sang the Blues,” Out/Look, Vol. 1, No. 1, Spring 1988, pp. 52-61. These examples show some of the various ways queer African American women have created public rituals to express their relationships and have therefore insisted on their rights to full citizenship, many decades prior to the current struggle for marriage equality.  - Cookie  
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Queer African American Women and the History of Marriage 

This photo and headline accompanied an article from the October 15, 1970 issue of Jet magazine. They reveal that long before the recent struggle for marriage equality began,  African American women who love women have engaged with the institution of marriage and have fought to make it their own.

Edna Knowles, on the left, and Peaches Stevens were wed in Liz’s Mark III Lounge, a gay bar on the South Side of Chicago, “before a host of friends and well wishers.” The article ended by noting, “although the duo has a type of ‘marriage license’ in their possession, the state’s official marriage license bureau reported it had no record of their license.” This ending serves to remind Jet readers that Knowles and Stevens’ union was not legitimate in the eyes of the state, as does the use of quotes around the word “married” in the headline.

However, decades prior to this bold public display of queer affection, African American female couples in New York strategized alternative ways to obtain marriage licenses in the 1920s and 30s:

“Marriage ceremonies were held with large wedding parties which included several bridesmaids, attendants, and other wedding party members. Actual marriage licenses were obtained by either masculinizing the first name, or having a gay male surrogate obtain the license for the marrying couple. These marriage licenses were placed on file with the New York City Marriage Bureau.” - Luvenia Pinson, “The Black Lesbian: Times Past-Time Present,” Womanews, May 1980  p. 8.

Also during the 1930s, popular performer Gladys Bentley was making a living singing bawdy tunes and playing piano late into the night at various clubs all over New York, including one named after her.

Gladys Bentley

Bentley married her white girlfriend in Atlantic City in a ceremony to which she invited friends in the entertainment industry:

“Columnist Louis Sobol remembered Bentley coming over to his table one night and whispering, ‘I’m getting married tomorrow and you’re invited.’ When Sobol asked who the lucky man was to be, she giggled and replied, ‘Man? Why boy you’re crazy. I’m marryin’ ——’ and she named another woman singer.” - Eric Garber, “Gladys Bentley: The Bulldagger Who Sang the Blues,” Out/Look, Vol. 1, No. 1, Spring 1988, pp. 52-61.

These examples show some of the various ways queer African American women have created public rituals to express their relationships and have therefore insisted on their rights to full citizenship, many decades prior to the current struggle for marriage equality. 
- Cookie

 

Sister Rosetta Tharpe (1915-1973) was a groundbreaking gospel singer and musician, who paved the way for the popularity of rock ‘n’ roll and influenced Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, among many others. 

Tharpe’s biographer, Gayle Wald, found some of the singer’s contemporaries who were willing to talk off the record about her bisexuality; one fellow musician claimed to have walked in on Tharpe and two other women in bed together during her “honeymoon tour” right after her third wedding in 1951. 

Wald writes, “The circulation of this and other lore indicated that the gospel world had its own legends of outlaw identities and behaviors: of sissy men and bulldagger women,  of philandering evangelists and pilfering prophets, of hypocrites who boozed up backstage before singing in front of the curtain about the virtues of holy living. For homosexuals in her audiences, rumors about Rosetta’s sexuality might have been liberating, an invitation to look for tell-tale signs of affirmation of their own veiled existence.”

Source: Gayle F. Wald, Shout Sister Shout! The Untold Story of Rock-n-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Beacon Press, 2007.

-Cookie

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