by Marc Stein. Copyright © Marc Stein 2026. All rights reserved.

Introduction

I interviewed Pat Hill because she was a former owner of Giovanni’s Room bookstore in Philadelphia and I knew she was active in the Philadelphia LGBTQ movement in the 1970s. After I showed Hill a transcript of the interview, she asked that I delete a few items, which I did (from both the tape and the transcript). I occasionally saw Hill in subsequent years, most recently at a lecture I delivered at the University of Pennsylvania in 2014. In the 2020s, I learned that Hill was now living in a Benjamin Franklin Parkway apartment building where a friend of mine lives, but my efforts to contact her before publishing this transcript in 2026 have not been successful. I have removed a few references to individuals in the transcript since Hill expressed concern about revealing their names.

Hill supplied the following biographical information before the taped recording began:

Date of Birth: 15 November 1935

Place of Birth: Savannah, Georgia

Place of Mother's Birth: Dallas, Texas

Mother's Occupation: Housewife and interior designer

Place of Father's Birth: Logansport, Indiana

Father's Occupation: Manufacturer and government researcher

Race/Ethnicity: White

Religious Background: Quaker

 

Residential History

1935-42: Savannah, Georgia

1942-56: Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania

1956-62: 21st and Rittenhouse Square Streets, Center City, Philadelphia

1962-67: 21st and Chestnut Streets, Center City, Philadelphia

1967-68: 21st and Rittenhouse Square Streets, Center City, Philadelphia

1968-78: 260 S. 11th Street, Philadelphia

1978-80: New Hampshire

 

Work History

1957-62: Advertising Production Assistant, NW Ayer Advertising

1957-62: Copywriter, America Viscose

1957-62: Graphic Designer and Copywriter, James G. Biddle

1962-67: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

1962-74: Recreation Department Staff, Philadelphia

1974-77: Proprietor, Giovanni’s Room

Interview Transcript

Marc Stein Interview with Pat Hill - November 16, 1993. Transcribed by Marc Stein.

 

MS: This is Marc Stein and I'm interviewing Pat Hill on November 16th, 1993, in my house in Center City. And I just thought we could start maybe by talking a little bit about your childhood. I know you told me that you were born in 1935 in Georgia. So if you could just say a few words about what your growing up experiences were like, what your family was like, stuff like that.

 

PH: Well I don't remember a whole lot from age seven, which was when we moved up here to Philadelphia, but it's funny that I always identify as a southerner. I mean even now I think of myself as a southerner. And I'm fifty-eight yesterday. So that is my identity, southern and Quaker. And there aren't many southern Quakers.

 

MS: You said before you were an only child?

 

PH: I am an only child, yes I am. And like I said, my father worked for the government, setting up experimental stations to do research to find experimental uses of goldenrod. So that's how he met my mother. He was doing that in Dallas. And then he was working at a station, I don't know exactly where it was, I guess in Savannah, which is where we lived. And I don't know what else to say about that, except that I think being a southerner living in the North has given me sort of a different perspective. For instance, I grew up with a Black woman taking care of me, and I've always been very comfortable with Blacks. And I think much more, it's always struck me as an irony that northerners think they're so much more comfortable or so much more advanced in terms of civil rights. And really it's an irony that it seems to me that southerners really are, in spite of the Ku Klux Klan and all the bad things that happened, there’s something much more loving and real between people of different colors there. That has enabled me, or not enabled me, but I live in a Black neighborhood. I, in all my years in recreation, mostly supervised Black recreation centers, because there weren't enough white leaders to go around on the level that I was. And I wanted to be there.

 

MS: Well I'm curious, maybe this is another angle on your early years, but when you later came out as lesbian, did you look back on your childhood, your early years in Georgia, or in Philadelphia, and say, ahah there was someone in my childhood who was gay, or ahah, there were these signs that I was different back then.

 

PH: No.

 

MS: Anything like that?

 

PH: No. It wasn't until I had an affair with a woman, although even as a Girl Scout, even as a Brownie, I think, I was fiddling around with friends.

 

MS: You were.

 

PH: Yes, yeah I was, I definitely was, on camping trips, and with little girls stay over. That's very common; we all stayed over at each other's houses. And we were making out like crazy. And I was seducing them. But it really wasn't, it's funny, in spite of all that activity, it really wasn't until high school that I got involved with a woman that I was attracted to. I wouldn't say that she was even part of my little clique of girlfriends. She was, in fact, one my closest friend's cousin. So when I think about that, it wasn't just getting involved with a best friend. It was an attraction and making a best friend out of somebody because of our being drawn to each other. And anyway, the point of what I'm saying is that I remember very, very clearly, when we were together, we both thought that no one had ever felt this way before. I'm sure you've heard this a million times. And we didn't know what it was. And if you can believe this, we really didn't even make love. We didn't touch each other's genitals or anything. Just holding hands and just kissing and embracing and sleeping together. It was just so exciting. You know the bed was on fire. It's so funny that we didn't know to reach down there.

 

MS: Ahah.

 

PH: We were in high school. We were like sixteen years old.

 

MS: So what high school were you in?

 

PH: Abington?

 

MS: Abington. So you were living out, I think you told me this, in the suburbs.

 

PH: A suburb of Philadelphia.

 

MS: In Huntingdon Valley.

 

PH: Yeah.

 

MS: And the high school was in Abington?

 

PH: Yes.

 

MS: And the girl was the same age as you?

 

PH: Yes. NB [editor’s note: the name has been changed to initials here and in what follows because PH elsewhere expressed concern about disclosing people’s names without their permission]. So there N. Even though you went and got married and had six children.

 

MS: So how long were you together?

 

PH: It's part of history now. Several years, 'til she went to Tufts, in Boston. And then we saw each other. I went to visit her up there. And we were still, we were just madly in love with each other.

 

MS: So do you remember how old you were when it started?

 

PH: Well when does one get out of high school? Sixteen or eighteen?

 

MS: Eighteen usually. Unless you're particularly advanced.

 

PH: We were both smart. But we didn't get out 'til I guess we were eighteen. And I know I was at Temple, so it was the first year of college. And I introduced her to the guy that she would later marry and then divorce. So the question is when did we begin? My guess is fifteen. I don't think it was fourteen.

 

MS: I see. O.K. And did anyone ever find out. Did anyone?

 

PH: Yes my mother found out. She found us. Right after N's mother had died, N was in my bed at our house. And I was leaning over her, kissing her, and my mother walked into the room. And she threw N out, out into the street in her pajamas. She threw a fit and would not allow me to see her anymore. And so it was a very, very nasty mean scene.

 

MS: Had there been no other confrontations of that sort before that?

 

PH: No, no. That was the first she found out. I said, I told my mother I was just comforting her, but I was awfully close to her to be comforting her.

 

MS: I see.

 

PH: I would even say on top of her.

 

MS: Did you and your mother talk about it?

 

PH: Uhhuh, uhhuh [no]. No, we didn't talk. It just was an explosion, a horrible, horrible explosion. But then things were terribly, terribly tense. As I said, my father committed suicide, not that year, although I'm not really clear what year. What year are we talking about here. Let's see I graduated from high school in '53 and he died in '56. That's what I said earlier. Well things were bad. Things were very emotionally bad.

 

MS: Did you continue to see N after that?

 

PH: Yes we did.

 

MS: Behind your mother's back?

 

PH: Yes.

 

MS: Where would you meet if you could no longer meet at your house?

 

PH: Well we would go to her house since her mother had died. It's terrible to say, and her father was an alcoholic. And her brothers were much older. There was a great age span between her and her older siblings.

 

MS: I see.

 

PH: And I remember, although maybe this was before we got caught, I'm not sure, they had a seashore house in New Jersey, in Ocean City. And we went there often. But that might have been before her mother died or before we were caught. So I don't know, cars, her house. I had a car. I always had a car from the time I was like twelve. Earlier really.

 

MS: So you went to Temple, then, in '53. Is that right? The year that you finished high school? Or did you say you went to another school first?

 

PH: No, I went to Temple. As I said, I was pre-med. My grandfather was a country doctor. He was a twin. He and his brother. I have some wonderful pictures of them doing their rounds in their horse and buggy in Indiana. And my father was not a doctor, but he was a scientist. I mean he was in that kind of field. He was thrown out of Earlham, a Quaker college in Indiana, for drinking. So I never actually heard that he was planning to be a doctor, but whatever, e got sidetracked. And he finished up at Penn eventually and moved here. But anyway, I wanted to be a doctor. But things were just too crazy. I mean they were just too crazy. And I think part of that was my lesbianism, how it was affecting my life. And also my family was just very dysfunctional, to use a modern word. My mother and I had terrible fights. I blamed her for my father's suicide. And she beat me up. I mean really beat me up. And I remember my girlfriend Mary Lou Cooper's mother taking me in, into their house, and trying to help me.

 

MS: This was before your father's suicide?

 

PH: No, it was right after my father's suicide. So what was your question?

 

MS: Well I was moving into the years that you were at Temple. I'm curious about how the relationship ended, the one with your first girlfriend.

 

PH: With N?

 

MS: Yeah.

 

PH: Well it ended with her getting very frightened. Maybe she did find out what it was we were doing. Maybe she read a book or something. We certainly didn't know the word lesbian. And like I said, we thought that nobody had ever felt this way? Have you heard that a thousand times?

 

MS: Not a thousand times; a few times.

 

PH: You've heard it a lot?

 

MS: Yeah, I wouldn't even say a lot. A few times.

 

PH: It's wild, isn't it? She got married is how it ended.

 

MS: Is that right?

 

PH: Yeah, she married this guy BD, who actually was from our high school. And I think that was an effort, I'm quite sure it was an effort, to be straight. And she succeeded apparently. I called her about, I don't know, maybe twenty years later. I was drunk one night. And I somehow called her in Boston. And she invited me up to visit them. I think she was still married to B. But she said, “But you mustn't mention what went on between us, because I've never told him.” I said, “What?” What kind of marriage is this where you would never tell, where you wouldn't tell somebody something so important. But what do I know? I guess it happens all the time. So I said, “That's O.K., forget it.”

 

MS: So the whole time you were involved, though, I think you just said, you did not have a sense of any kind of larger world of lesbians.

 

PH: No, no I didn't. Not at all. But I did have tremendous crushes on everybody and their uncle. My science teacher Dorothy Hafer when I was in grade school, or junior high, not grade school. And my English teacher in junior high school. And N's cousin, who really was one of my closest friends, PP, I was just crazy about. And it's been very interesting, because I think I told you that I've just started to try to integrate that world. I just went five years ago to my first high school reunion, my 35th high school reunion. And just a couple of weeks ago went to my 40th. P didn't come, but I haven't seen P in forty years. But saw all the other close friends that I had then. And it's amazing. It is just amazing. It's so clear what I have blocked out. Because they all remember details of our life then. They remember all kinds of things. They must think that I've just come in from another planet or something. Because I'm sure, it's bringing it home to me, how painful it all was, not just with my father's death, not just with whatever led to that, the relationship between my parents led to it, but that the struggle over being lesbian, and being different, and all of that, all of that, that secret that I had. And these secret longings for my girlfriends, it's just very troubling. And so it's blocked out.

