The Last American Gay Bar (2024) FULL Documentary TV Series
The Last American Gay Bar explores the history and cultural significance of the Blazing Saddle, Iowa's oldest operating gay bar, located in Des Moines. Opened in 1983, the Blazing Saddle has been a significant part of the local LGBTQ+ community, witnessing and adapting through decades of societal changes, including the AIDS epidemic, the legalization of gay marriage, and recent anti-LGBTQ laws (Iowa Public Radio) (Kinorium).
Directed by Kristian Day, the series highlights the evolving role of gay bars in a society where LGBTQ+ acceptance has grown, questioning whether these spaces are still needed as safe havens for the community. The docuseries delves into the challenges and changes faced by such establishments, reflecting on the broader implications for LGBTQ+ identity and community cohesion
The Last American Gay Bar explores the history and cultural significance of the Blazing Saddle, Iowa's oldest operating gay bar, located in Des Moines. Opened in 1983, the Blazing Saddle has been a significant part of the local LGBTQ+ community, witnessing and adapting through decades of societal changes, including the AIDS epidemic, the legalization of gay marriage, and recent anti-LGBTQ laws (Iowa Public Radio) (Kinorium).
Directed by Kristian Day, the series highlights the evolving role of gay bars in a society where LGBTQ+ acceptance has grown, questioning whether these spaces are still needed as safe havens for the community. The docuseries delves into the challenges and changes faced by such establishments, reflecting on the broader implications for LGBTQ+ identity and community cohesion
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Short filmTranscript
00:00:00The
00:00:20blazing saddle.
00:00:21I'm like, what is this, some country bar?
00:00:28There's, you know, these abandoned buildings and, you know, you're driving down, there's
00:00:42not a soul on the street, not a soul.
00:00:45So I turn and I pull up and here's this row of these brownstone like looking buildings
00:00:50that are, you know, look more or less dumps.
00:00:55And right in the middle of it was the blazing saddle, you know, it stuck out, it was painted
00:00:59this dark purple, but it had huge bars on the windows.
00:01:05Blazing saddle is a community bar.
00:01:10It's also a community home base.
00:01:15Every organization comes through there.
00:01:18Every organization has had fundraisers through there.
00:01:22It's not a gay bar on a Saturday night.
00:01:25It's a community bar, it's a straight bar, it's a entertainment bar, a drag bar, but
00:01:31it's not just a gay bar.
00:01:33And that's why your documentary about the last gay bar couldn't be more true.
00:01:48There were no gay people around, no one that I knew of that was gay, nobody in the family,
00:01:53nothing was ever mentioned about it.
00:01:55It's as if they didn't exist, and of course it would be awful to even mention that they
00:02:00existed at that time.
00:02:02I hadn't really met any gay people.
00:02:05I only, you know, knew society's reaction to gay people.
00:02:10And I hadn't had much experience with alcohol, and so I wasn't like going to go out and have
00:02:16two or three drinks.
00:02:18And so it was, it was a little nerve wracking.
00:02:22You see some of these guys trying to be so ultra-conservative and go, yeah, I seen you
00:02:27at the bookstore last week, bitch.
00:02:29It was still a time period when, you know, you didn't want to be out.
00:02:38And actually at the P&S Lounge, I think I remember when I first was introduced to somebody,
00:02:44he said, I said, oh, I'm Gary.
00:02:46And he said, oh, glad to meet you.
00:02:47He says, now what's your real name?
00:02:49Because everybody in the bar had a bar name that you didn't use your real name when you
00:02:53go into the bar.
00:02:55There were certain things that you did not do in gay bars.
00:02:57You did not take a photograph in a gay bar anywhere in this country.
00:03:02That was just, it was, I mean, inappropriate.
00:03:07It was, I mean, you would actually get yelled at if you pulled a camera out and tried to
00:03:11take a picture in a gay bar.
00:03:13That's changed.
00:03:14If you're a gay bar in today's society, if you don't blend with society, then you're
00:03:22not going to be around very long.
00:03:24You know, we've got straight people that come in here religiously and love the place, and
00:03:29we love them.
00:03:35Now, yeah, some of those bridal showers are a real pain in the ass, because they, all
00:03:40young girls, they come in and think they're going to take over.
00:03:44No, bitch, settle down.
00:03:46You know where you're at.
00:03:53I was born June 25th, 1949, delivered at home, and my grandmother was kind of the midwife.
00:04:05And I popped out and said, hello, it's showtime.
00:04:10We were basically a poor family, ate a lot of ham and beans and raccoon and squirrel
00:04:17and rabbit and whatever the old man killed we ate, but we were happy.
00:04:24Well, first of all, I was born smack in the middle of World War II.
00:04:30There was a lot going on in January 1943.
00:04:41You know, I had actually a pretty idyllic childhood those first few years.
00:04:47By the time I graduated high school in 1962, you know, I've hit adolescence and puberty,
00:04:56and I've figured out that it looks to me like I might be gay.
00:05:03You know, I didn't much like that idea.
00:05:05I was growing up in Dubuque, where the parochial system was larger than the public system of education.
00:05:14I'd never heard the word gay in Dubuque.
00:05:18You try to educate yourself, you go to the public library and try to find information.
00:05:23There was nothing there, literally nothing.
00:05:28My sex education, like most parents, you just really don't talk much with your kids.
00:05:36They left a book called The Encyclopedia of Sex that had just about anything you'd want
00:05:42to know about the physical body and what happened.
00:05:46It had one small paragraph on homosexuality.
00:05:50We were still, it was still a psychiatric diagnosis back then.
00:05:55So you were mentally ill, and as I remember, it said that you were most likely going to
00:06:01commit suicide by the time you were in your middle thirties.
00:06:05So the only words you really had to explain to yourself, or that you heard, were faggot
00:06:10and queer and homosexual.
00:06:13And you know, when you're growing up where sex can't be talked about at all, it leaves
00:06:21a lot to the imagination and a lot for exploration.
00:06:28I did come out to my family.
00:06:32My father died quite young, so he died before I came out to him, but actually the first
00:06:39relative I came out to was my twin sister, Joan.
00:06:43And she, her attitude was, oh, thank God, it all makes so much sense.
