Letters to Datebook Letters to Datebook

Editor - I remember a fine June breeze swishing its way up Christopher Street from the river and the sweet aroma from the joint in my hand as I sat on a stoop up the block with some friends, the night New York's finest raided the Stonewall Inn ("Stonewall bar riot was clarion call for change," Monday). The Stonewall had been there for years. A pub, it is said, built before the American Revolution of the granite blocks from which it took its name. In my time it had been the best speakeasy dance bar in the West Village. By that June night in 1969, its faddish heyday had passed and it had become the party bar for drag and its fans. It was run, as were all the queer bars in New York City at that time, by the mob and its minions.

Remember, in those days, it was almost illegal to be queer, to congregate, to drink together, much less dance. We paid the mob in our private clubs and they paid the cops so we would be left alone. And that's why that night, as I sat with my friends blowing a joint up the block, the cops raided the Stonewall. They raided it over a "bump in the pad," an increase in their bribe. The Stonewall wouldn't pay, so it got raided. (One of New York's dirty little secrets.)

Police unprepared

I'm sure the "boys in blue" from the precinct on West 10th Street were not prepared for what happened that night. I know I wasn't. I wasn't prepared for the guys in drag breaking the lock on the back of the paddy wagon parked out front to let their "sisters" go. I wasn't prepared for the crowd that grew outside the bar as word spread down Christopher Street, person to person, street to street, club to club, bar to bar in a time before cell phones, texts and e-mail. I was not prepared for the hippies and street people, the young and the old, the butch and the nellies, the men in leather, the college guys in chinos and polo shirts, the men in suits and ties, the scattering of lesbians or the guys from the trucks.

I was not prepared for it, but that's what happened.

From a couple of cop cars, one paddy wagon, about a dozen drag queens, the staff of the bar, a few drunks, some onlookers and the ubiquitous Sheridan Square pigeons grew one of the most important incidents in what has become the continuing movement for gay rights.

I remember it was a night tinged with mourning. Judy Garland had just died, and it's been said, only half in jest, that's why we got so mad. Our "idol" was dead and they wouldn't let us mourn in peace. And I remember how during the night, at odd moments from some radio on the fringes or some stereo in a window, would come the sound of Garland singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."

I remember fragments.

I remember the guys who slowly, inexorably, rocked a parking meter from its concrete foundation in the sidewalk until it came free. I remember how this small band of longhairs, some in dresses, some in pants and fringe, hefted that phallic projectile on their shoulders, ran across the street and heaved it meter first through the huge black plate-glass window of the Stonewall Bar. I remember the astonished look on the faces of the cops, who were now exposed to a screaming, angry, cheering outside world. I remember that what we saw was bedlam. They hadn't just come to raid the bar, but to trash it. To send a "message." Everything everywhere was broken. There were cops with their nightsticks clearing all the shelves of all the liquor. The cash registers were open, broken and empty. And there was the echo of their laughing faces as the cops went happily about their work.

I remember the three cops who came to the front door with the emergency hose from the back. I remember the nozzle pointing at us from across the street. I remember that first insistent spearhead of water shooting from that nozzle, dousing us and pushing us back. And I remember the moment froze. And the water lost its power. And shrank away to an impotent drip.

I remember that hose. That old frayed emergency hose every bar had to have. That hose that had been folded in its rack on the back wall of the bar for years and years. I remember how that hose just split the first time it was ever used, leaving the bar and the cops ankle-deep in booze, water, beer and broken glass.

I remember the three cops in the doorway with the now flaccid hose in their hands. And I remember thinking, "Here we are, a bunch of fags, and we will not be washed away." To this day I wonder how different that night would have been had that old hose not split open, and the cops had been able to drive us back and wash us away, as down south Bull Connor had tried to wash the blacks away with his hoses and his dogs.

I remember how, as the night went on and the crowd grew, we were surrounded; as cops on horses, cops in riot gear, cops in cars and paddy wagons began to roll in behind and around Sheridan Square, with the firefighters and their trucks, and their hoses hooked up to hydrants and the hoses that would work. And Garland's voice and that haunting song. I can remember thinking how glad I was that John Lindsay was the mayor, because without Lindsay holding the cops at bay and refusing to give them permission to move, there would have been a bloodbath. I mean there we were, a crowd of homosexuals, pansies, fairies, fags, and we were not letting New York's finest trash a gay bar with impunity.

In the world before that night, we could not have done what we did. But that night we did. We finally stood up and said we have rights. To congregate. To dance. To mourn. To be left alone. Left alone to live, to love, to work, or just dance and listen to Garland sing.

40 years later

It's been 40 years since that night. I was 24 and two years out of the U.S. Marine Corps; two years since I had "turned myself in" to my CO because I was queer and I didn't want to go and kill or be killed in Vietnam for a government that did not want to recognize my right to exist.

I just wanted to be what I am. A gay man trying to be happy in a straight world. Sad to say, I'm still fighting the same war. Different battle. To remember Stonewall one must remember its context, its moment in time. It was a time of politics; a time of demonstrations, awareness and idealism. It was a time to march for peace and equal rights - on Selma and Montgomery, on the Pentagon, on the convention in Chicago. Anytime and anywhere injustice was perceived. There were movements everywhere. The civil rights movement, the peace movement, the women's movement. There were hippies and flower power, Cesar Chavez and the farmworkers, Black Panthers, Gray Panthers, the Weathermen and SDS. Woodstock was two months in the future, we were about to land on the moon and the whole world was watching the queers in Greenwich Village. The ground was shifting right under the establishment's feet.

That night the world changed for me and for every other gay, lesbian, bi, cross-dressing and transgender person on the planet. That night we were all reborn in the baptism of that hose's "holy" water.

Today I am 64 years old. I am a poet and retired actor. My face has, many times, graced the silver screen. I am 25 years HIV positive. I have marched and demonstrated all my life. I marched in San Francisco the night Harvey Milk and George Moscone were shot, and months later I rioted. I've marched on conventions and city halls.

I've marched in New York and D.C., San Francisco and L.A.

I've marched in daylight and with a candle in my hand. I've marched for the living and the dead.

I've grown tired and old and sick marching. I've grown powerful and brave, wise and proud marching.

So even after 40 years, every time I hear Garland's voice sing that haunting song, I think of bluebirds and lemon drops, a fire hose and freedom. And for that freedom and our rights, I am - and many, many others are - prepared to march under our rainbow flags forever.

- J.E. Freeman, San Francisco

Netrebko great

Editor - Having heard Anna Netrebko sing multiple times in recent months, I have difficulty believing Joshua Kosman's account of a "deeply disappointing" performance by Netrebko on opening night of "La Traviata" ("Anna Netrebko returns to S.F. in 'La Traviata,' " June 15).

A friend of mine at the premiere confirmed that her voice and acting thoroughly transfixed those lucky enough to be present. I suspect Kosman is guilty of trying to hear with his eyes instead of his ears. Bemoaning the soprano's (supposedly) "sluggish sound" and no longer "sleek, silvery tone," Kosman seems rather to be lamenting the fact Netrebko is now a size 8, with a 9-month-old son to boot ("Anna Netrebko - an opera superstar but no diva," June 14).

We should instead be thrilled - and grateful - that Netrebko has returned to wow us onstage mere months after becoming a mother. In fact, I am so confident that Netrebko is as good as ever that I'm traveling to San Francisco twice in the next week to hear her. In the meantime, Kosman might want to book an appointment with his otologist.

- Justin Snider, New York City