 

MS: Right, right.

 

PH: It's really, really blocked out.

 

MS: So what was the kind of next step. Was it another relationship or was it a connection with the larger lesbian community after the relationship ended?

 

PH: Well, after N? Yeah, I moved in town. I mean I wasn't thinking that's the place to be, but with no family, estranged from my mother, my father dead, N having gone straight and us having definitely said goodbye, I moved in town, where a lot of people do.

 

MS: I see that was in 1956, I guess you said before.

 

PH: Did I?

 

MS: Or at least around the time that your father died. It's not important, the precise year. But late '50s?

 

PH: Well, you know what I did leave out there. I got an apartment in Abington. And I did commute in town. Well we better not waste the tape right now.

 

MS: O.K. I'll just make a note to go back to that.

 

PH: O.K. Oh, let's see now. Oh I know what I did next then. Then I tried to be straight. Well I'd always had a fellow on the side. I mean I came close to getting married. I didn't have a ring, but I was almost engaged. And there was always a process of nobody was good enough. You know they had to have a sailboat and play tennis and all these different things that just nobody quite had everything, or not had everything, but was everything. You know, didn't have all the qualities that I wanted. So that was a way of not going through with that. But in spite of that, I always had a fellow on the side. I always had a boyfriend. Always had a boyfriend in high school. Always dated guys.

 

MS: Is that right?

 

PH: Yeah. And always had some sort of steady beau that would tolerate me having almost nothing to do with him. Certainly nothing to do with him physically. I wouldn't say nothing to do with him. I did make out and stuff. But I never really went all the way. And it's funny. I guess you've heard this too. But my mother, I was constantly warned about boys, and about sex, and told not to do this, that, and the other thing. But never a word about girls. So it's like carte blanche, isn't it? You know you can do whatever you want to because your parents have never mentioned what not to do with girls. They only mentioned what not to do with boys. So I wasn't thinking that, but it has to have some effect on you. That you're always warned about this stuff. So anyway, what I tried to do, well like I said, I always had a boyfriend. And I did in town. And what I did was I went to this guy Jerry Weiss, who was a psychologist on Spruce Street, to try to be straight. Because I was just tortured. I was trying not to look at women on the street. If I was walking down the street, and I'd see somebody attractive, I would look at the ground. And it was beginning to just really eat me up. And so I went to this guy. And it's just amazing. I went to him. He was sort of referred to me by some friends at the corner drugstore or something. A woman in there that was the soda jerk or something and was seeing him who thought he was wonderful. And I think he has since died. But whatever year this was, if we straighten all this stuff out.

 

MS: Seems like late 1950s.

 

PH: Yeah, I was going to guess like '58 or something. But I don't know. I saw him for a couple years. And I just think this was so enlightened for then. He said there is nothing, and he was straight as straight could be, he said there's nothing wrong with what you're feeling. There is only something wrong with the way society views it.

 

MS: Is that right?

 

PH: Yeah. And he encouraged me to act out my feelings, to get a girlfriend, to not feel guilty about it, to try to connect with somebody. So with that little bit of encouragement, I went forth and I did just that. I saw this woman, who is to this day my best friend, Ann Stokes, or one of my best friends. And I saw her. She's a fairly obvious lesbian. She lived on Waverly Street. And I saw her bending over watering her flowers. No, she lived on Addison Street. And I thought oh is she cute. Is she cute!

 

MS: Now what do you mean, at that time, what do you mean by obvious lesbian? Why did she look lesbian to you?

 

PH: Well she's kinda' chunky. She's kinda' butchy looking. She's handsome. She is handsome. But at that time, I don't think you would take her for straight. I didn't. Or that's another interesting question. In fact Weiss was interested in it. This psychologist was always asking me how do you all know each other. How do you communicate? You saw this woman. I mean he might have even asked me about Ann. What is it? What is it that goes through the air? I don't know if he was writing on it or what, but he was very interested in how we communicated. And it's a good question, even today.

 

MS: So somehow you knew. And you went up to her?

 

PH: No, I didn't go up to her. I was going with a guy, Phillip Osborne. And Phillip, we were kind of in a social circle of artists in Center City. It was all straight people. And anyway, I engineered, there was a party at Ann's house very shortly after I saw her. And I knew, and Phillip and I were going. So Phillip and I went and I told him to go home. And I stayed. And I also took a small bottle of champagne to that party, 'cause I knew I was gonna' stay with her.

 

MS: Uhhuh.

 

PH: Well she had a reputation actually. She had a very kind of exotic reputation. I don't think I knew when I saw her who she was. But I did a little research and I found out who she was.

 

MS: I see.

 

PH: So anyway, I took this small bottle of champagne. And I knew that Phillip's days were numbered. And I just said I was staying. And he left. And he left when all the other partygoers left, including his sister, who's still somewhat of a friend of mine. And I stayed for three days. And we broke the bed. And there was another straight couple that stayed above us. She had a huge house.

 

MS: And you broke the bed?

 

PH: We broke the bed. I kept my coat on. I had this funny Peck and Peck, actually a very beautiful Peck and Peck tweed coat then, and we often have recalled this story. That I wouldn't take my overcoat off. Even though I took her champagne. I mean talk about mixed messages. Take her champagne, which is certainly a clue, and then won't take my overcoat off.

 

MS: For three days you didn't take your overcoat off?

 

PH: Well not for three days, but for hours. But she got it off. She was good at that.

 

MS: I see. And correct me if I'm wrong. You described your relationship with N as not kind of fully sexual in that way. Is that right?

 

PH: It was extremely sexual, but so naive.

 

MS: Ah I see.

 

PH: I mean it was so exciting. So I don't know. What do you call it?

 

MS: O.K., maybe that was the wrong terminology.

 

PH: But we didn't touch down there. No we didn't.

 

MS: And you did, but you did with Ann. Is that right?

 

PH: Oh yes, yes.

 

MS: So that was different, different in a sense.

 

PH: Yes. And Ann's kind of butch, too. I don't think she would mind. Yes she probably would mind me saying that. But anyway.

 

MS: And what did that mean. You just said that in reference to sex. I mean I don't want to cross any lines, but can you say something about why you just said that?

 

PH: About Ann?

 

MS: Yeah.

 

PH: Well she's more aggressive. She's a take charge kind of person. There's no question about it. And I mean it's her appeal to today. Looks you straight in the eye. And yeah, knows what she's about in terms of her lesbianism.

 

MS: I see. Now she was your age as well?

 

PH: She's older, actually. I've just turned fifty-eight. She'll be sixty-three.

 

MS: I see. And so you were involved.

 

PH: She's the Ann Stokes of this book, by the way.

 

MS: Ah, I see.

 

PH: Has that property in that. We went together for three years. Although she tends to, oh god if she heard this she'd kill me, she tends to like straight women. She tends, she has often gotten involved with married women. She's never lived with anyone. But nevertheless we went together for several years. And then we broke up. And I didn't speak to her for two years. And then, from that point on, we have been best friends.

 

MS: Now was it?

 

PH: So we've been very, very close. All this what thirty-some years.

 

MS: Was it with Ann that you…?

 

PH: And she's a Quaker.

 

MS: Ahah. Was it with Ann that you discovered…?

 

PH: And we're related.

 

MS: And you're related?

 

PH: We are. We're related. Our distant Quaker, some Newland relative of mine was married to her great, great, great grandfather or someone. Go ahead, go ahead.

 

MS: Was it while you were with Ann that you became part of a larger social network of lesbians? Or had that still not happened for you?

 

PH: No, I think that was pretty much straight. I can't say exactly why we broke up. But she was involved with a woman, a straight woman who was married. And she's kind of a rogue. Ann's kind of a rogue. And so what was the question?

 

MS: Whether you had met other lesbians. And were part of any kind of a larger. I assume now we're talking about the late '50s and early '60s.

 

PH: No. Yeah. No we were part of a straight community, straight artistic community.

 

MS: So still to this point in your life, say, you hadn't met a gay man? Is that fair to say?

 

PH: Center City. I can't believe I didn't meet one. But I can't remember one.

 

MS: So no one who stands out now in your memory?

 

PH: No, except that we belonged to the Rittenhouse Swim Club on Lombard Street here. And there were, in fact these two gay men that I was telling you about, that you should just go up and knock on their door. They have been together. I think they belonged to the Rittenhouse Swim Club. And there were a couple of obvious pairs of men that I see, even today, around town, in this area, in this neighborhood of Delancey and 23rd and 24th.

 

MS: Hmmm. So you would see them at the swim club?

 

PH: I would see them. And that's about it.

 

MS: Were you part of the crowd that hung out in Rittenhouse Square or in the gay coffeehouses. I'm sorry not the gay coffeehouses; the coffeehouses, the kind of beatnik coffeehouses that were around.

 

PH: Yes, yes, very much so. Very much so, but not gay.

 

MS: Uhhuh. So which ones were you going to? Do you recall?

 

PH: The Gilded Cage was my hangout. That why I lived two places across the street from it.

 

MS: I see. But they did not seem gay to you, those coffeehouses.

 

PH: They definitely weren't gay. But there was this heavy duty, intense, lesbian, now I don't know what the gay men were doing. I'm not aware of them at all. But there was a very intense sort of network of attraction between several of us that centered around the Gilded Cage.

 

MS: Is that right?

 

PH: Singers. Nancy Carlin--I don't mind naming names; I don't think Nancy would mind--and Linda Lubove were two guitar players who also played at the Second Fret, over on I think it was on Sansom Street. And let's see, well Tassi Aaron, who was married, but got involved. And so anyway, that was the scene.

 

MS: So it sounds like it was a friendly atmosphere to be there and to have these attractions.

 

PH: Mhmmm. Oh yeah, great fun.

 

MS: Did you go to the Humoresque?

 

PH: Yes.

 

MS: Was that pretty much the same as the Gilded Cage?

 

PH: The Humoresque, I can't remember. What was nice about the Gilded Cage for me was that the two people who owned it, Ed and Esther Halperin, were very paternal and maternal. And also it did tend to be almost all Jewish. I was like a little WASP mascot. And that was very sweet. I mean I've been that often. I've very often had Jewish friends and been kind of the token WASP to them. The shiksa.

 

MS: Were you aware at the time of Rizzo's raids on those coffeehouses?

 

PH: Yes, yes. And I remember in fact when he raided the Gilded Cage, and he was putting everybody in the paddy wagon, and I begged to go, and he just sort of brushed me aside. “Get out of here.”

 

MS: Why did you beg to go?