00:06:52She told me she apologized to two or three different girls in our high school class because
00:06:59nobody could figure out why they couldn't get my attention.
00:07:03And so she was relieved.
00:07:05I came out to my mother right about that same time, and she only had one question about
00:07:11it.
00:07:12Had you ever been in love?
00:07:15And I said, yes.
00:07:17And she didn't care about anything else, so.
00:07:21Well, my real dad, he took off right after I was born and never really knew him.
00:07:27He was very arrogant and never had a credit card in his life, and he wouldn't go to a
00:07:34doctor and he ended up dying of a ruptured aneurysm through the belly.
00:07:40But it was no loss to me because I didn't know him.
00:07:42Well, then I had all the other stepdads.
00:07:46The last one, Bill, he was an old Southern hillbilly, but the nicest man I had ever met.
00:07:59And when he, on my 40th birthday, he came back to see us, and he said, Bob, I knew you
00:08:05as queer.
00:08:06It doesn't matter.
00:08:07You're my boy.
00:08:09Nobody wants to screw with you.
00:08:11They got to go through me.
00:08:13The only way that gay people, I felt back then, knew how to meet other gay people was
00:08:20through a hole in the wall, you know?
00:08:23That's how you met people.
00:08:25And that's what I did when I first came to Des Moines.
00:08:27I went to Merle Hay Mall, which is close to where the family was, and bought a home.
00:08:35And I went up there and went to the restroom in the bowling alley, and here was a hole
00:08:39in the wall.
00:08:40And I met somebody through it who, in talking with him afterwards, he said, well, have you
00:08:46been down to the gay bar?
00:08:48And in my ignorance, I said, what's a gay bar?
00:08:53And he says, well, that's where people like you and I go to.
00:08:57I graduated from Iowa State, and I would have been drafted.
00:09:01I know I would have been drafted.
00:09:02So I enlisted in the Navy post-college.
00:09:07My ship, the aircraft carrier, was in dry dock in San Francisco for nine or ten months.
00:09:17So essentially, I was living shipboard, but in the city.
00:09:21And I got to know San Francisco pretty well.
00:09:24I was hired at American Can before I got drafted.
00:09:28And I worked for them for, oh, a couple, three months.
00:09:32And I went into personnel.
00:09:33I said, I got to take a two-year leave of absence here.
00:09:40So I went home, told my folks, and I had Mom go out and buy me a bottle of Jack Daniels.
00:09:50And I set out in my 1968 International Scout with an eight-track player, enlisted in everything
00:09:58Johnny Cash ever did, and killed off the bottle.
00:10:02Well, the next morning, the old man says, well, we got to take you down to the draft
00:10:07center.
00:10:08Oh, they ain't going to take me.
00:10:09I'm too drunk.
00:10:10I don't think they care.
00:10:11They didn't.
00:10:13In my senior year of college, we had the lottery.
00:10:21They needed more troops.
00:10:23Those with high, with low numbers, if you were, you know, most likely you were going
00:10:28to be drafted right away as soon as you finished college.
00:10:32I drew number 13.
00:10:36So I knew that I was going to be drafted pretty much as soon as I finished college.
00:10:45I wasn't going to volunteer.
00:10:48I had been on the DBA team in college, and I did not support the war.
00:10:52I thought it was just, you know, we were on the wrong side to start out with.
00:10:57I had two of my shipmates who evidently saw right through my closet door.
00:11:06My glass closet door, because they invited me to go with them on a weekend in the city.
00:11:14They took me on a tour of gay bars in San Francisco.
00:11:19One of them had a wonderful performance stage across the front for drag shows.
00:11:23And I, of course, had never seen a drag show in my life.
00:11:27I remember specifically this one act where this drag queen came out in the wonderful
00:11:36white frilly dress, hair in ringlets and flowers in her hair.
00:11:45And this big garden swing dropped down from up over stage, and the ropes were garlanded
00:11:51with flowers.
00:11:54And this singer got in that swing and started swinging.
00:11:58And the song, of course, was, if you are going to San Francisco, you better wear some flowers
00:12:03in your hair.
00:12:06And every time I think about that song, I go right back there to that bar and watching
00:12:12that singer go back and forth on the stage, singing that song, and thinking to myself,
00:12:18you know, this isn't bad at all.
00:12:21These are real people, and they're all having such a good time that there's no reason at
00:12:26all why this can't be a part of me, too.
00:12:29I remember having that revelation, which is, you know, part of coming out is, I can do
00:12:36this.
00:12:37Yes.
00:12:38The day before I was to leave, there was a horrible snowstorm.
00:12:44Well, I decided I was going out.
00:12:46I didn't make any difference what it was.
00:12:48This is my last night in Des Moines, and I was going to Vietnam, and maybe I was never
00:12:53coming home.
00:12:54So I went out.
00:12:55I went down to a bar called the Mailbox Lounge.
00:12:58It was a new gay bar in town.
00:13:02Just had been open a couple of months.
00:13:04Very few people there.
00:13:06I did meet somebody, though, and I went home, and the next morning, I was on the first flight
00:13:11out of Des Moines.
00:13:13What I didn't know until many months later when I was then out of the Navy and back home
00:13:20here was that I had that experience on the weekend of June 28, 1969, which meant on the
00:13:29same weekend the Stonewall riots were happening in Greenwich Village.
00:13:44I think of myself now as sort of a child of Stonewall, because my coming out coincided
00:13:50with that weekend.
00:13:51Well, I went to Fort Polk, Louisiana, and if you're going to go to Nam, that's the place
00:13:58to go, because there's weeds and stink and hotter than holy hell, so you're ready for
00:14:06it.
00:14:07And then I got into a program with training to be a sergeant, the NCO Academy, Fort Benning,
00:14:14Georgia.
00:14:15So I went out there and took that, and then I took recondo training and a few other.
00:14:21If there was a school, I went to it.
00:14:24I don't know if I can do it now, but I could take a .45, blindfold it, field strip it,
00:14:30lay it out, put it back together, go through the manual of arms, and there you are.
00:14:35There's a lot of people in the military who are also gay, and I think it's also like any
00:14:39other situation where you have just a totally male environment, there are times you, even
00:14:47those who aren't gay, may want to have a sexual experience.
