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In October ’78, my new boss, Ted Eidson, suggested that I watch a documentary film in theaters entitled Word is Out. I continued working there a few months longer when it moved two blocks away to McKinney Avenue. I remember them in the circular booth: Dick Peeples, Don Baker, Loise Young, Steve Wilkins, and Jerry Ward. One night a week I waited on the group that was in the process of founding the Dallas Gay Political Caucus (“DGPC”), the first Dallas gay political organization. All spring and summer the juke box played Liza Minelli’s New York, New York. The Bell Pepper was owned by a couple named Dennis and Suzanne. It was a Denny’s-looking building that had previously been an Indian restaurant – The Raja, I believe. In early 1977, I got a part time waiter job at the newly-opened Bell Pepper gay restaurant on Lemmon at McKinney. I believe there are still a couple of now- meaningless no-turn signs to try to break up the repeated loops around that block by cars which slowed traffic. Finally, around the quadrant of Sale – Hood – Dickinson – Gillespie Streets, there was slow driving around ‘The Cruise Route’. He gave many new drag queens their start, among them Lady Shawn, Jimmy Dee, Alan Allison, Michael Andrews (the first Miss Gay America I believe), and Deva Sanchez, Occasionally, several of us would drive to the nude beach at Lake Dallas in Lewisville, and a couple of times to Hippie Hollow, the nude beach at Lake Travis outside of Austin. Secondly, on Sunday evenings I would walk with others to the Old Plantation, by this time Harwood Street, to sit on the floor and watch the legendary Jan Russell and his drag shows. After hours you could see the drag shows move from the bars to the diner.
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(in the current location of the Pappadeaux’s parking lot). Today I am an active member of Legacy, the COH group for those over fifty years of age, as well as Coat of Colors, the COH African-American group.ĭuring these early years I remember several diversions. One was late nights at the Lucas B&B diner at Oak Lawn and Bowser. I have attended the MCC and its successor, Cathedral of Hope, off and on over the ensuing 42 years. Other than a few bars, Union Jack Clothing Store, and Crossroads Market, there was not much in the way of a gay community. That same summer I first visited the Metropolitan Community Church (“MCC”) at Reagan and Brown, which at that time was only six years old. In the fall of ’76, I joined OLTA – Oak Lawn Tennis Association - which played at Samuell Grand Park. I don’t recall an organized theme, merely a procession of speakers. I can still hear the newly-released Frampton Comes Alive blaring from the loudspeakers on stage. It was in Exall Park near Baylor Hospital – also near two early bars, the Villa Fontana (oldest operating gay bar in the US until it closed years later) and the Fontainebleau. In the summer of 1976 I attended what I believe to be the first ever gay rally in Dallas. I then moved into my own efficiency in the Saracen Apartments at Hall and Carlisle Streets. In March,’76, I packed up my car and moved back to Dallas, where I spent my first ten days in a rented room in the Downtown YMCA on Elm Street. (by the time I returned to Dallas permanently, the “ OP” had moved to Denton Drive Cutoff near Maple and Inwood, and later moved to Harwood Street near downtown). During this trip I twice visited the original Old Plantation on Rawlins Street in Oak Lawn, before it burned to the ground. In the fall of 1975, two college roommates, Ronald Harris and Frank Stotts, invited me to come down to Dallas by train and spend a month with them for a ‘trial run’ of my moving back to Dallas.
DALLAS GAY BARS LICENSE
We were instructed to park our cars by backing tightly against the building so that sheriff deputies could not record our license plates (Kansas doesn’t have front license plates).
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There was also one gay bar in North Topeka, near the river, called The Other Side. I still remember slouching down in the dark Jayhawk Theatre in 1974 to see Boys in the Band. I would occasionally take a bus to Kansas City for a weekend of ‘coming out’ in the bars. I moved back into my parents’ home in Topeka, Kansas and continued at Washburn University Law School. After graduating from SMU in 1973, I enrolled in law school at SMU, but after the first year could not afford to stay.