 

PH: Well because I wanted to be part of it. I was part of it. But I guess I just looked so innocent that he wouldn't take me. And  I wanted to get in the paddy wagon because they were taking everybody else off. And I felt very left behind.

 

MS: What was the feeling at the time of the raids? Do you recall?

 

PH: Oh well not having anything to do with anything queer. Just having to do with him making a name for himself on these like ludicrous charges of dope smoking or something. I forget what. I think it was marijuana. Is that right? Is that what you've heard?

 

MS: Well the newspaper articles talk about that and about homosexuality. But he used both of those explanations for why he was raiding the coffeehouses. But you don't recall any of that.

 

PH: No. I think he made that up. I think that even though....

 

MS: That principally centered around the Humoresque.

 

PH: Yeah, yeah there was something a little gray about the Humoresque. I can't say why I never went there. I did go there. But I mean why I didn't hang there, other than the fact that I lived across the street from this place.

 

MS: Right.

 

PH: Was there any gay male activity there?

 

MS: It seems like it. And Mel Heifetz was the owner of the Humoresque.

 

PH: Uhhuh, right.

 

MS: So he ended up taking a big case to court over the coffeehouse raids.

 

PH: Discrimination?

 

MS: So maybe around him, maybe because he was the owner there was more of a gay male clientele. I'm not sure.

 

PH: Yeah maybe. It might have been a reason that I didn't go there.

 

MS: So were there other public spaces, or businesses, in Philadelphia that kind of were more friendly to lesbians that you would go to?

 

PH: Well as I said, the Second Fret. We kind of went back and forth.

 

[interruption]

 

MS: You were talking about the Second Fret.

 

PH: Well actually I was talking about the Gilded Cage. What was so nice about the Gilded Cage was this couple that owned it, Ed and Esther Halperin, who are my friends today. They live at like 23rd and Spruce. And I don't see them often. I have a gardening plot over at Judy Garland Park. And they're gardeners. And so I see them in the Center City Residents Association. But anyway, they are wonderful, wonderful people. And it was like we were all their children, although I guess we're kind of contemporaries. I don't think they could be five years older than I am, if that. But they were very, very sweet to all of us sort of lost sheep. And so that made the difference. That was the intense draw, rather than the Second Fret. I can't say that it was men. I really have no sense of gay men around at all. It was a sort of straight slash lesbian scene.

 

MS: Is that right?

 

PH: Yeah, and the Halperin's were aware of it. I mean that was another nice thing. It was sort of a tacit kind of acceptance of us. No judgement. And it was all the Philadelphia Folksong Society kind of intertwined with that. I was very involved in that in those days. And they were, or Esther's a folksinger, and Tassi Aron, like I say. So.

 

MS: So were there other businesses? Restaurants, bars, public parks, or anyplace where you would go to meet other women. Or to go with some of the women you just mentioned where you'd feel safe and comfortable?

 

PH: Well as you know, I mean that's not a general M. O. of women, to go to parks and things. So that was not, no, I wouldn't say that at all. And I'm trying to think, because it's an obvious question, when did I first go to Rusty's. Have you heard of Rusty's?

 

MS: Mmhmm.

 

PH: That was the lesbian bar that was Mafia run. And constantly, I mean you'd see the police coming up and getting their money, their payoffs. And eventually I was barred from Rusty's for writing an article with Rachel Rubin in Wicce about the watered down drinks and how intolerable it was that the police were in there all the time.

 

MS: Is that right?

 

PH: And they were so creepy to us too. They were so mean to us.

 

MS: So that was later in the '70s.

 

PH: Well.

 

MS: Because Wicce started coming out in '73 or so.

 

PH: I'm not sure. Yeah, but Rusty's had been around a long time. And I'm trying to overlap it with the Gilded Cage.

 

MS: Oh no, I don't mean that it wasn't around earlier. I mean the article that you wrote must have been in the '70s.

 

PH: Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, that was probably in '75, something like that.

 

MS: So do you have a sense of when you may have first gone to Rusty's? Can you picture yourself there with a partner? Would that help you place the time?

 

PH: No I didn't have a partner. No it was a place to go and meet people. And I did. I do remember asking Barbara Gittings to dance. And she said, oh of course that must have been later too. Cause I knew Barbara Gittings.

 

MS: So you knew who she was.

 

PH: Yeah. And I asked her to dance and she said “No, no thank you.” And so I started to walk away. And I felt so rejected. And she said, “Oh I don't dance but I do talk.” So cute! So sweet of her. It was like she was being gentle. So we talked. I met Joan in this bar. I met Joan. Actually when Joan and I met, also at the Academy, or we knew each other at the Academy, but we met in this bar, in Rusty's. But gosh, we would have to do this by the process of elimination. Figure out when. Can you help me? Do you have any idea?

 

MS: What's that? To figure out?

 

PH: With Rusty's. What its years are.

 

MS: I don't know exactly when it was founded yet. I know it was certainly around in '68, because that was when the big raid happened that led to the establishment of HAL.

 

PH: Well it was definitely up flights of steps, knock three times. It was very, very sub rosa. But anyway, I have no other recollection of anything else gay or lesbian, except let's see, I told you I went to the Academy from '62 to '67. And I won a Cresheim, which is a travelling scholarship to Europe, in '65. And I remember wanting to get information on lesbian bars, not lesbian, you didn't use the word lesbian then. It wasn't a word.

 

MS: What words were you using?

 

PH: Gay, just gay. I mean my recollection was that there weren't lesbians until, and you know how I say that facetiously, but there weren't lesbians until seventy, maybe '75. Obviously I've been in the gay movement, the gay and lesbian movement, so long there weren't any lesbians. So I do remember going up, talk about going up flights of steps and knocking three times, trying to go to a little office that might have been, it wouldn't have been DOB. What was another organization?

 

MS: The Janus Society?

 

PH: Yeah maybe. I heard that there was a listing, like just a mimeographed listing of gay bars in Europe or something.

 

MS: I see.

 

PH: And I was wanting to get that.

 

MS: And you went to their office?

 

PH: Yeah.

 

MS: Now I know that they had two offices so I'm wondering if maybe you would remember it from that. There was one on 17th Street. And there was one that was 1230 Arch Street.

 

PH: I went to the 17th Street one, I'm pretty sure.

 

MS: And it would have been, you think, the DOB office? Or the Janus Society office.

 

PH: Well did Barbara have to do with the DOB office?

 

MS: At its very end. She wasn't involved when it started. Why do you ask that?

 

PH: Well because I don't have a recollection of seeing her there. But I have a recollection of some connection with that organization, whatever it was. Was she involved with Janus?

 

MS: No.

 

PH: Cause that was men. Wasn't it?

 

MS: Right, well it was mixed and then became mostly men.

 

PH: In fact I might have even been going to get a list of gay bars, which probably would have been mostly men.

 

MS: Right, right. So were there other places aside from Rusty's that you went to in Philly in the '60s. Primarily gay men's bars that you ever went to? Or after-hours clubs?

 

PH: Oh, oh yeah. I remember dragging a guy I was going with, some guy I was dating, to the Surf Club.

 

MS: Uhhuh.

 

PH: Yeah, I went to the Surf Club, which is sort of where the Hershey Hotel is now. Have you gotten this description?

 

MS: Some.

 

PH: Whatever that little street is that runs parallel with Broad. It's probably their back delivery entrance. And I remember going in there under the pretense of being straight, because I had heard it was a lesbian. It was a lesbian bar. It was not a gay bar. I mean it wasn't all lesbian, but I mean it was a women's bar. It was not a men's bar. And I can't tell you how many other people I've heard do the same thing. Drag a guy in there, sort of like ogle everybody.

 

MS: Ahah. And so he was straight, the guy?

 

PH: Well he thought, I mean it was probably Emerson. I don't know. It was this lawyer that I mentioned. But he did always call himself straight.

 

MS: Did you go back to the Surf Club after that one time?

 

PH: No I don't believe I did. I felt like just this little debutante. I felt like just something that had come in from another planet. And this was just this really upsetting sort of shocking world of women who looked like men. And I wanted to fit into it. I was very attracted to, these strong attractions to obvious dykes. Because other women I couldn't sense that they were lesbian. But the obvious ones, with the men's shirts rolled up and a pack of Camel's stuffed in their shirt, that sort of thing, that's somebody that I could be with, I guess. In fact I get teased to this day for my taste in these women. This woman that used to come in Rusty's, French Chervis, Joan calls her, who carried a gun. And she was this South Philly type that was a very, very, very tough woman. And I wouldn't have known what to say to her. I mean these women weren't attracted to me at all. So it was just a mismatch all around. And the sad thing is that--well I shouldn't say that--I mean going to a bar at all to meet somebody is, in my view, not a very good thing to do. But what else was there to do?

 

MS: So in the '60s did you have any other sort of longer term involvements? You mentioned Ann. You mentioned N earlier. Was there anyone who you were seeing on any kind of regular basis in the '60s.

 

PH: Well this woman Linda Lubove I was crazy about, a guitar singer who lives out in Bucks County. Another woman who just chased after me 'til she got me. I really wasn't interested in her. NC, whose family lives on 16th Street. She now lives in California. She just paddled after me. She was sleeping in my doorway downstairs. And she was much younger than I. She just had a terrible crush on me. And in fact I went to talk to her mother to see if together we couldn't sort of do something about N. Cause I didn't want to get involved with her. And her mother was very nasty to me. And we're friends today, this many years later. She's still alive. But she thought that I seduced her. What happened was that I eventually, when her mother kind of rejected me and didn't want to be in alliance with me, I think what she was doing was blaming me for N's budding lesbianism, which really I wasn't responsible for. And I wanted to relate to her as an adult about N. But anyway, I don't know if this is just a big rationalization, but after that I got involved with N. I just let her in one night and we started an affair.

 

MS: How long did that last?

 

PH: That lasted 'til, actually now it's clearer, that lasted 'til I got involved with Ann.

 

MS: So that was before.

 

PH: So that was before, yes it was. Yeah, it lasted until that party that I went to with Phillip and then didn't leave. And then N tried to kill herself unfortunately. And then she left for California. She was just absolutely destroyed that I got involved with somebody else. She's never come back.

 

MS: Now did you say before what years you thought you were involved with Ann? Did we figure that out?

 

PH: No. I don't know.

 

MS: So you're not sure now. Well let me ask you this. Were there other women that you had sustained relationships with other than Ann in the '60s?

 

PH: Mmhmm [no]. No, N and Ann. And Linda Lubove. I don't know exactly how Linda fits in there.

 

MS: Were you involved with Linda?

 

PH: A little bit. Yeah, we slept together but it was not a take clearly.

 

MS: Were you dating a lot in that sort of way?

