Charlie

Wow! I didn't start my daily journals until several years after the Dewey's protest, so I was depending entirely on my memory of the details of the event. These articles have brought back aspects that I had forgotten after almost sixty years, so thanks for finding them. It's interesting that none of them mentions the role of the ACLU in advising Clark about how to handle the situation. Spencer Coxe, the head of the Philadelphia branch at that time, was very sympathetic to the gay community, and was instrumental in helping Clark and the kids who were arrested with the legal issues. A couple of the sources you listed mention that the protesters at Independence Hall each July 4th always were conservatively dressed--men in suits and ties, women in dresses--which was something Frank Kameny always insisted upon when he organized a protest (I found it risible that Frank even wore a suit when he went to a gay bar to cruise). If you will notice in the photos of the protest at Dewey's, although one of the issues that the management objected to was the "non-conformist" attire of the gay customers, Clark is wearing a dark suit (something he almost never did except in a courtroom), and the leaflet-givers are also conservatively dressed--I was a student and had only one good suit in those days, but Clark told me to wear it, to let the public know that we were serious about the issue.

That clean-cut Mormon young man whom I mentioned in my post above did take me to my first New York City leather bar.

This reminds me of the story of a protest at a Dewey's restaurant in Philadelphia in 1965. The diner was near Rittenhouse Square, a popular gathering place for gays in the evening. It was open late at night, and gays often stopped there when they left the square. The management was upset when some of them became loud, and one night told them to leave; the next day they posted a sign saying that homosexuals were not welcome and would not be served. The Janus Society, the local LGB organization in Philadelphia in those days, organized a protest at the diner, and gave out leaflets outside explaining the issue to potential customers. When three young gays--two males and one female--entered the diner, took seats and refused to leave, the manager called the cops, and the young gays were arrested, along with Clark Polak, the President of Janus. The picketing continued, the local ACLU chapter got involved, news media picked up the story, and the management of the restaurant quickly backed down. The incident is usually reported in histories of gay Philadelphia, but as far as I know, no memorial to the event, the first of its kind in the city, has ever been erected. (I can attest to the accuracy of the story, because I was one of the those giving out the leaflets.)

You are obviously too young to remember such historical items.

Kasatkina has always been known as a very fair, friendly, good sport. At the end of the Svitolina/Kasatkina match, which Svitolina won, Kasatkina gave a quiet thumbs up to Svitolina, but Svitolina didn't even look at her.

That looks like it would do a lot of damage to any hole it entered.

Many years ago, after a romp with an escort, we were lying in bed pleasantly chatting; he picked up the Advocate pink pages, and we started looking through the ads together to compare notes. To my surprise, we both had had sex with many of the same guys (I had paid, he had enjoyed professional courtesy). He had apparently preferred guys who looked very much like himself, while I had gone for guys who looked very different from me. If you look like the guys in your portfolio, you probably should consider going into business yourself.

Go, Indians!!

Well, at least he hasn't desecrated that face with ink.

It turns out that Svitolina's next opponent will be Daria Kasatkina, whom she probably knows pretty well--they are about the same age and both have been around the top of the sport for a few years. Kasatkina is also one of the only Russians who has voiced any sort of criticism of the Putin regime. It will be interesting to see how she handles that interaction.

Not as much as some people might think. The town has a higher proportion of openly gay residents than most municipalities, and a fair number of tourists to patronize gay businesses, but I don't think that gays are even a majority of residents and visitors. It's not like Cherry Grove, where it is pretty much taken for granted that almost every male you encounter will be gay or bisexual. In Palm Springs, people are not surprised to learn that you are gay, and there is little openly anti-gay activity, but that's all part of the general liberalism of the area.

Strangely enough, Svitolina and Blinkova ended up playing one another again today in an early round at RG, and Svitolina won again, with much more difficulty than on Saturday. Svitolina again refused to shake Blinkova's hand, and this time there was a smattering of boos for her. Svitolina is a passionate supporter of Ukraine--she announced at the trophy presentation on Saturday that she was donating all her prize money to a Ukrainian relief organization--and she is being consistent in her behavior, but this is a sporting match between individuals, not countries. Since she has said that she doesn't think players from Russia should be allowed to compete, it seems to me that it would be more honorable to refuse to play her matches against Blinkova rather than profit from them.

Yours is a more likely scenario, since Wellesley is a town as well as the name of the college, i.e., a "house party" in the town of Wellesley, MA.

I wonder if someone found the photo, saw a note on it that said "Wellesley House party," meaning a party at the fashionable Wellesley House apartment building on Sloane Square in London, and misunderstood it.

I'm confused: Wellesley is a women's college in Boston. Why would there be gay men at a house party there?

"Good Neighbor is unable to take your call at this time. Please leave a message."

