What Morris Kight thought it might be like in 2010

In a 1976 radio interview with Jonathan N. Katz (this Jonathan Katz NOT that Jonathan Katz), Morris Kight said: 

"By the year 2010 the population will have doubled. If you believe that we're doing a lousy job now think what it'll be like with the decline of fossil fuel, deterioration of air and water, world wide wars. A lot of troubles are coming. Society can be conned into believing a lot of lies. Gays as sick or sinful is a lie. There are a lot of other lies."

As much as Kight loved being right, I can't imagine he'd be too happy about being this right.

Fagots Stay Out

This is the sign that hung in a neighborhood bar in West Hollywood from the mid-fifties to 1970.  This is how Morris Kight tells the story:


"This sign was a great catalyst for the gay movement.  In spring of 1970 we did a change-in, sit-in, shop in, boycott and picket.  It took all that to persuade [the owner] to surrender us the sign and to never discriminate again in employment or service."

The pickets went on for months and in an unusual twist for the times the LA County Sheriff's were on the side of the demonstrators.  Especially odd since the sign went up in the fifties when the Sheriff's Department warned the owner that his place was picking up "a reputation."

So the the sign came down in 1970 and became a central piece in the Morris Kight Collection.  The new owner of the place (escrow hadn't even closed when the demonstrations began) enjoyed the free publicity that the sign (and the demonstrations) generated that he scrawled out a new fagots stay out sign (questionable spelling and all).  That sign would get taken down and put back up over the years.  At one point, he even had it match books printed.  Finally, West Hollywood incorporated in 1984 and the very first thing the newly elected mayor did was to march into the bar and demand that that sign come down and that discrimination against homosexuals would no longer be tolerated.

Washington D.C., did you hear that?

Baked

Mark Haskell Smith has just released his third novel, Baked. It was the perfect summer detour for me having been hugging the non-fiction for the past few years for the Kight biography. Baked took me on a ride through the marijuana industry (and make no mistake about it folks--it is an industry), introduced me to a stray Mormon, some (new) kinky sex tricks, and inside the head of an LAPD detective desperately in need of a vacation.

I've been so wrapped up in piecing together a non-fiction story, the life of Morris Kight, that I may have forgotten the joy of writing for the sake of the joy of writing. Haskell Smith gently reminded me of what I've been missing.

I wish Mark Haskell Smith all the success in the world with Baked.

Now back to my regularly scheduled input/output. But I'll be blogging more.

This is embarrasing

Well, this is embarrassing. I set up this blog last year with very good intentions to keep you posted on the comings and goings on over here at the Cherry Urban Ranch (that’s what I’ll call it for today) and you haven’t heard from me since the November election. I forgot the web address and the password. It’s embarrassing. But let me ask: didja miss me?

There have been lots of comings and lots of goings on over here. The right side of the brain is busy working on a new webisode entitled: “Arnie and Mike,” the left side of the brain says not to tell you too much at this time because we don’t want to spoil the surprises.

Am I the only one who sees the Senate Committee questioning Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, as a neutering process? They want to steam all the ethnic and female out of her in their last ditch efforts to protect the integrity of the white male perspective (which is always based upon personal experience). What’s the big concern? They seem to fear what the Supreme Court needs the most- a fresh perspective on the same old laws. Like most successful job candidates, she kowtowed to the interviewers and she seemed to survive intact. Let’s hope she’s not hoodwinking the America people who, while not all white and not all male, have a vested interest in the kind of job she will do. By the way, some of my best friends are white males.

I really enjoyed watching the Laker’s Victory parade. Not because I’m a big parade-ophile – I just like spending time with winners. And the Laker’s are so pretty when they win.

Like most of us, I was excited to see Barack Obama become president. It represented so many things, all of them good and positive. I admit, I wasn’t an Obama supporter from the gate (I wasn’t for Hillary either) and I never did get around to drinking the kool aid. I’m cool on his handling of the economic disaster; I feel that he is using the same tools and thinking that got us into this mess. I am not hopeful for his health care plan, which looks like it will amount to mandated health insurance (a big yahoo for the insurance companies). But I am loving Michele. She is by far the classist first lady ever. She’s an intimidating role model for working mothers only because she makes it look so easy (of course, she must have more help and handlers than a Ringling Brothers circus). She always shows up, looking cool and calm, she’s got it handled, whatever ‘it’ happens to be that day. She must intimidate Barack on some level and good for him for marrying a woman who does that to him. I was moved watching the photos of Sasha and Malia standing in the "Door of No Return" at Cape Coast Castle, Africa (a fortress where slaves were kept before being shipped to America). The two girls walked through the doorway, and then walked back out. It was a reminder that progress does prevail and as our president commented on his daughters freedom of movement, “while the future is unknowable, the winds always blow in the direction of human progress."

I’m going to leave all further comment regarding the City of Los Angeles paying for Michael Jackson’s funeral (in a time when we are laying off school teachers and cutting library hours) to Arnie & Mike. They will have something to say about that right from the start.

I’m here waiting for Suzanne. We are going to a special event at downtown’s Union Station. It’s SVREP’s 35th anniversary gala. What’s so special about this one? It features faire from six of Los Angeles’ top South American cuisine restaurants, which means a few hours of some serious um um. Suzanne will agree that an evening of multiple cuisines is probably the last thing that the either of us need right now- but it’s for a good cause.

The really important news, the big reason for you and me to be here, on this page at this time is the wonderful Morris Kight biography that has been keeping me the busiest. I love this work. It is time consuming, challenging, and it has added so much to my life. It has been a long process and I have grown from it. If nothing, Morris Kight’s memory is well served by the response of the people who knew him and the community he helped to create. The gay and lesbian community has opened their homes, their hearts, their photo books, their personal diaries to me to assist my effort to tell the story of this fascinating individual. In addition, I have traveled across the country and been given the privilege to scour private collections of personal letters, notes, doodling, audio tapes and 8mm films that help to piece together the 83 years that Kight put in on this earth and a majority of those years were dedicated to the liberation of all gay peoples. I want to thank the gay community who, for the most part, are a real classy bunch. See the photo of Morris Kight and this blogger taken in 1995.

And that’s not all. There are other people embracing the telling of gay history. It is so pertinent to this country’s overall history; these human stories need to be told and retold and examined from many different perspectives and experiences. First-person accounts of “the bad old days” of entrapments and arrests on trumped up charges are as important as the documentation of the holocaust. There are two such movie projects that I’d like to bring to your attention. “The Other Side,” by Jane Cantillon is an excursion through the oldest gay piano bar in the Silverlake section of LA. Beautifully told stories woven together by regulars at a neighborhood piano bar, reminiscing an incredibly oppressive era in a place where they would find joie de vivre and also a place that one police raid could abruptly destroy career and family.

Another recent effort is “On These Shoulders We Stand,” a gift of love to the LGBT community from mechanic-turned-filmmaker Glenne McElhinney. McElhinney has assembled an impressive trove of archival research, some of the finest film footage and photographs available from pre-Stonewall days entwined with personal accounts.

All the attention being given to the gay right struggle brings me back to the words our president said just the past week when referring to slavery: “While the future is unknowable, the winds always blow in the direction of human progress."

Yep.

So with this blogisode I am making a sincere effort to begin the practice of “blogging,” as created by generation X, Y, or one of those. We’ll see how it goes and let me know what you think. Which, if any, parts of my ramble do you like? Dislike? Do I get a “D” in blogging?

Good night Uncle Walter. There will never be another anchor like him.

That’s the news from here for now.