 

PH: Well interestingly, in that period, was the first time I also had kind of a beau. I had this guy AL. That was the first time, 'cause I remember the fit that N threw when I slept with him. Cause I was a virgin. And I guess in this day and age it would definitely be date rape because he definitely forced himself on me. But I liked him. I mean I liked him. And I was going out with him. But he shouldn't have done what he did. He was I think turned on at the idea of taking a virgin. And he liked me. But anyway, N was just hysterical over that. And I wasn't real thrilled with it either. It was very painful and it was an upsetting time.

 

MS: Did you continue to see men after that?

 

PH: I did see, I usually saw, yes, I had a boyfriend, Charlie Wass, in the Academy. Meanwhile just crazy nuts about one woman or another. But nevertheless, and Charlie was a very sweet guy, who did not force himself on me at all, physically, didn't really make love or anything. And then I remember being in this Gilbert and Sullivan group, this sort of society group, Savoy Company, and I always had a boyfriend in that too. And I think it was really at that time that I just kind of decided that, maybe I was beginning to feel stronger. I was beginning to emerge more as a lesbian and just beginning to feel that this was either not necessary or desirable. And so then, after that point, after having always a steady boyfriend on the side while I was chasing after women and being chased after, then I slept with a man once a year. I always slept with a man once a year.

 

MS: Ahah.

 

PH: To remind myself how much I like women. Or to just sort of keep my hand in it or something. I don't know.

 

MS: Ahah.

 

PH: And I did that until I got pregnant. In 1978 I slept with a gay man and a lesbian at the same time and I got pregnant. And that wasn't fun. So I haven't slept with a man since.

 

MS: So that lasted from when 'til 1978. From the '60s.

 

PH: Yeah, yeah.

 

MS: Wow. Well I don't know if this is the time then to shift to how you got involved with the movement. Or if there are other things that we haven't talked about, touched on, about the 1960s, that you want to make sure we talk about.

 

PH: Well I'm not taking much control here. I mean I should be telling you things, I should have my own agenda. But I don't. So your questions are good and I'm answering them easily, much easier than I thought I could.

 

MS: Well maybe I'll ask one other question then, before we move on. In the years before you became involved as an activist, what was your sense of where things stood between lesbians and gay men, your overall sense. Did you have a feeling that these two communities were very close, that they were one community really? Do you feel like they had very little to do with one another but were sort of forced together by circumstance?

 

PH: That they had absolutely nothing to do with each other. Absolutely nothing. Or at least in my world, they had nothing to do with each other. As I say, the only gay men that I knew from a distance were these gay men that I would see at the Rittenhouse Swim Club.

 

MS: And why do you think things were so separated?

 

PH: Well they certainly did not act like they thought women even deserved to breathe.

 

MS: Can you think of any specific instances or interactions that you had then that made you feel that way?

 

PH: Well come to think of it, it could have been my own disdain for them too, although I'm not aware of that. But now that you're asking me, not only was it their arrogance, which you know I feel from a lot of gay men of that type even now, that women just don't have brains and they shouldn't be allowed to live. But also it probably was a kind of a homophobia on our part, or my part, that gay men, I mean it just could have been an internalized self-hatred kind of thing, thinking that, I guess that's not the principle involved here. But anyway just thinking less of them because they were gay. You know all my friends, not all my friends, but I mean I was part of a larger straight circle. Like I say, kind of an artist, kind of counterculture kind of circle of people.

 

MS: I see.

 

PH: And I can't say that, I was gonna' say that we were openly accepted. The Halperin's openly accepted us. I'm not sure in the real art circles that I'm talking about, I think it was just kind of understood that we didn't talk about it but we were all plenty active. So I don't know; that's not real acceptance but t's a kind of acceptance.

 

MS: Right. Within your young social network, artists, Center City.

 

PH: Yeah.

 

MS: Sounds like that's what the status of things were.

 

PH: But I remember even when I became active, being outside of bars, leafletting, talking to people, talking to gay men who would say, “Why don't you all just shut up and stop this. You're making things worse.”

 

MS: Right.

 

PH: And so that certainly corroborated the feeling that I had from earlier years that gay men, at least these fellows who were in couples and very comfortable, lawyers, I mean obviously very well off were not people who wanted to be my friend.

 

MS: Right. Well I guess what maybe I'll press you on a little bit is that I think what's so hard to get at is to think past those memories of your interactions once you became an activist to the things that made you felt that way at the time, made you feel that way at the time, in the '60s, about gay men. Do you know what I mean?

 

PH: No.

 

MS: Well I think there is a tendency to of course have our experiences affect our memories.

 

PH: Mmhmm. Sure.

 

MS: So one of the things I'm trying to work on figuring out how to deal with is when I talk to people now in the 1990s, their memories of the '50s and '60s are very much filtered through that experience of going through lesbian feminism in the '70s. So, for example, you just used an example that occurred to you from when you became an activist. But I'm wondering if you can think of other things from before you became an activist.

 

PH: The only thing I can say, Marc, is that I probably, having thought of myself as straight for so long, although god knows I started pretty early emerging as a lesbian, and I never did actually marry a man, which a lot of women did, who turned out to be lesbians.

 

MS: Right.

 

PH: So that represents some sort of pretty strong identity as a lesbian. All I can think of was that I had the same homophobia that the rest of society has, and had, that gay men are hairdressers, ballet dancers, effeminate, less than men, less than real men, and that sort of thing. So that's the deepest answer I can give you, is that I might not have liked them much. I don't think that I thought that I wanted to be close to them at all.

 

MS: So then it wasn't...

 

PH: I just thought of them as different creatures.

 

MS: So then was it not so much, then, their arrogance? Was that something you kind of realized later? Or do you think you had a sense of that from before you became an activist?

 

PH: Well I don't know that it's necessary to say which was more, but they were definitely aloof. Now I think even today they're aloof. When I saw these guys, just their body language, going into their house, and they've been together all these years, these thirty-some years, or whatever it is. Now maybe they do, I mean even in my experience, there are gay men who don't really know any women, who really don't know what women are at all.

 

MS: Right, right.

 

PH: So it's kind of a two-way thing, I guess. Cause we didn't like them and they didn't like us.

 

MS: Ahah. Well maybe we should then move on to activism, to when you became an activist, how you became an activist.

 

PH: But you know what? Lesbians do that, too, and it makes me so sad, even today, to see lesbians who don't feel part of a larger society. And you can just tell by their body language and their eyes. It's just the saddest thing to me, when they won't even connect with another lesbian. They're so used to being isolated and sort of in their own little cocoon that it's a survival technique. They don't really make eye contact with other people. I don't know, it just seems, it seems sad to me in this time. Not that things are so fabulous but they're a lot better than that. Anyway.

 

MS: Did you tell me the other day that Radicalesbians was the first lesbian group that you think you got involved with?

 

PH: Yeah.

 

MS: We were having trouble figuring out, but is that right, yeah?

 

PH: Yeah.

 

MS: And do you remember what that was. What was Radicalesbians in Philadelphia?

 

PH: Well I think the first thing we did, Joan Meyers and I and our friends, we had quite a circle of friends, hanging around the Barn. I think we went to a dance, a small dance. It was on Chestnut Street, I believe. Chestnut or Walnut, a second or third story job. And wonderful. Very, very hot and sweaty dance.

 

MS: In Center City or in West Philly?

 

PH: In Center City. Around 12th, 13th, something like that. Any other mentions of that? Have you heard?

 

MS: I can't know if it's the same dance yet aause you haven't said much about when it was or what else you remember about it?

 

PH: Well in that location, have you heard of anything?

 

MS: No, nothing that comes to my mind immediately.

 

PH: You have the name of Bert Hacker? Has that come up?

 

MS: No.

 

PH: You should see her. She'd be easy to see, too. She's still in Center City.

 

MS: So what kind of dance was this? Was this a Radicalesbians event?

 

PH: Yes, and it was all women.

 

MS: Ahah.

 

PH: And there were probably a hundred women there.

 

MS: Ahah. And was it mixed-age, mixed race?

 

PH: Hmmm, yes, mixed age. Mixed race? I'm trying to think if there was any Black woman there at all. Certainly was mostly white.

 

MS: Mostly white?

 

PH: Yeah.

 

MS: And was it a benefit for Radicalesbians or what it more a social event for people to enjoy?

 

PH: I don't remember it being a benefit, no.

 

MS: O.K. And what did you know about Radicalesbians when you went? Had you heard of them before?

 

PH: Just that it was so exciting that there was a lesbian event. And I'm not sure. No, it was just very exciting.

 

MS: Do you remember when it was?

 

PH: An alternative to Rusty's, and political. No, that's the $64,000 question, isn't it?

 

MS: Well that's O.K. Maybe we'll come to it.

 

PH: Talking about late '60s, are we, '68? Something like that? '70? '70?

 

MS: I think they didn't start here until ’70.

 

PH: '70?

 

MS: Yeah. Did you get more involved with Radicalesbians after this party?

 

PH: Yeah it wouldn't have been '68 because I wasn't doing it then. Did I get more? Well yeah, I went to the consciousness-raising, c-r groups, in West Philly, which I think were sponsored by the same group?

 

MS: Ahah. And where did those meet?

 

PH: That was in the, oh I don't know. My recollection is around 42nd and Springfield, something like that.

 

MS: And was it in someone's house or was it a Women's Center of some sort.

 

PH: It was a Women's Center. On the second story of that.

 

MS: And what were the consciousness-raising groups like? Were they all-lesbian, or women, straight and lesbian?

 

PH: I think they were all-lesbian.

 

MS: And what would you do with the c-r groups? How many people would be there? And what would you do?

 

PH: There would be about twenty women. And I can't tell you what we talked about. We talked about being lesbians, I guess. I tell you the main dynamic was not only what was said but who was there. Part of the point was to meet people, if not the main point.

 

MS: Ahah. Is that right? So you found that as more important than any kind of development of ideology or….

 

PH: Well I wouldn't say that. But I would say that that was a very important component of it. And it was very nice to be, I mean it was incredibly nice to be meeting people outside of a bar. Not that, I mean I love to drink. It's not that. It's just it was just such a departure just to be having a conversation in a lighted place instead of a dark, smoky place.

 

MS: Were most of the women living, I don't know exactly how to say this, living as lesbians. By which I mean that they weren't married or that they weren't....

 

PH: Mmhmm. Yeah, I think you could say that.

 

MS: And were they mostly single or a good mix of single and partnered women?

 

PH: No, it seemed like mostly everybody was single. I don't think couples came very much. As soon as we became a couple, I met this woman Nikki Welch....

 

MS: And you stopped going? Did you stop going at that point?

 

PH: Well we went a little bit but we pretty much stopped going.

 

MS: Do you think, looking back, that people were there as single women, and when they became partnered there was less of a reason to continue going? Yes?