00:14:54One thing I always taught all of my guys, just remember when we go out tonight, you're
00:14:59going to die.
00:15:01So if you're prepared for it, you don't worry about it, because you've got no influence
00:15:06over it at all.
00:15:07My goal wasn't really to kill commies.
00:15:10Just go on out, follow me, do what I tell you to do, and I'll bring you back home.
00:15:17Well, one night I'm out training Arvins how to patrol.
00:15:23Die.
00:15:25And I get a call over the radio, my other team had been hit, and I sit down and listened,
00:15:33and this one had died, that one had died, this one got his eyes blown out, the medic,
00:15:38his eyes had popped out, and he's crawling around trying to find body parts, and I just
00:15:44sat there in the middle of the field and cried, because the night before, I had told him that
00:15:51road was landmine, don't go down it.
00:15:54Well, I never passed it on to the other team.
00:15:58Came back feeling like I didn't stand up to what my principles were, and nor did the country,
00:16:05nor were we treated that way.
00:16:07It's different today when you see us going to various parts of the world, in Afghanistan
00:16:14and Iran and Iraq, they went over as a company.
00:16:21So you had that sense of camaraderie, a Vietnam veteran, you didn't have that, you went over
00:16:26as an individual and you came home as one.
00:16:29I hated it when I landed in California, baby killer and blah, blah, blah, that was the
00:16:37last thing I ever did, I would never shoot civilians, babies, the villagers loved me
00:16:44like one of theirs.
00:16:48We had our first cavalry reunion in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and my best fuck-buddy put it together.
00:17:00I get there and he says, don't out me, don't out me, I won't do that.
00:17:04So I had enough brandy in me, I went up to the first sergeant, got my top, did you know
00:17:11back in the day, and he says, Sergeant Eickelberry, I know you as queer as a $3 bill, but you're
00:17:18the best damn sergeant I've ever had.
00:17:21Forty years of worrying about something just, and there was a lot of us, but we had to keep
00:17:28it quiet.
00:17:29Just keep your trap shut and your zipper up until it's time to take it down.
00:17:38I had very special parents, and before I left, I had made a peace sign out of Christmas
00:17:48lights and was going to put it up at the house.
00:17:52My father wouldn't let me, and when I came home, I noticed the peace, that lit peace
00:18:01sign was on the peak of the house, and my mother, I said, when did that go up, and my
00:18:06mother said, the day you left, and your father's had it on every night.
00:18:13So that was enough for me.
00:18:15I heard about the loop, so I'm up driving the loop, trying to get a little, and I see
00:18:21this guy pulling a parking lot, and I looked at him and watched him, and he had that swoosh,
00:18:28John.
00:18:29So I walk in, and I'm still in my BDUs and beret, and I walked up to the bartender and
00:18:37I said, is this one of them queer bars, and everybody shut up.
00:18:42I was built like a brick shithouse back then, and he said, yeah, it's a gay bar, and I said,
00:18:50thank God, Mary, I'm home.
00:18:52First time I went downtown to check out the P&S Lounge, which was the iconic gay bar
00:19:02in Des Moines at the time, you had to park in this surface parking lot, and cross busy
00:19:08Second Avenue without anybody seeing you, and slipping into the bar.
00:19:14Gary summed it up real good one time.
00:19:19People treat us like we're second-class citizens, and this is how we're supposed to act, so
00:19:26hell, act that way.
00:19:27Well, of course, one of the points of spending any time in the gay bar is to do some cruising.
00:19:36I was going out Mushroom Mountain, and this guy kept cruising me, and I thought, wow,
00:19:41looky here.
00:19:42And all of a sudden, I found out I could have a lot of good sex out there.
00:19:46It was all about sucking dick.
00:19:51I hadn't really met any gay people.
00:19:54I only knew society's reaction to gay people, and I hadn't had much experience with alcohol,
00:20:04and so I wasn't going to go out and have two or three drinks.
00:20:07And so it was a little nerve-wracking.
00:20:12Especially you walk in there, if you're new meat in town, everyone's looking at you.
00:20:19It's like they haven't figured out how weird you are yet, and so you're very popular.
00:20:26The new meat thing refers to they haven't figured out your flaws yet.
00:20:30You haven't had a conversation where you've embarrassed yourself yet, and so you're new
00:20:34meat.
00:20:35You're not, just use the word virgin, but you're kind of untouched.
00:20:41Because we were in the closet back then, we behaved more poorly.
00:20:47I mean, because nobody knew what we were doing, we were in the closet.
00:20:52So some of the things we did in the closet were probably not things that we would do
00:20:57today.
00:20:58Having sex in public, like outdoors in public, or having sex in your cars, or having sex
00:21:05in the bars, those things were more prevalent in our community.
00:21:13I don't know, sometimes I'd probably be embarrassed to say some of the things that we did.
00:21:18We were still having to deal with all the stress of not being able to tell your mother
00:21:25that you're gay, of not being able to tell your boss that you're gay, not being able
00:21:30to deal with your teachers.
00:21:34I was in a class in my first year of college, it was called Sex Roles in Modern Society.
00:21:39And someone came, well, I think gay is horrid, and blah, blah, blah.
00:21:44And the teacher said, there might be a gay person in this class, hopefully they have
00:21:48the courage to speak up.
00:21:50I didn't.
00:21:51I didn't have the courage to speak up.
00:21:54Because I'd already heard what his opinion was on gays, and I really didn't want to go
00:21:58there.
00:22:00Even though it was the mid-70s, we were still very much in the closet.
00:22:06In 74, I moved down to teach in a small town near Des Moines.
00:22:13And my fraternity brother, who had become my partner at that time, joined me also.
00:22:19We would come into the bars regularly, and the biggest problem we had was, other than
00:22:26Gary and some other people that we met, they were really inclusive.
00:22:30They wouldn't allow people from outside town into their groups.
00:22:35And so, it wasn't until some college graduates from Iowa State, they had a Halloween party,
00:22:44and it just blew everyone's minds.
00:22:48Everyone had fantastic costumes, and everybody mixed for the first time, and it was never
00:22:56the same after that.
