| The Black Cat Cafe | ||
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The Black Cat Cafe on Montgomery Street became home to a gay
drag revue starring Jose Sarria. Sarria was born in San Francisco and performed
each Sunday afternoon for fifteen years to full houses of 250 or more, using
his role as Madame Butterfly to sermonize about homosexual rights and leading
a sing-along of “God Save the Nelly Queens..." When it finally closed in 1963,
The Black Cat had broken the barriers that prevented overtly gay bars from existing
freely. A 1951 California Supreme Court decision banned the closing down of
a bar simply because homosexuals were the usual customers. Manuel Castells convincingly
argues in The Grassroots and the City that The Black Cat had also established
an important cultural precedent for the gay community: fun and humor. As the
community developed, feasts, celebrations, street parties, public and private
bars, and bathhouses and sex clubs, became the important forms of cultural expression
and sociability, which in turn strongly influenced other communities in San
Francisco and beyond. -- Chris Carlsson |
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