 

PH: Yes, yes, and that seems to be a dynamic. I told you that later on I started a group for women over forty in Giovanni's Room. Then moved it out. We met at Giovanni's Room, then out at the Christian Association. And you could see it over and over and over. That was not my dynamic because I was with Dolores Klaich at the time. But you could see it over and over. That when women came and they would meet somebody, they wouldn't come back. And if they broke up, they would come back and find somebody else. And so often what were left were people that nobody wanted to be with.

 

MS: Do you remember talking about gay men at the Radicalesbians c-r groups.

 

PH: Talking about gay men? No, I don't remember any discussion at all of gay men. What was a hotter interest and topic was straight women and how we fit into the emerging feminist movement. And there was all that to-do in New York, with Betty Friedan and the purge of lesbians from NOW and all of that business. And it was very difficult relating to straight women. So no, I don't remember any discussions at all about gay men.

 

MS: But you had said your group was all lesbian, is that right? So those discussions about straight women were not taking place within the group? They were sort of about women who weren't in the group? Is that right?

 

PH: Well I don't know. I mean maybe I'm mixing up my dates again. But I remember trying to have some. I can't really recall exactly what the project was or whether we were going to share some space or do something together. And I met with somebody else, met with a group of straight women, for some common purpose. And it just was a hideous experience. I mean we just might have been meeting with aliens. It was terrible.

 

MS: Is that right?

 

PH: Yeah. It was a very, very strange, awful feeling. But you do have to keep in mind that this was all kind of part of the feminist movement too. I think that as lesbians were getting more strength, the feminist movement was happening too.

 

MS: Right.

 

PH: So where are we going with this?

 

MS: O.K. Well maybe we can turn to this chronology and give you a couple of landmarks if that's all right. I know that you thought that you had been to this July 17th, 1970, dance that HAL sponsored at St. Mary's.

 

PH: Mmhmm [assent]. 1970, did you say that is?

 

MS: Yeah.

 

PH: Uhuh [assent]. Yeah.

 

MS: And that does sound familiar to you?

 

PH: Definitely.

 

MS: Do you remember anything about it?

 

PH: A lot of men. And a lot of dancing wildly, which I think was something that eventually led. Yes, equal numbers of Blacks and whites. Many more men than women, yeah. I remember Barbara Gittings involved in this, I believe, and I believe John Wyle. I know I've mentioned that name to you, but that was my recollection, that he had to do with that.

 

MS: So you went with a group of women?

 

PH: Yes.

 

MS: And it was a good time?

 

PH: It was a good time. It was a good time. I think there were a couple of them. And they were fun, except that the men were too outrageous. The men were just, I don't know, either have so much more energy or dance so much more obviously or something that they sort of crowd women. I always feel that.

 

MS: And you felt that at those dances?

 

PH: Yeah.

 

MS: They took up a lot of space.

 

PH: Yeah, yeah they did.

 

MS: Well let's see. The Temple Gay Liberation Front dance with 500 people. That I think you said you didn't remember? Do you remember going to dances at Temple? I think there was a series of those as well.

 

PH: No. I think they were for Temple students.

 

MS: O.K.

 

PH: I think Tommi Avicolli maybe was involved in that.

 

MS: That's right, that's right. And then I asked you before I guess about the Black Panthers' Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention at Temple. And there was a Radicalesbians workshop but you don't remember being part of that?

 

PH: No, let's see. Radicalesbians demands are not read, leading to much anger. I can't honestly say I do remember that, no.

 

MS: O.K. I'm just picking out those things that I think are most likely that you might know about. None of these things in 1970 stand out. I think you said before that you didn't know much about the People's Fund controversy.

 

PH: Mmhmm [no].

 

MS: Eid you know anything about the Philadelphia Christian Homophile Church. Reverend Bob Louis. Does that sound familiar?

 

PH: Sounds familiar but no, I don't know about it.

 

MS: O.K.

 

PH: Are these things that Barbara has given you?

 

MS: No these are a collection of sources, from multiple sources.

 

PH: O.K.

 

MS: And I guess here.

 

PH: Oh now Frank Kameny. I sort of remember him. EB?

 

MS: That's the Evening Bulletin. That's just my notes.

 

PH: Now somewhere, oh it's later, the Bulletin did a wonderful. I wondered if you had access to the Bulletin.

 

MS: Yeah.

 

PH: They did a wonderful half-page article on when we started the Lesbian Coffeehouse. They did a whole big thing.

 

MS: I think I may have that actually. Maybe we can look at that too.

 

PH: Oh really? Oh I'd love to see it cause I don't have a copy of it.

 

MS: March 28th, 1971. I guess this you said you do remember participating in. HAL and the Christian Homophile Church picketed outside Reverend Carl McIntire’s church in Collingwood, New Jersey.

 

PH: Yes.

 

PH: It's actually Collingswood.

 

MS: Collingswood.

 

PH: There's a "g" in there. Yup.

 

MS: So you were out there?

 

PH: Yes, yes, I remember that very clearly.

 

MS: You remember any of the other people who were there?

 

PH: I'm sorry. I can't remember who I went with.

 

MS: Would you do a lot of these kinds of actions?

 

PH: Yes.

 

MS: Going to places like this?

 

PH: Ahah.

 

MS: Do you remember any others?

 

PH: No.

 

MS: That's all right. O.K.

 

PH: We did something else with McIntire, though. What did we do?

 

MS: Yeah, there were several actions. We might come to that. There were several actions around that.

 

PH: Oh O.K.

 

MS: Gay Activist Alliance-Philadelphia was founded in September 1971. Did you ever go to any of their meetings?

 

PH: Yes I did, ahah.

 

MS: Where did they meet?

 

PH: My recollection is somewhere around 12th and Lombard?

 

MS: Was it Horizon House?

 

PH: Yeah, that sounds right. Ahah.

 

MS: And what were those meetings like?

 

PH: Mostly men. All men. All men.

 

MS: And comfortable environment for a lesbian? Or not particularly?

 

PH: Well it was all very exciting for me. It really grew out of my friendship. I was very, very close to Tom Wilson and it grew out of that and also just an excitement, just something that, I mean looking back on it, I think it—I don’t think, I know—it was my Quaker calling. It was not only my personal interest as a lesbian but it was my particular calling. And still is. It's just something I just felt very, very deeply.

 

MS: Now how did you know Tom Wilson?

 

PH: Well how did I meet Tom Wilson? That's a good question.

 

MS: Was it through the arts scene?

 

PH: Mmhmm [no]. No, although I remember I was pretty impressed when he resigned from the Mask and Wig Club. Do you know that story?

 

MS: Mmhmm [no].

 

PH: Because they didn't want a gay man. They didn't want a gay man. And he was on the Board. And then he also resigned, his family owns this camp, somewhere upstate New York or somewhere.

 

MS: I know he had been a camp counselor there.

 

PH: Yeah, and it was very dear to his heart. And they wouldn't let he and John or him return, to be around the boys.

 

MS: Is that right?

 

PH: Yeah. And it was very upsetting.

 

MS: So you didn't, then, feel any contradictions between going to GAA meetings and being part of Radicalesbians as well? Or was there some sort of tension in participating in both?

 

PH: Well I saw myself as a bridge. I mean you can tell me. Maybe Marge McCann or somebody, I'm not aware of Marge McCann at all in that time, but I can't think of anybody else, certainly not Barbara, who was sort of a bridge to a separatist kind of political emerging and also involved with gay men. And I kind of prided myself on that.

 

MS: Why do you think more women weren't occupying that position?

 

PH: Well later I became very much of a separatist. My friends contradict me when I say that. I always think that I am very radical separatist type and they don't. They say, “Oh you've always had men friends and you've always been involved with gay men.” But that's not how I see myself. But anyway, I did, yes I did go to that. Did Dennis Rubini found it? Or did somebody else?

 

MS: He was an officer for a time.

 

PH: Jerry Curtis? Was he involved in it?

 

MS: I think so.

 

PH: O.K. Yes, I did go to meetings.

 

MS: Well these were the dances I guess you were talking about. The dances continued at St. Mary's of HAL. Let's see.

 

PH: Wow! The Bulletin had all these? All this news that you got from the Evening Bulletin?

 

MS: Yup.

 

PH: Hmmm. Now the Gay Media Project was formed yet or or not yet?

 

MS: That comes later. We'll come to that. These Halloween costume balls at the Drake and then the Warwick. Was that something you went to?

 

PH: I have, but I don't think I went then.

 

MS: O.K.

 

PH: Was that Henri David then?

 

MS: Yeah.

 

PH: Back that far? Was it?

 

MS: October 30th, 1971, twenty members of GAA, Radicalesbians, HAL, and the Homosexual Information Service picket the campaign headquarters of Thatcher Longstreth and Frank Rizzo.

 

PH: Oh I'm sure. I'm sure I did that. Yes, I'm quite sure I did that.

 

MS: Was there much cooperation between Radicalesbians and GAA?

 

PH: In fact I have some wonderful, oh Marc, I have to find these pictures for you. Did I tell you about these pictures that I found? They're street puppets that we made, to go along Chestnut Street and all over Center City to protest Rizzo. And they're wonderful. They're really neat pictures. But where are they? Good question. And they're from that time.

 

MS: Was there much cooperation between GAA and Radicalesbians as far as you remember?

 

PH: Was there much cooperation? No, I don't remember much cooperation.

 

MS: Just these isolated actions, I guess?

 

PH: Well gosh, who was the main woman here. I can't even think if it was. Was it a group of us? I don't remember really being a leader of that. Do you have a name?

 

MS: I'd have to look up the article but no one comes to mind. A GAA protest at Samuel Hadden, the psychiatrist, December 1971.

 

PH: Mmhmm [no]. No, I don't remember that.

 

MS: The coffeehouses at U. Penn. that Kiyoshi organized?

 

PH: I remember the coffeehouses. Yeah, I remember going to them. Disbands in what year are we in? '71?

 

MS: '71, yeah.

 

PH: Huh.

 

MS: These I don't have more specific dates for. Why don't we move on to '72.

 

PH: Do you know why? Did Barbara explain that?

 

MS: Yeah, I have some sense of that. I think more Ada actually, but Barbara as well. I think a lot of the people continued on to work on the community center but I think the feeling was that homophile was an outdated term. And also some amount of generational conflict with the younger people.

 

PH: Well I don't know how old Barbara is, but I'm fifty-eight. I mean I can't imagine that Ada or Barbara, or Barbara's probably a little older than I am. Sixty, probably about sixty-one. Do you know?

 

MS: I think she was born in '29.

 

PH: Oh really? That much older? But I kind of resent that, when people say that, when they explain things by generational things. Because, well I don't know, because I'm the age I am. And I think it's not necessarily an explanation for why people behave they do.

 

MS: Right.

 

PH: I mean you can be older and be radical and you can be younger and be conservative.