00:23:02Well, I always had certain guys that were kind of interesting to me, but there was no
00:23:09approaching them, and there wouldn't be any way to actually make any contact.
00:23:13Instead, I actually dated girls.
00:23:15I was in a fraternity.
00:23:17My date actually became the fraternity white rose queen, and it was all kind of crazy.
00:23:28I started going to a counselor because I knew I had a problem, and I didn't know how to
00:23:32get out of it.
00:23:33So when I asked her to meet me and go for this walk, I think she thought I was going
00:23:41to pop the question, and instead I told her I was gay.
00:23:47I was devastated.
00:23:49She was devastated.
00:23:50It was a pretty emotional experience overall.
00:23:54But it set me on a new path, and that path was to explore the world, find out who I was.
00:24:01And it's amazing how that all came together in a gay life that puts me here in this chair
00:24:07right now.
00:24:08When I was 16, I had a mustache, and I was able to get into places.
00:24:16Even at 15, I guess, I had a mustache, and so I could get into the bookstores, even though
00:24:22you were supposed to be 16.
00:24:23I looked 16.
00:24:25At 17, I had people coming to me to buy their liquor for them because I looked old enough
00:24:31and nobody ever questioned it.
00:24:36Des Moines had more dirty bookstores than Chicago had.
00:24:44Bible thumpers really need a place to release.
00:24:51These were adult bookstores.
00:24:53It would be dirty.
00:24:56It would be sleazy.
00:24:58There would be someone sitting behind a desk, usually elevated, and of course they were
00:25:06checking IDs and making sure that everybody was 16 and over.
00:25:12There were, at any given time, there were usually about four different bookstores open,
00:25:18and so you could go from one store to another to another and check out who was out and about.
00:25:27Gay people didn't have the social outlet, so we only had the bookstore back then.
00:25:35Now we have other social outlets, so we don't need to go to the lion's den.
00:25:40It was one of the first times that we could go in and buy gay pornography.
00:25:47Wow.
00:25:48A lot of us had some pretty good collections back in the day until they came out with movies,
00:25:55and now we started getting our movies.
00:26:02There would be a curtain to the back area, and the back area then would be lined with
00:26:07booths with doors on them.
00:26:11Of course, it was one person per booth, which always got fudged a little bit.
00:26:18The rooms were four by four rooms.
00:26:21The screen was on the back of the door, and it used quarters.
00:26:26You would take quarters in, but if you failed to keep the projector running, they would
00:26:31come around and bang on the door, so you would drop another quarter in.
00:26:36Sometimes the screen would be covered with phone numbers.
00:26:40I did meet somebody one time with a phone number off the back of the door.
00:26:48The glory hole varied in size.
00:26:51One particular glory hole was three feet by three feet, meaning that you could crawl from
00:26:57one booth to the other.
00:26:59You could pretty much come on to anybody in the bookstores back then.
00:27:05It was just a place to hook up and meet someone and have some casual sex, and then go on with
00:27:11your life.
00:27:13I didn't give anyone my name and number unless I thought they were very attractive, and they
00:27:20were really good at sex.
00:27:22So one night, I'd given that to two people.
00:27:26So months later, after I came out to my parents, which didn't really go all that well, but
00:27:33they didn't kick me out of the house.
00:27:35They didn't stop talking to me.
00:27:36They just went into a depression, and I really didn't know how to help them.
00:27:42One of these guys calls me, and I said, we were going to meet and go to Lake Okoboji
00:27:50for the weekend.
00:27:54I said, don't come early, because I'll be working until five.
00:27:59He must have heard me say, come early, because he arrived early.
00:28:04So I get home, and my mother says, there was this guy that came for you.
00:28:08I said, yeah, we're going up to Lake Okoboji for the weekend.
00:28:13And then she says, totally unprompted, boy, he was really handsome.
00:28:17I thought, well, what do you think?
00:28:23The problem with me was, I'd given my name to two people that night, and I didn't know
00:28:28which one this guy was.
00:28:30All I knew was, he was good looking, he was good in the sack.
00:28:34So that worked out pretty well.
00:28:37But not even that.
00:28:38I showered, I cleaned up, and as I'm walking through the kitchen to go to the front door,
00:28:42she whispers, he's really good looking.
00:28:48I think that was her way of saying, I'm okay.
00:28:52I'm okay with you being gay.
00:28:54And it kind of gets to me now, because that was her way of saying, I'm accepting you.
00:29:00It was casual, because we were just having casual sex.
00:29:04You knew that 30 minutes from now, you were going to be going about your business.
00:29:08It's because we didn't have to worry about how we looked in front of straight people,
00:29:12because they didn't want to know about us.
00:29:14We were in the closet, which is where they wanted us.
00:29:18It sounds very degrading, but it would be not uncommon for me to have a couple of casual
00:29:27encounters, and then go to work bartending, and then have somebody waiting for me at two
00:29:33o'clock in the morning when I got off.
00:29:35That would actually be a normal Saturday night.
00:29:39That's kind of when you were in the closet, that's what you were able to do.
00:29:44You didn't have to have long-term relationships.
00:29:49We also didn't have quite the jealousies.
00:29:56We were pretty casual about it.
00:29:58People that graduated high school in the mid-60s, they turned around and got married because
00:30:05they thought they were going to screw their life up if they lived a gay lifestyle.
00:30:10What they didn't quite realize is that straight people screw their lives up just as easily,
00:30:15and they usually drag some kids along with it.
00:30:18My second boyfriend, he was married when I met him.
00:30:22He got a divorce, and she wanted to sue me for alienation of affection, which obviously
00:30:29didn't work.
00:30:32There were a lot of people that didn't get married, but there was a much higher percentage
00:30:38of gay men that got married.
00:30:41It was a time period where I think gay people had a lot of self-hatred.
00:30:47Gays tended to be more conservative.
00:30:50We wanted to belong, so we wanted to be like people, like everybody else.
00:30:58I think as time went on, we learned we were just fine being who we were.
00:31:04We didn't need to be like everybody else.
00:31:10The big thing that happened in Iowa, of course, was in 78 when Anita Bryant came here.
00:31:15When Anita Bryant came to sing a concert at Vets Auditorium, she always had a press conference
00:31:23before.
00:31:24She starts out, like she always does, with her crusade called Save the Children.