When I was young, back in the Dark Ages, gay bubbles were hard to find. I was fascinated by it the first time I was taken there when I was 19--it felt so liberating to be in a place where everyone was gay or gay friendly, and I could openly be whatever I wanted to be. On one of my first visits, I found myself sharing a pizza with Martha Raye down at the Cherry Grove dock one night, and another night I sat quietly in the room I was sharing with a friend, watching while he was making out on the sofa with Jerry Herman. It seemed like a dream for a shy gay kid from the Jersey suburbs. The world is very different today, and the idea of a gay bubble no longer interests me very much. I went back a few times in the 70s, but I haven't been back since the early 1980s.

The WTA tournament in Strasbourg last week created an interesting situation, because the final on Saturday was between Elina Svitolina of Ukraine and Anna Blinkova of Russia. Since it was a final, both players had to stay on court afterwards for the interviews and trophy presentation. They did not interact with one another, but were politely distant. As the runner-up, Blinkova was interviewed and gave her trophy speech first; to my surprise, she did it entirely in very fluent French. Then, as the winner, Svitolina spoke. Since she is married to a Frenchman and actually lives in Paris, she surely could have spoken in French, but after her initial "Bon jour," she chose to speak entirely in English. She may have done it just to accentuate the difference between them, but I also wondered whether, knowing how touchy the French are about their language, she was afraid the French audience might compare her competence in the language negatively to Blinkova's.

At matches, they usually do not announce the nationality of the players; on the scoreboard there is usually a picture of the flag of the country which the player represents next to his or her name. Many spectators don't pay attention to that, or don't recognize the flags. The current practice is to not show any flag next to names of players from Russia or Belarus; there are probably many spectators who don't know what that means, or don't know whether it means Russia or Belarus, which many people are not even aware is Russia's ally in the war. The flags are of the country whose tennis association sponsors the player, so in the case of Rybakina, the flag shown next to her name is Kazakhstan, even though she is Russian, and she is not the only Russian player who is supported by the tennis association of another one of the former Soviet republics, who don't have many home-grown players. (Quick! Do you recognize the Kazakh flag, or the flag of Belarus?) I would not have booed her, but I would not have applauded her either, because I don't think it is appropriate for players in an individual sport to openly disrespect an opponent solely because of the opponent's nationality.

This is a difficult topic. Some Ukrainian players refuse to shake hands with opponents from Russia or Belarus simply because the opponent represents a country with which they are at war. Some may be afraid that a photo of a handshake will be used against them in a propaganda war by one side or the other. There is also the question of which player wins or loses the match. All of the Ukrainian players are outspoken against the war, but most of the Russian/Belarussian players take no public position, probably because of fear of retaliation against them or their families by the Russian government; Daria Kasatkina, one of the top Russian women, has criticized the war, but her opponent still did not shake her hand. Then there is the sticky question of how to treat the Russian players who play for a country that is not included in the war, the most notable being Elena Rybakina, the current Wimbledon champion, who is Russian and lives in Moscow, but officially plays for Kazakhstan. There is also the question of someone like Viktoria Azarenka, a veteran champion who is a citizen of Belarus, but who has lived for years in the US. There is also the personal issue of the Russian and Ukrainian players who have known one another and played amicably for years before the war. Aryna Sabalenka is #2 in the world, and is generally popular with fans and with her fellow players; she is from Belarus, but many spectators are not aware of exactly where she is from, or of Belarus's connection to the war. Kostyuk is a young player, and many fans probably don't really know where she is from either. Sabalenka beat Kostyuk pretty convincingly, and she seemed to be headed to the net to shake hands, while Kostyuk made it obvious that she was not going to acknowledge her opponent, and looked like she was flouncing off in a huff. To many fans it probably looked simply like she was being a bad sport about losing a tennis match, and that was enough to generate the boos.

I am reading A Voyage Long and Strange, by Tony Horwitz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist known for books like Confederates in the Attic, who died four years ago. When he realized how little he really knew about the early history of European interaction with the Americas besides Columbus "discovering" America and the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock, he started exploring places like the Viking settlement in Newfoundland, the places Columbus visited on his later voyages in the Caribbean, the routes taken by the Spanish explorers like Coronado and DeSoto in what became the US, etc. Along the way he discovered many interesting local people and events, like a "re-enactor" festival in Florida, where he got dressed up in authentic Spanish Conquistador gear. As I read about his travels in places mostly ignored by tourists, I wondered if he were gay; although he was married with children, he seems to pick up companions easily in bars, and his family doesn't interfere with his long travels alone; along the way he picks up men who seem happy to travel with him, even stay with him in sleazy motels. (The Dominican Republic Bureau of Tourism would not want you to read this book.) He also uses non-academic language ("Oh, shit! We're fucked.") that one wouldn't find in a typical historian's descriptions. He smoothly integrates his serious academic knowledge about Columbus--a more complicated character than one usually learns about--with his own experience on his voyage of discovery. I am finding it very enjoyable.

I was thinking that he looked almost younger than 24.

I think few of us would have had difficulty figuring out which man was Ferrero and which were his "friends."

When I see an ad for an escort in Philadelphia, I am sometimes curious enough to use the "map me" function, but most of the time it says that the escort is located next to City Hall.

Yes, but it takes a lot of folding to find the news items among all the Mattress Showroom ads.