 

MS: Sure. No I guess what people have said about this was that this group had started before Stonewall. Ada has said that even the word homophile was considered quite outdated. And that most of the members of HAL were not students. And Gay Liberation Front, not necessarily GAA, but Gay Liberation Front was primarily like a student movement. That how a lot of people have described it. It was based very much at Temple and Penn. So it's only in that sense I think that people have talked about generational conflict. Certainly Barbara talks about the conflicts that she had with lesbian feminists. But you're right, it's not purely a generational conflict. It was a political conflict.

 

PH: Yeah, and that would be my explanation before I heard your answer. My explanation would be that lesbians were taking a lot of energy elsewhere. And it just was becoming irrelevant. But that's O.K. I mean things have their life.

 

MS: I guess I'm most interested in the things that you participated in directly. So maybe we'll come to some of those. The GAA picket of a Republican fundraiser at the Academy of Music?

 

PH: I don't remember it.

 

MS: The Gay Alternative I guess started June 1972.

 

PH: Like I say, GAA was mostly men. In fact I can only remember one woman. And I can't even think….

 

MS: Cathy McPeek?

 

PH: Right.

 

MS: Is that her?

 

PH: She's the woman who ran off and married the gay man?

 

MS: Yeah, I've heard that. Can you tell me something about that?

 

PH: No. No, my memory is refreshed by you telling me actually.

 

MS: Oh, O.K.

 

PH: But no, I guess that's why I didn't do a lot of things with them although I did go to a couple of meetings. And I have, up in New Hampshire, I have up on blocks a '65 Mustang convertible that I had at the time. And I have--I was just looking at it when I was up there a few weeks ago--a GAA sticker on the visor.

 

MS: Well the Gay Alternative began in June 1972.

 

PH: Did it?

 

MS: And you talked to me about having some involvement with the Gay Alternative. Can you explain to me what your role with them was?

 

PH: Well let's see. Well I guess Dan Sherbo and Tom Wilson, Joe McGlone, I guess they started it. I don't have a memory of helping to found it. But I certainly worked on it a lot. I mean we put it together out at Penn. And did a lot of editing and a lot of graphic stuff. And I mean Dan Sherbo is just a tour de force in the art department. So he did most of that but I did a lot of it too. I mean I worked hard on it over a period of time.

 

MS: Would you say it a collaborative lesbian-gay effort? Or was it primarily gay men and a few lesbians?

 

PH: Well me and gay men, yeah.

 

MS: Yeah?

 

PH: Just me, and Rachel contributed some. She didn't work the way I did but she did contribute some articles, I think. Do you have them?

 

MS: Yes.

 

PH: Do you have all the issues of it?

 

MS: Yeah, yeah. And do you remember tensions between the lesbian community and the Gay Alternative?

 

PH: See it's funny, I wonder. Now what has become of Radicalesbians at this point? Are there still references to them?

 

MS: Yeah. Why do you ask?

 

PH: I ask because it just doesn't feel like I was representing a community much. It just feels like these were just such sort of very fledgling efforts. I don't know. I mean my relationship with them was very close. Dan and Bernie and Tom. I mean we were all like this. And it was the only game in town. I think this was the only. This was before Wicce. Before we did Wicce. And Wicce grew out of this really. I did this for awhile and Rachel contributed some.

 

MS: How did Wicce start?

 

PH: Well it started just as we decided we should have a lesbian publication. Why shouldn’t we be doing that? But it wasn't a hostile thing at all. I mean you've asked a number of times the relationship between lesbians and gay men. And at that point, it was very, very, very good. At least my relationship with them was.

 

MS: Well here, June 11th was the first gay pride march in Philadelphia. This was in 1972 still.

 

PH: 10,000 people! You mean ten people!

 

MS: Well 10,000 is what the Evening Bulletin reported.

 

PH: Oh stop. 10,000 people.

 

MS: And then The Advocate reported 2500. And Byrna Aronson and Jerry Curtis were listed as the spokespeople. You remember it much smaller.

 

PH: I remember, yes, much smaller.

 

MS: Do you remember much about that event?

 

PH: No I don't. I just remember being down there. And how exciting it was. And also how scary it was. Walking through the streets. I mean proud and scary. Not knowing if you were going to get stoned. And also I felt some embarrassment. I'm ashamed to say that I felt some embarrassment, that there were, it felt to me, like really the fringes of society. And maybe that was just my little deb Huntingdon Valley self feeling that way. But there was a lot of drag queens and people who felt like, which can often be the case. If people can be radical because they don't have a lot to lose. I mean sometimes that's the case. I don't mean it always, to take away from anybody's courage or strength. But there were quite a few people who didn't have too much to lose but maybe there were a lot of people who did, too, and I'm just not aware. If there were 10,000 people, obviously there were. That must be a misprint or something. I mean what have other people said.

 

MS: Again, I can't recall that specifically. I did pick up on the conflict between 2500 and 10,000 in those two reports. I mean there's always a conflict on these marches about whether to count bystanders.

 

PH: Yes, that's true.

 

MS: So it's still possible that's why your memories are more important to me than….

 

PH: Honestly my memory is 300 would have been a lot.

 

MS: And it's also possible that you're remembering something different, other than what was called in the newspaper the pride march cause there were other kinds of events, too. Let's see.

 

PH: Gay Libber?

 

MS: Yeah.

 

PH: Hmmm!

 

MS: I have to dig up that story.

 

PH: Yeah, really.

 

MS: Let's see, this is I guess maybe the first action of the Gay Raiders. Mark Segal and Sag Powell doing an action against WPVI. And then GAA organized an action on Larry Kane's show.

 

PH: That was exciting.

 

MS: And what was your sense of the Gay Raiders and Mark Segal?

 

PH: Oh I thought he was wonderful. I mean I know some people didn't get along with him but I did. And I thought that was great.

 

MS: Why didn't people get along with him then?

 

PH: Let's see, why didn't people? I don't know. You'll have to ask the people that didn't get along with him.

 

MS: O.K., then why did you like what he was doing?

 

PH: Because I thought it was gutsy; it was radical. I mean I just gave him a lot of credit for that. A little guerilla warfare there. That's good.

 

MS: Ahah. O.K. Let's see I have noted a feminist rally in Rittenhouse Square that was covered by the Evening Bulletin on August 26^th, 1972. But I don't have any other details.

 

PH: I'm sorry I can't help you there. I probably went to it although feminist does not necessarily mean it was lesbian. There was a lot of tension between feminists and lesbians then.

 

MS: Right. What were the flashpoints of those tensions? Do you recall any?

 

PH: Well as I say, again I don't really know the year of that, but the very well-publicized event of feminists in New York purging the NOW lesbians.

 

MS: Right.

 

PH: I don't know.

 

MS: I guess the local flashpoint I've noticed is when Jan Welch was elected the president of the local NOW chapter. Does that ring a bell? She was openly lesbian.

 

PH: She was a friend of mine, yeah, she was. I haven't seen her in years. Yeah, I worked on that. I helped her. We were very close. And I helped her with the publicity.

 

MS: I guess we'll come to that. That was a little bit later.

 

PH: I have a funny story that I can tell you off of, maybe when we have lunch again.

 

MS: O.K.

 

PH: About Lynn Abraham around that time.

 

MS: Well I think I won't focus so much on the GAA and the Mark Segal activities cause I'm really more interested in the specific things that you were doing. And there may not be any right here.

 

PH: Oh good for him. I don't remember that. But that was neat. Philadelphia Magazine what? Feature on the gay movement? I don't remember that.

 

MS: That was an article by Ark Spikol. I think it's called "Gay Today."

 

PH: Really?

 

MS: Yeah.

 

PH: Huh, O.K.

 

MS: Let's see. Gay Switchboard.

 

PH: Chained himself to the Liberty Bell? All right!

 

MS: Here's the election of Jan Welch.

 

PH: Oh Gay Switchboard, that's interesting.

 

MS: Gay Switchboard was here, February 19th, 1973. Did you have any involvement with that?

 

PH: Well I didn't really have involvement with the Gay Switchboard. But my involvement there is that this sort of evolved, because it was in the same space, the Quakers own that building on 3rd Street. I could give you the address if you need it. Like 32 North Third Street. And I was on a committee within the Quaker meeting, the Family Relations Committee, and a sub-group for gay and lesbian concerns or something. And because they were using it at certain hours, I got permission on this committee that I was on, got them to agree to use it as a lesbian coffeehouse, to open up at night. And then eventually they kicked us out in '76 when the Bicentennial was coming. And also we were running out of energy in the Lesbian Coffeehouse anyway. It was a volunteer thing.

 

MS: Right. I have notes on that that are going to come up too. I guess here we finally get to Jan Welch elected president of Philadelphia NOW. So you worked on her campaign.

 

PH: Yeah, we were very good friends. Ahah.

 

MS: And do you remember a lot of conflicts surrounding her election?

 

PH: No, no I don't. Was there? I mean have you heard that referred to?

 

MS: No. The articles talk about one straight woman who had some objections. But she won smoothly and it seems like Philadelphia didn't have the kind of eruption the way New York did, from what I can tell, from her election.

 

PH: It was just one of those funny, almost a quirky, thing that happened. It probably couldn't happen, well maybe it could happen today. But it couldn't have happened probably ten years later. It did happen smoothly. And she was just so obviously the choice. She was the right person to be president.

 

MS: Founding of Giovanni's Room, September 1973. Did you used to go when it first opened down on South Street?

 

PH: Oh yeah, yeah. Like I said, I was very close to these, some of my closest friends, and I helped them.

 

MS: Were there other gay businesses aside from Giovanni's Room that were opening up at around that time?

 

PH: Gay businesses? No, Marc. No there weren't other gay businesses. The only other public gay thing at all was Eromin Center. And that, I believe, grew out of the Switchboard, Keith Clark and the Switchboard, yeah.

 

MS: Gays at Penn. Gay Raiders. Walter Cronkite show. Oh here, I guess it was in '73 that Wicce began publication. Who were the principal women involved with that, as you recall?

 

PH: Well me and Rachel Rubin and Joan Meyers and Joyce Finkelman. And Victoria wrote for it, Victoria Brownworth. I don't believe she was one of the founding people.

 

MS: Did you all have an office?

 

PH: My house, the Barn.

 

MS: Yeah?

 

PH: The Barn. And it was a pretty darned good paper. If you don't have copies; you do have copies of it.

 

MS: I do have copies, yeah. I've taken pretty extensive notes on it. It's great, yeah.

 

PH: Yeah, it's not bad. I'm pretty amazed myself when I look back on it.

 

MS: There's an interview with Rusty that I looked at.

 

PH: Yeah.

 

MS: And a lot of stuff around Susan Saxe. Let's see: Lesbian Hotline was formed in 1973. Does that sound familiar?

 

PH: Yeah it does but I didn't have anything to do with it.

 

MS: O.K. Let's see. None of these stand out to you?.

 

PH: Community center. I was involved. Well I wasn't involved with the search but I was very close friends with, oh god, I don't remember. It will come to me.