00:31:30Because this bitch was just trying to smear us and turn us into a bunch of wild creatures.
00:31:37Anita Bryant, the orange juice queen, she sold the whole nation on the idea that gay
00:31:44people are out to recruit your children into the gay lifestyle, feeding on the old idea
00:31:50that of course gay people don't reproduce, and so they have to recruit children into
00:31:57the gay lifestyle or we'll run out of gay people.
00:32:01That's actually the argument that they used.
00:32:04She had used it in Miami-Dade when they got gay rights passed there, civil rights there.
00:32:09She actually got the Dade County people to rescind it.
00:32:13She got all of the evangelicals all upset that your children are going to be taught
00:32:18by gay people and all kinds of things, and they rescinded it.
00:32:22Then she went on to Topeka, Kansas, where believe it or not they had it, and they rescinded
00:32:27it.
00:32:28They went to Eugene, Oregon, they rescinded it there.
00:32:29They went to St. Paul, Minnesota, they rescinded it there.
00:32:33She was on a real roll here.
00:32:35Well, believe it or not, Des Moines didn't even have such a thing, but she still was
00:32:38going to mention it.
00:32:39She says she loves the homosexual.
00:32:42Of course she didn't use the G word because that would be too kind to gay people, you
00:32:46know, the homosexuals, but she just wishes they would just stop talking.
00:32:53That sounds a little familiar.
00:32:54It's because it's exactly the same thing they're saying now.
00:32:59Here we are nearly over 50 years later, and they're saying the same thing again.
00:33:03If we want to crusade across the nation and try to do away with the homosexuals, then
00:33:08we certainly would have done it on June the 8th after one of the most overwhelming victories.
00:33:12A guy from St. Paul from an anarchist group actually came down with two friends of his,
00:33:18and he had entered the building and proceeded to the front of the room and threw a pie in
00:33:22her face.
00:33:23Well, I guess the room, the people that were there just went silent.
00:33:30Nobody went, oh, or anything like that.
00:33:32And then to a place called Norfolk, Virginia, and were met with protest and all kinds of
00:33:37problems.
00:33:38And it just went silent.
00:33:45But the cameras just cried on right on rolling.
00:33:48And so it was all on film and everybody was writing down what was happening.
00:33:53And she's wiping the pie away from her face, and she says, well, at least it's a fruit
00:33:58pie.
00:33:59It turns out it was banana cream, my favorite pie.
00:34:05I cheered when I read that she got a pie in her face, because I already, I just hated
00:34:10her.
00:34:11I mean, vehemently.
00:34:12It made national news that Anita Bryant met her match in little Des Moines, Iowa.
00:34:21And it's something we are to this day very proud of, that we started the decline of Anita
00:34:27Bryant's movement against us.
00:34:32So after this went national, the gay community in San Francisco were having banana cream
00:34:38pie parties.
00:34:39I mean...
00:34:40Now, Anita, let's pray.
00:34:43That's all right.
00:34:44Father, we want to thank you for the opportunity of coming to Des Moines.
00:34:49Father, I want to ask that you forgive him.
00:34:52That we love him.
00:34:53And that we love him.
00:34:54And that we're praying for him to be delivered from his deviant lifestyle, Father.
00:35:03We're just as plain as everybody else.
00:35:06We just happen to have sex with our same gender.
00:35:10We had our own signals, you know, like if you're sitting in a bathroom stall, tapping
00:35:16your foot and trying to bring your foot a little closer to the other side, and if you
00:35:21got stomped on, you know you've sucked up.
00:35:26Margo Franco was a county park on the northern edge of Des Moines, on 2nd Avenue.
00:35:37And it had trails that went off through it.
00:35:44And it kind of became a spot where gay people would travel the trails and hook up.
00:35:51Gay people had few places to meet people, so that's one of the places that they did.
00:35:56Well, it became a problem with the general public, you know, if they were used in a trail
00:36:03and all of a sudden run across two guys going at it, it became a problem.
00:36:11This is, you know, back, remember when I said, you know, the only place we could meet
00:36:15people was through a hole in the wall?
00:36:18This was kind of a carry-on of that.
00:36:20You know, how do you meet other gay people when, you know, we're not out and about?
00:36:27You know, and this, it was part of that time period.
00:36:31What happened was the Dameron Guide came out and it lists places that have cruising areas,
00:36:38gay bars, gay restaurants, gay hotels, any place where you would be safe being gay.
00:36:44So that, you know, you wouldn't be arrested or something like that.
00:36:47And Marco Franco Park was listed as a place that was cruising.
00:36:52There were two sides to it.
00:36:54There was the big side, it had playground equipment, it had bathrooms, the bathrooms
00:36:59were cruisy, but it was also big and open.
00:37:03And that's generally where if there were straight people in the park, they were over there.
00:37:08Then there was the back side, which just had a little shelter house and a bathroom,
00:37:13and they connected.
00:37:14You walked down into the woods and the two sides were connected that way, but you'd go
00:37:20to one side and try to pick someone up and then you'd drive around to the other side.
00:37:26It was, you know, it was one of those things where you didn't have to say any words.
00:37:33You'd, you know, you'd get eye contact if they were acceptable, then you went off to
00:37:38the corner, you went into the bathroom, you went, you know, into the woods or something
00:37:43like that.
00:37:44Well, one of my famous lines, because I like to cut through the crap, buy somebody a drink,
00:37:51hey, want to fuck?
00:37:53Let's go.
00:37:54It worked.
00:37:55Now, if you do it, it's only going to slap you in the face.
00:37:59You romantic, you.
00:38:01Yeah.
00:38:02Very romantic, you know.
00:38:04I knew all about Margo Frankel Park.
00:38:07I never participated in any of that myself, but I had friends who did.
00:38:12I helped bail somebody out once, as a matter of fact, over that.
00:38:16We had a deputy, I think in the Polk County Sheriff's Office, who had taken on this mission
00:38:27of cleaning up Margo Frankel Woods.
00:38:32Somehow, someway, somewhere, Channel 13 News announced that, and so I think that kind of
00:38:40alerted the police department that that was going on.
00:38:44I can't put any of that, I have no evidence of that, but I think that's what was happening.