 

MS: O.K.

 

PH: Steve, the architect for it. He was involved. Mirman, Steve Mirman. M-I-R-M-A-N.

 

MS: Oh right, yes. Let's see, then March 7th. Three city councilmen agree to sponsor the gay rights bill. Were you involved much in the fight for bill 1275?

 

PH: Yes I was, but I didn't testify. I'm trying to think. Well do you have much on this? Do you have?

 

MS: Yeah, I have a lot of newspaper articles, yeah.

 

PH: Supporting stuff, yeah.

 

MS: And then Tom Wilson started The Weekly Gayzette in April of '74. Were you involved with that as well?

 

PH: Well yes, I helped him. I just helped him with the graphics and stuff. Let's see, where did he do that? I remember going somewhere on Spruce Street, around 15^th. I remember going there and working on that with him. I don't know how long it lasted. Do you know?

 

MS: At least 'til '77.

 

PH: Did it really?

 

MS: Yeah. It lasted that long.

 

PH: Oh I didn't work. I mean I just worked on some issues with him. I didn't work on it for three years. That's for sure.

 

MS: I see.

 

PH: But I helped him once in awhile. I think he did it by himself with Joe McGlone pretty much.

 

MS: At some point he turned over the editorship to someone else. I've forgotten who right now. It might come to me.

 

PH: That's right.

 

[interruption]

 

MS: We were just starting to talk about the Gay Media Project, which you were involved with?

 

PH: I was involved with it but I wasn't any core person.I certainly was involved, yeah. I went to meetings.

 

MS: What was the idea?

 

PH: What is this, seventy, what year are we in?

 

MS: We're in '74.

 

PH: Really?

 

MS: Yeah.

 

PH: O.K.

 

MS: What kind of people do you associate with the Gay Media Project.

 

PH: Just mostly Barbara Gittings and John Wyle I did some speaking things with. Actually John and I were kind of a pair. And Jerry Dilno. And what was her lover's name? Do you know? Does that come to mind? And who else? Did I say Mark Segal?

 

MS: No you didn't. And what was the idea of the Gay Media Project?

 

PH: I remember great tension between Mark and Barbara.

 

MS: Is that right?

 

PH: Yeah. Yeah, even though they may not refer to it. There was great tension between them.

 

MS: What was the nature of the conflict? Was it political? O.K. Well actually this is something you mentioned before. August '74, the women's-only Lesbian Coffeehouse begins. Do you think that’s the coffeehouse that you were talking about in the Quaker building?

 

PH: Yes I do believe it was, since that was the only lesbian coffeehouse. I think thirty, like I said, 32 North 3rd, I think.

 

MS: And were you involved beyond helping to get the space?

 

PH: Yeah. I mean I feel like I started that. I don't know. Maybe other people say other things. Now where did you get this information again?

 

MS: Past around here I stopped writing down my citations. So I don't remember. That could be from Wicce. For some reason I think it might be in Wicce.

 

PH: Yeah, I mean there were other women involved. Let's see, well Sharon Musson. And well I was lovers with Dolores Klaich then. And I remember we went there together. I mean we volunteered and we opened it and closed it each night.

 

MS: You said Sharon Wilson?

 

PH: Musson. M-U-S-S-O-N.

 

MS: Why don't you tell me about the relationship with Dolores Klaich? That happened around this time, is that right?

 

PH: Ahah. Yes.

 

MS: And how did you get involved?

 

PH: I met her on the Edie Huggins Show. I was on the Edie Huggins Show. I can't tell you what channel it was. I would guess six, but I could be wrong.

 

MS: What kind of show was it?

 

PH: I thought it was like the first tv show, but apparently not. Apparently there was another tv show that you refer to in here.

 

MS: First to do what?

 

PH: Well on the subject of gays and lesbians. And Barbara Gittings was on it. And me. And Dolores was on it because she had just written this book, Woman + Woman. And she was just on a publicity tour from Simon and Schuster. I mean she was just going all around the country, talking about this book. And so I guess the station took that as an opportunity when they got her press release or something and said, here she was coming to town, to put together a little gay show. And a wonderful woman, oh gosh, I must think of her name for you. She's tall. She was a friend of Barbara Gittings. I'll think of it later. So me, that woman, Barbara, Dolores. I can't remember a man on it. But I think there was a man on it.

 

MS: And that was the first time you met Dolores Klaich?

 

PH: On the show.

 

MS: Yeah, it was on the show. But am I right that she wrote the book while in Philadelphia?

 

PH: No.

 

MS: That's not right.

 

PH: No, she didn’t have anything to do with Philadelphia except me.

 

MS: I see. O.K.

 

PH: Yeah we met on the show. And she had the woman that she lived with, but they weren't lovers at that point, with her. Just as a companion, kind of an aid. And oh just great sparks flew. And I could say accurately I think that we fell in love in that moment. And we, the three of us, drove off to Cape May, New Jersey, to a guesthouse.

 

MS: That very day?

 

PH: That very day, right after the show. We just took off in my Mustang convertible.

 

MS: Did Dolores move down here?

 

PH: No.

 

MS: Or did you have a commuting relationship?

 

PH: Yeah, we had a commuting relationship. It's funny, because in Cape May, she and I walked into, when we were lining up a hotel room, a guesthouse. We were sort of going along the beach and we went into this motel. And the woman at the desk said, when we both walked in, she looked at me, and she looked at Dolores. She went like this. She's pointing to both of us. She said, “You were just on television.” And here we were, just like two hours later, we were in her motel. It blew her mind. It blew ours too. “You were just on television.” “Yes, you're right. You watched the show on gays and lesbians, did you? So anyway, we got very, very intensely involved. And it was a wonderful time. We were lovers from '74 to '77. And she continued to live in New York, although she had a little summer place out in Bucks County that we would go to. And she volunteered, she helped out in the store. And after that, through being in Philadelphia with me, somebody put together--I don't know if it was GAA or who put it together; oh I guess it was Gays at Penn--a whole series of gay and lesbian speakers and she was one of them.

 

MS: I see.

 

PH: Do you have any record of that? Does that ring a bell cause that would be a good thing.

 

MS: I can't remember. There's too much stuff these years for me to keep track of everything.

 

PH: Well you should make a note of that cause that was an interesting series. It was Dolores with an O. D-O-L-O-R-E-S. Klaich.

 

MS: I have material on Penn, Gays at Penn.

 

PH: Ahah. Yeah that was a neat series. It was Vito Russo of gays in film. Very exciting time. I think Kate Millett spoke, too, as part of that series. So have other people referred to Dolores as a Philadelphian or that she had some involvement here other than with me?

 

MS: I thought I read that she had been living in Philly when she wrote Woman + Woman. But I read a lot of things.

 

PH: Yeah, no.

 

MS: And I can only be held responsible for what I write.

 

PH: Well you have a wonderful memory.

 

MS: Pat Hill buys Giovanni's Room, August '74. Is that accurate?

 

PH: I bought it but I had been running it long before that. Because they had wanted out of it. And I honestly think if I hadn't bought it, I only bought it for $500. So that gives you an idea of how big a business it was. And, like I say, this Au Courant article on Giovanni's Room a few months ago on the twenty-year history or whatever it was, was very, very inaccurate by my recollections anyway.

 

MS: Well since the tape doesn't include the article, why don't you say what the problem with that article was and what your recollections are?

 

PH: Well my recollection was that Tom and Dan and Bernie, or Tom, arranged the financial parts of it, I guess signed the lease and everything and was the money behind it. Although other people's efforts went into it. I remember that the bookshelves, I mean I helped, they were sanding the floors and everything. And I was helping out with all of that, too, or at least visiting. And like I say, they were my friends. And I remember Jeffrey Escoffier stole the bookshelves from Penn's library for the store, or at least some. I don't know if they were all from there. But I still have them actually. They're beautiful mahogany bookshelves. And let's see, my recollection was that they arranged to open it in September. I'm not sure it opened then. But they got the lease and everything in September of whatever year this is, what are we in now '74.

 

MS: '74, yeah.

 

PH: So that would have been in September of '73 that they got that.

 

MS: O.K.

 

PH: And then I don't know when they actually opened.

 

MS: I don't have it here. But oh yeah, I have September they found Giovanni's Room, whatever that means. In '73. So that's right, September '73.

 

PH: Ahah, O.K. I don't know if they opened the doors then cause they did have to do a lot of work on it. But maybe they did. Anyway, my recollection was that they ran it like October, November, December, for a few months, and were really, it was a lot of, even though it was just a fledgling store. There weren't very many titles at all. It tied them down. And they thought for the three of them, it was a lot of work for them. And I don't think it was terribly long, it was by the spring, that they wanted to get rid of it. And by early summer I said that I would run it. I pretty much took it over but we didn't have a transfer of ownership or anything. I still was working for the city. And I wanted to see if I could do it, if I enjoyed doing it, if it was doable for me. And it was a big decision for me because it meant leaving the city. So anyway, by August, I did actually buy it, like I say, for $500. But I had been running it for a couple of months.

 

MS: Was it in the same location? Did it stay in the same location while you owned it?

 

PH: Yeah.

 

MS: And did you change it much, during the years that you owned it, from what it was on its way to becoming?

 

PH: Well I certainly helped it grow. I developed it, I believe. I mean it was just, like I say, it was very, very modest. The sales tax for a quarter, I think, paid to the state was like $15 for the quarter. That's three months. Now what does that tell you. It tells you how many sales there were. And we wrote them down every day. It was very, very elemental.

 

MS: So it wasn't providing you with a livable wage.

 

PH: Oh no, not at all. Not at all. And yeah, so I was just struggling along. I did leave my job.

 

MS: Do you think it made a difference that a lesbian owned it from, from three gay men owning it?

 

PH: I like to think that it did. Yeah, I certainly brought women, I mean I brought my friends in and the people that I was involved. Well not involved romantically with. Like Wine, Women, and Song sang there. I had a little series of entertainment. Sharon did a magic show. And Joan Meyers had a photographic exhibit there. And a friend of mine from Quaker meeting, Bob Dickinson, who later became Roberta Dickinson, had a show of his paintings there, his erotic paintings. And he was an architect, a very interesting guy.

 

MS: So you think the principal change was bringing in larger numbers of women, lesbians.

 

PH: Yeah, yeah, although men continued to be involved. Not Dan. That's not true. Dan did continue to volunteer there. I mean nobody was paid. Everybody was volunteer. And then, as I said, by the spring of I guess the next year, I was so destitute that I went on welfare and was on welfare, like I said, for eight years while I continued all this business. And when I went to welfare, it's funny, at first I was turned down. I explained my situation. And you can have a business that doesn't make money and be on welfare. And the guy just sort of flatly turned me down. And I am not one to cry. I mean really, I cried. I do not cry easily. I just burst into tears in the guy's office. I was like if I didn't get this $32 a week in food stamps, I really didn't know what I was going to do. And I just burst out crying. And he got up from his desk. And he just says, “Well let me look into this.” So he goes down the hall and then he came back and he said it was approved. Like of all the embarrassing things to pull. I mean it wasn't planned. It was perfectly genuine. But a woman getting her way by crying is so embarrassing but nevertheless it was good.