00:38:50So there was a raid, and what it was is, it was entrapment.
00:38:57They were trapping people into, you know, they were bringing out beautiful young men
00:39:02and trying to get them to have sex with somebody.
00:39:06So they would have cameras around, and they would take pictures of it.
00:39:10Then they would arrest you, take you down to the police station, where they would keep
00:39:16you there until they let you go, once you posted bond.
00:39:23If you got a good lawyer, you generally got it expunged from the record after so long.
00:39:29But there was a big article on the front page.
00:39:31It was listed, Beware of Bears in the Woods.
00:39:36That was to tell people that the police were watching, and it was an article about Margo
00:39:42Frankel Park.
00:39:43But later on, there was a place at Cherry Creek, also near Saylorville, and there was
00:39:48some, it became a meeting place, I guess.
00:39:52And there were a bunch of people arrested there, and those names were put in the paper.
00:39:56And some of those people lost their jobs.
00:40:00People took advantage of gay people back then.
00:40:03My first apartment I had when I came back from Vietnam, I was robbed in.
00:40:11I'd met somebody who brought him home, and they went to the kitchen and pulled out a
00:40:16knife and robbed me.
00:40:19I called the police right away, and they came, and they kind of looked at me funny, and I
00:40:25just looked at them and said, yes, I'm gay, and I want their ass in jail.
00:40:30And two days later, they were in jail.
00:40:33But a lot of time, people would do that with gay people, and they weren't reported.
00:40:40And it's because, you know, people didn't want to be outed.
00:40:47A teacher actually went to the loop, was driving through, saw two young men, brought them back
00:40:56to his home, and that night, they murdered him.
00:41:03The Ken Eaton murder, Ken was a public school teacher, and that was back in the day when
00:41:11you couldn't be a public school teacher and be gay.
00:41:14So he was, you know, he had to maintain a closet.
00:41:18Nevertheless, he socialized a lot.
00:41:21Just a couple of months before he was murdered, I'm at a party, and Ken is also there.
00:41:28At the time, I was pretty prominent in terms of being visibly gay in the city.
00:41:35The media had found me, and when, you know, any news story came up, they'd come to me.
00:41:42Ken complimented me on stuff I had done for the community over the last few years before that.
00:41:49And he told me, he said, you know, John, I can't be out and keep my job.
00:41:55So, you know, there's really nothing I can do to help the community, he said, but do
00:42:01know that if there's ever anything I can do to make a difference, I'll do that.
00:42:12About two months later, he was murdered, and everybody was looking for a motive.
00:42:42The police found out, of course, and they couldn't make heads or tails out of who was
00:42:47this?
00:42:48Who would have killed him?
00:42:49How did this happen?
00:42:50Nobody could put it together.
00:42:53There was a whole series of coincidences that occurred that was just bizarre.
00:42:58The first thing is they found a list of gay people in a gay organization called the Gay
00:43:05Coalition of Iowa.
00:43:07My name was on that list, too, and it was the first time they actually published a list
00:43:12that would give your address and phone numbers, because everybody felt at this time good enough
00:43:18and trusting enough that everybody could find those things out.
00:43:23But he had three names marked with stars, and they just knew that that was a sex club.
00:43:29Nobody would break the news that this was a gay man.
00:43:34His daughter wasn't willing to say that, the family wasn't willing to say that, nobody
00:43:38in the media would say that, and finally, a reporter from the Des Moines Register got
00:43:43to me, and I thought about Ken, and I thought, you know, he told me if there is ever anything
00:43:53he could do to make a difference, he'd do it.
00:43:57And I thought to myself, you know, Ken, there is something you can do now.
00:44:01You can let me out you, so that this becomes the story that it should be.
00:44:08And so I did.
00:44:09I told the Des Moines Register that this was a gay man and this was a gay homicide, and
00:44:15I think it changed the direction of the investigation, so that, you know, they went down to the gay
00:44:22loop, and they eventually found the two men who had done this, and I think it was breaking
00:44:29the news that this was a gay murder changed that whole investigation.
00:44:37One day, a garbage man was out unloading the dumpsters, but he went to an apartment and
00:44:44he couldn't get to the dumpster.
00:44:46So the first coincidence is, there were two cars parked in front of the dumpsters.
00:44:51Usually you're not allowed to park in front of dumpsters, right?
00:44:54And then the second coincidence, the guy decides he'll get out of the dump truck and he will
00:44:59go over and check to see if there's anything in the dumpster.
00:45:03When he looked in the dumpster, he found a bunch of bloody clothes along with some stereo
00:45:09equipment.
00:45:10He thought, this is really bizarre.
00:45:12So he called the police.
00:45:14The police put two and two together and figured out when they contacted these guys' girlfriends,
00:45:20they gave them all up.
00:45:21They knew everything that had happened, and I believe they're still in jail to this day.
00:45:28But that really shook this community.
00:45:31First of all, because he was such a well-loved English teacher at Brody Middle School.
00:45:37And I remember even the person I go to that cuts my hair, he cut his hair too.
00:45:44And she said, the whole place was just devastated.
00:45:50There were gay bashings happening in the city.
00:45:54The Des Moines Police Department was not nearly as friendly towards us as they are
00:46:00now.
00:46:01There was a time period where to be in a bar that was frequented by homosexuals was considered
00:46:08you were considered visiting a house of ill repute.
00:46:12And they could come in and arrest you for being in a place where they had homosexuals.
00:46:15Now, how they would determine that, I'm not quite sure, but people didn't question it.
00:46:21And at that time, you know, of course, then the register or the paper would print, you
00:46:26know, this person was arrested being in a house of ill repute with homosexuals the next
00:46:32day.
00:46:33And that would cause people to lose their jobs and, and it broke up marriages and, you
00:46:42know, and some people committed suicide from it.
00:46:45I think people honed in on the, the sexual part and, you know, and also where else did
00:46:57we have to go?
00:47:01By now, City Disco and the idea of disco was really grabbing Des Moines and Chuck Brooks
00:47:08had created a bar called the Des Moines City Disco Park.
00:47:12It was a second floor establishment.
00:47:16And the nice thing about it is the dance floor had lights in the bottom of it.
00:47:20That was the happenings back then.
00:47:22I never seen anything like it.
00:47:25So we had a lot of fun and we had about 600 people there every night at City Disco.
00:47:33And they had people from Kansas City coming up here and they, they couldn't believe how
00:47:38Des Moines had something like this.
00:47:40First bar I went into was at 4th and Court Avenue in downtown Des Moines and it was called
00:47:47the Country Cove.
00:47:49It had been a straight bar called the Cove.
00:47:51It was a great big sign with the, the word cove running up and down.
00:47:56So in order to make it a gay bar, they just added the word country in front of it.
00:48:00And that's all she wrote.
00:48:02The leather bars and the bath houses of the 70s and 80s, you know, they were highly sexually
00:48:13energized.
00:48:14A little bit of everything happened in the bars.
00:48:19Maybe the main floor, this would be a bar pretty much like any other bar, but maybe
00:48:24they would have a back room or a basement where clothing was optional or they'd have
00:48:32a cell set up.
00:48:34It's a true story that one of the bar owners would find out about a gay party and would
00:48:41call the police and rat on the gay party.
00:48:45The police would come in and arrest everybody at the party and take them in to jail for
00:48:49the night.
00:48:50And then the next morning, this bar owner would show up and bail all of her own customers
00:48:56out of jail.
00:48:57You want me to say?
00:48:58Yeah.
00:48:59Her name, her name was Marlis Watson.
00:49:01May she rest in peace.
00:49:05The bar owners did not necessarily always act appropriately.
00:49:09When a bar was going under, suddenly it was burning down too.
00:49:13Something happened at the, the City Disco, which was unusual.
00:49:18People that were gay would invite their straight friends.
00:49:21And I remember dancing on the floor one time and looking over and there's like eight people
00:49:25just sitting there like this, just watching us dance as if we were freaks.
00:49:31And I thought, I'm not coming back here anymore.
00:49:34And I think a lot of other people felt the same way.
00:49:37And pretty soon City Disco was having problems.
00:49:41And then there was a fire.
00:49:45This was the second or third time that there was a fire at a bar and it was beginning to
00:49:51look a little unusual.
00:49:58Chuck was a tall, trim man with kind of a thin pencil mustache.
00:50:03He was not unattractive, but his biggest quality was he was arrogant.
00:50:10Did you ever meet Chuck?
00:50:13Yes.
00:50:14Do you remember meeting him?
00:50:15Were you worried about Chuck Brooks?
00:50:17Well, I even went home with him one night.
00:50:20I had the hots for Chuck, and Chuck had the hots for someone else, and that someone else
00:50:25had the hots for me.
00:50:27And so it eventually worked into a three-way.
00:50:29However, the third in that triangle may have, may have burned a bar or two.
00:50:34I had a good time with him.
00:50:36I lived with Chuck for quite a while, and Larry and his lover.
00:50:41And then they met some woman.
00:50:43They got married in London.
00:50:45Well, as a person, I liked him until I got to know him.
00:50:51And he was a conniving, cheating son of a bitch.
00:50:54And then if he was having a real bad run of things or whatever, it mysteriously burned.
00:51:01But he was always out of town.
00:51:04He had somebody else do the work.
00:51:07Hmm.
00:51:08Do you know who did it?
00:51:13I know who done it.
00:51:14I know who done it.
00:51:15But when three bars by one bar owner tend to burn, then I think you've got a problem.
00:51:21That's the one that we heard that Marlis had paid him to torch the coal, see?
00:51:28And that's what it was, see?
00:51:30We got torched.
00:51:31So that wasn't an internal work that that might have been.
00:51:36I think Marlis had something to do, because Country Cove was a busy place, really busy.
00:51:45And Marlis didn't like it.
00:51:47The P.S. Lounge had a fire.
00:51:50The Country Cove eventually burned, the one I worked at.
00:51:53And then again, it didn't burn down.
00:51:55It reopened as the barn door.
00:51:58That's at least three, and I know there's a fourth one.
00:52:01I was one of Chuck's best friends all of a sudden.
00:52:04We played cards together.
00:52:06We played poker together all of a sudden.
00:52:08I've known him for years, but he started doing crack and stuff like that.
00:52:16That wasn't my thing.
00:52:18Then I could see that when we opened up the barbell, I didn't realize that Chuck was dealing
00:52:32in crystal meth.
00:52:34I didn't know that, see?
00:52:36Which closed our bar because of that.
00:52:39I thought, here we have AIDS, and you're bringing this shit into my people, trying to kill them,
00:52:45and you don't care.
00:52:47This was not Chuck Brooke's finest moment, but he had just brought a shipment of ice.
00:52:52I believe it was from Chicago.
00:52:55I'm not really sure where he was bringing it in from.
00:52:58But he parked his, he drove his car up on the curb in front of his bar, the Barbell
00:53:03Athletic Club, and left the trunk open and went inside.
00:53:07And the police came by with the trunk open, full of methamphetamines, sitting up on the
00:53:12curb, and he was very quickly arrested.
00:53:16Had taken all his possessions and put them in the bar, not the bar, but the building
00:53:22next door.
00:53:23I think he was kind of living in there, and yes, the car with the Cadillac was on the
00:53:30sidewalk.
00:53:32But all the burning, all of those fires stopped after 1980.
00:53:37Why do you think that was?
00:53:40Because that's when Chuck owned his bars.
00:53:44Sorry.
00:53:45See, I wasn't really talking to Chuck then, see?
00:53:51He kind of pissed me off, and I'd given him some money, and I had never got anything back
00:53:56from him.
00:53:57He paid everybody else off, but didn't pay me, see?
00:54:01So that ended our friendship.
00:54:07I opened this, I thought, no, I ain't gonna be like that.
00:54:11I'm gonna go for my people and my community first.
00:54:13Yeah, and now the East Village is a vibrant, you know, it wasn't back then, it was kind
00:54:20of a rough place.
00:54:23I never really saw prostitution or anything going on.
00:54:26It's like, there's this army surplus store, there's these abandoned buildings.
00:54:33It's the kind of place you'd come to buy your pot.
00:54:36Stuck out, it was painted this dark purple, but it had huge bars on the windows.
00:54:44It was crazy.
00:54:45And it was all black windowed, so you couldn't really see in.
00:54:47I would see some guys walking in and out, and it was like, some of them were just intimidating.
00:54:53You'd walk in and everybody would rub their neck around, and you're like, ooh, and it
00:54:58kind of creeped you out a little bit.
00:54:59And then they'd go back to whatever they were doing.
00:55:01All these leather dudes were just piled up, right in a row, down the whole thing, and
00:55:06I'm like, yike.
00:55:08The whole idea behind leather, it's a statement.
00:55:12Well, leather can be taken many, many ways.
00:55:16It can be very, very hard, SM, BD, I've never done that.
00:55:24Or it can be taken very softly.
00:55:27But it was a very big part of the saddle when we started.
00:55:33But it was really kind of tacky.
00:55:34I mean, the ice machine was there.
00:55:37There was a stereo system on top of the ice machine.
00:55:41That was the DJ booth.
00:55:43The tables were yellow Formica tables.
00:55:46Yeah, it was nothing special.
00:55:49Now we used to have the bar on this side.
00:55:51It was all wooden floor.
00:55:54And I'd polish the shit and put all the varnishes on it.
00:55:58But you could never make it look good all the time.
00:56:02You know, we were trying to find a name.
00:56:05I was going to call it the albatross, the bird that hangs around my neck.
00:56:10But somebody said, well, use your nickname, and I said, call it Mongo's?
00:56:16No, Blazing Saddle, and I went, hmm, Mongo liked that idea.
00:56:21So there it went.
00:56:23I remember the bartender, when he waited on me, was just dressed to the nines.
00:56:29He was, you know, the jewelry, the whole thing.
00:56:32It was like, OK, that's what I want to be.
00:56:35That's what I want to do.
00:56:36It was Gary Moore.
00:56:39Gary was, on the other end, bigger than life, bigger than life,
00:56:43and had a boa on.
00:56:44So I went right up to him, right off, knew that I was new.
00:56:48When I started working there, the back bar
00:56:52was cement blocks with boards on it to put the booze on.
00:56:57He let me kind of play with things.
00:56:59The back bar that's there, I designed and had built.
00:57:03Everything was a double, and there was no cover to get in.
00:57:06People loved that.
00:57:07That was a great marketing idea.
00:57:10Every person at the bar was gay.
00:57:12And you looked around, and you'd go, wow, he's gay?
00:57:15Oh, they're gay, too?
00:57:17It was like smorgasbord.
00:57:20It's like, so many men, so little time, you know what I mean?
00:57:24I had only been going there about a week.
00:57:27And then I ran into, and I sat down at the bar,
00:57:29and I was waiting for friends to show up.
00:57:32And so I was drinking my cocktail there at the bar.
00:57:37And I didn't realize that, lo and behold, I
00:57:39was sitting next to the owner, Bob Mongo, good old Mongo.
00:57:43And I was sitting next to him.
00:57:45And so we just started talking.
00:57:47He was a character.
00:57:48He just cracked me up.
00:57:49And he had such great stories.
00:57:51He was a Vietnam vet, you know?
00:57:53I mean, he was a man.
00:57:56I just felt like I was a regular.
00:57:57Part of being a bar owner is being a showman, Ringling
00:58:01Brothers or something.
00:58:03Because you get so many different types of people
00:58:06and attitudes and everything else,
00:58:08you've got to adapt and figure out where they're coming from.
00:58:13Not exactly what you would probably
00:58:16picture as a bar owner.
00:58:17It wasn't like he was dressed to the nines
00:58:20because he owned a gay bar.
00:58:21It was like, nope, work boots, work shirt, Bob.
00:58:25Said Bob right on his shirt.
00:58:27Bob is kind of a jack of all trades and a master of none.
00:58:33The first time I ever heard about Bob was my friend Morris.
00:58:38My queen mother had Bob re-roof his house.
00:58:45Bob can do anything.
00:58:46Just ask him.
00:58:49You know, when you roof a house, you take a knife
00:58:53and you cut the shingles off on the edge
00:58:55to a nice straight line.
00:58:58Well, Bob had dropped his knife or something
00:59:01and decided he could just tear them off.
00:59:05Yeah, Morris had this new roof that looked like shit.
00:59:11That's the first time I heard about Bob.
00:59:14Bob was like dad to like 90% of this crowd.
00:59:19I never made it all about me.
00:59:22I never wanted to be some living legend.
00:59:25Just trying to be one of the guys, you know?
00:59:27I get no respect.
00:59:29Every Thanksgiving and Christmas,
00:59:32I'd cook at home and bring a big spread down here.
00:59:36Anybody could come in and eat for free.
00:59:40Yeah, one time there was this old homeless guy
00:59:43walking down the street and kind of looked in.
00:59:46And I said, sir, have you eaten today?
00:59:47And he said, no.
00:59:49I said, you come on in.
00:59:50You don't have to buy a thing to fill yourself up.
00:59:53And God bless you, sir.
00:59:55You don't have to buy a thing to fill yourself up.
00:59:58He said, God bless you.
00:59:59And I said, no, God bless you.
01:00:01Why'd you let that bum in?
01:00:03Because he was hungry.
01:00:05Well, that really meant something to me.
01:00:07And mom used to get so mad at me.
01:00:10Well, you got your own family.
01:00:11Come on over.
01:00:12And I said, I got a bigger family, mother.
01:00:14And these people need something.
01:00:17I said, suicide rates among gays and lesbians
01:00:20are higher during the holidays simply
01:00:23being kicked out of their homes.
01:00:25Nobody loves them.
01:00:27I said, if I can show a little love and a good hot meal,
01:00:31there be it.
01:00:34I remember starting to read newspapers,
01:00:38short newspaper stories, never on a front page,
01:00:42about what they were calling a gay cancer or a gay plague.
01:00:48Well, that's something that's happening in New York
01:00:50City or San Francisco.
01:00:52It's really not going to affect us here.
01:00:55AIDS had closed down most of those highly
01:00:59sexualized environments.
01:01:00Bath houses closed.
01:01:03Bathrooms closed.
01:01:04And people were dying.
01:01:06And so that changed the gay scene quite drastically
01:01:15right there.