 

MS: Since we don't have too much time left, I just want to make sure….

 

PH: So also I want to say that I feel like I had Giovanni's Room for three years. I think Au Courant said I had it for three months. I feel like I developed it. I feel like if I hadn't bought it, there wouldn't be any Giovanni's Room. Because nobody else was dying to buy it, believe me. And I helped it grow. One of the reasons I didn't have any money was that any money that I made I put back into it by buying new titles and what have you.

 

MS: I have to say, don't worry: I'm not going to rely on Au Courant for my historical information.

 

PH: Good, good. And then when I went to sell it, Mark Segal wanted to buy it. But I'm sorry to say that that that didn't seem like the thing that would be….  

 

MS: Is that right?

 

PH: Yeah.

 

MS: So these are just repeats of things where originally I didn't have the dates. Like the Gay Media Project. The creation of Eromin. The Lesbian Coffeehouse.

 

PH: I don't know about spun off from GAA. Is that really true? Or was it separate?

 

MS: It was the media committee of GAA.

 

PH: Was it?

 

MS: Yeah.

 

PH: Cause I don't think Barbara Gittings was involved in GAA. Was she?

 

MS: That's right. No she wasn't.

 

PH: And wasn't she the main person in there?

 

MS: It was the sort of thing where there was a media committee. They met, decided to form a Gay Media Project. And the very first meeting there were non-GAA people there who really took it off. And I guess this address that I have is 60 North 3rd Street for the Lesbian Coffeehouse. Is that the same location you were saying?

 

PH: Could be. My guess was 32. But could be 60.

 

MS: Is it where the Gay Switchboard, Eromin, and the Gay Coffeehouse were as well?

 

PH: Ahah.

 

MS: The way you remember it?

 

PH: Well not Gay Coffeehouse. Lesbian Coffeehouse. I don't think there was a gay coffeehouse there. Was there? Is there a reference to that.

 

MS: Yeah definitely. There was a gay coffeehouse. But I don't know if we're talking about two buildings or not.

 

PH: No, it was just one building. So there was a separate gay men's coffeehouse.

 

MS: Yeah. Tommi Avicolli I know was quite involved. People describe it as being like a low-ceiling basement with like parachute netting on the ceiling.

 

PH: Hmmm.

 

MS: Doesn't ring a bell? Tom Wilson Weinberg also has talked about it.

 

PH: Yeah well then please add here the Lesbian Coffeehouse.

 

MS: Yeah, that's what….

 

PH: Oh I'm sorry, I'm sorry. O.K. Opened. Now where are we here?

 

MS: This is '74 sometime. I don't have the date right here.

 

PH: O.K.

 

MS: Let's see, Susan Saxe. Can you talk to me a little bit about what that meant for Philadelphia, what that meant for you.

 

PH: Are you going to say more about this? Resigns from Recreation Department. Are you going to make that connected to Giovanni's Room. Or to devote full time to the gay movement. Or it just, Recreation, I mean is it just?

 

MS: These are just my notes for myself.

 

PH: O.K.

 

MS: I have a whole file on your resignation from the Rec Department.

 

PH: O.K., O.K.

 

MS: So Susan Saxe?

 

PH: Yes.

 

MS: What do you remember about that whole episode?

 

PH: Well I don't remember anything very fondly. So I don't know if it's one of those things that should be off-tape or not. But it was very, very upsetting. Because she was not from Philadelphia. She and Byrna had; it says Bryna, but it's Byrna. It's B-Y-R.

 

MS: Yeah I know.

 

PH: O.K. It just splintered the movement, the lesbian energy in Philadelphia. Because women, some women, Ellen Tichenor, a couple of other women, wanted to, in fact the woman I'm meeting at 8:00 was one of the women, wanted to support her because they had the larger involvement of the Weathermen and all of that, the sort of radical underground. And I didn't. My concern was for Philadelphia lesbians of which Susan Saxe was not one. It's interesting that she has stayed here. I guess she is now a Philadelphia lesbian.

 

MS: Right.

 

PH: At that point she certainly was not. And my understanding was that she had been lovers with....

 

MS: Kathy Power.

 

PH: Kathy Power, for quite a while.

 

MS: While underground.

 

PH: Yeah, while underground.

 

MS: Did you know her before her arrest?

 

PH: Susan?

 

MS: Yeah.

 

PH: No. I had met her. I had seen her once, I believe, in West Philadelphia.

 

MS: But you knew Byrna.

 

PH: I knew Byrna, yes I did. I knew Byrna from what, Radicalesbians? From I don't know, being around. Byrna was not involved in the Lesbian Coffeehouse and that kind of stuff. But I like Byrna. I like her a lot. And my memories of her are very, very good. But....

 

MS: So did you fall on one of the sides in the Susan Saxe debate? Or are you telling me now what your sort of thoughts are about it from years later.

 

PH: Oh no, it was very pointed then. There was a lot of anger around that and a lot of tension. And we hadn't had tension. We'd only just had love and kisses before that. And then along came the Susan Saxe thing. And that to me was just the end; it was kind of the end of an era.

 

MS: Did you feel that way, yeah?

 

PH: Yeah, I really did.

 

MS: What ended then?

 

PH: Well there wasn't enough energy. With Susan Saxe drawing off all these people. There were only a handful of us anyway, like five or six people. And three or four of them go off with Susan Saxe. And that really didn't leave much to do things with. And a lot of acrimony. Just a lot of upset.

 

MS: I have two questions I want to ask before maybe trying to finish up. Cause I think we should leave this behind cause….

 

PH: Well I wanted to say about the FBI here. Did I? I told you that off-tape, I think.

 

MS: Yeah, why don't you tell me?

 

PH: Well just how the FBI was just so clumsy. When she was arrested, they were wanting to infiltrate the lesbian community. And what they did was come in very, very obvious police cars to Giovanni's Room. And they sent a Black woman in, who I guess was supposed to look like a lesbian. But she looked like an FBI agent. And she was. And very, very goofy questions about the lesbian, about lesbians. And then I think they sent a man in. And then I found my house being surveillanced. They were up on the roof behind. My neighbors were alarmed by it. They were up on the roof behind my house, the Barn, on 11th Street. And my phone, I don't know if it was really bugged, but they were on the line. When I would pick it up to make a phone call, I would hear breathing and then I would say, “Is somebody on the line?” And they would say, “This is a recording,” like that. And that sort of thing. And I had to tell my neighbors what was going on. That these people were just trying to find out anything they could.

 

MS: And what they wanted to find out was…

 

PH: But I hadn't done anything.

 

MS: Kathy Power's whereabouts? Or information about Susan Saxe?

 

PH: Susan Saxe.

 

MS: Or accomplices?

 

PH: Yeah. I don't know what they wanted to find out. But they certainly wanted to find out more about her. And they didn't know how to do it because there wasn't any identifiable lesbian organization or anything they could get their hands on. And so I guess I was the only public lesbian that they could actually walk into a store and say well here's somebody that we could, this is someone we could follow and maybe will lead us to something else. But lesbians, you can't, it doesn't work that way. They didn't find out anything.

 

MS: Ahah. Ahah.

 

PH: So anyway, I'm sorry, what were you going to say?

 

MS: Well there were two things I wanted to make sure to ask before the tape ends. One is I'm asking everyone what they did around the Bicentennial celebration in Philadelphia cause I think lesbians and gay men did all sorts of different things around that event.

 

PH: Did they?

 

MS: And so I'm curious what you did?

 

PH: Well I don't know what we did around the event. But it was the time I had the store, of course. And I know that we were expecting everybody. I mean lots of people in Philadelphia were expecting a real windfall, were expecting that, although not being a mainstream business, I didn't think millions of gay people were going to come. But all of South Street was really sort of geared up for a great influx of tourists. And it was all going to be wonderful and it would give Giovanni's Room a lot of income maybe. But it was just a terrible disappointment to everybody. And Frank Rizzo helped scare everybody away. In terms of what we did, I mean we didn't decorate or anything. We didn't do anything specifically. I didn't advertise in any specific way to get people there.

 

MS: Did you participate in any of the protests around the Bicentennial or the celebration itself. Or it sounds like maybe you were focused on the store.

 

PH: Well I certainly was focused on the store and just trying to get by there. I mean it wasn't easy. It really wasn't easy. Trying to help it grow. And also, I must say, I was in love. Dolores and I were just having this wonderful madcap thing. It was a very heady time. We did a lot of speaking engagements together and me singly with her along. And her singly with me along.

 

MS: What kind of places did you do speaking engagements for?

 

PH: I remember I spoke and we ended up speaking together at Gays at Princeton, a group up in Princeton. I spoke at Temple at a class that I think Dennis Rubini had. I'm not sure. And gosh, where else? Too bad I didn't keep a diary since my memory's shot.

 

MS: Well the other question I wanted to make sure to ask, because it keeps coming up, is about the Barn. Now we talked before the tape started that this was the place that you had at 260 South 11th Street.

 

PH: South 11th Street, yeah.

 

MS: And you thought you lived there about '68 to '78.

 

PH: Ahah.

 

MS: Was it a collective house or was it just your place? Why does it stand out so much in your memory?

 

PH: Well it's just a wonderful place. It was a very unusual place. It does look like a barn. I eventually bought it from the Redevelopment Authority and sort of modified it some. It has a new front and everything. If you went by it today, you probably wouldn't think there was anything special about it. But there were a lot of women coming and going. Joan and I lived there, Joan Meyers and I. And it was just a very creative time. And Dolores and I were also there. I have to give Joan an awful lot of credit because she is such a wild and wooly creative person that she was making films there. It all looks more debauched than it really was. I mean we weren't all jumping in and out of bed with one another but it looked very romantic. And she would make fake tubs with dry ice in them so there'd be steam coming out. And then she would film us getting naked into these baths. It was very Fellini-esque actually. And women in costumes. And it just had a very romantic aura to it. And so I think that if you ask, let's see, who might else you ask? Well I don't know if you'll get to interview Joan or not, or Rachel, or Joyce Finkelman, or people who would have been in and out of there.

 

MS: They could tell me more about it.

 

PH: There are some wonderful photographs. I don't know what you're planning on doing visually with your book.

 

MS: Haven't really thought about it yet.

 

PH: Well that would be getting a little ahead of yourself, I guess.

 

MS: Yeah definitely. Listen I'm afraid that this is ending.

 

PH: Yeah.

 

MS: And I just want to leave some space for you to say any kind of summary things. I mean I don't have any specific questions but I want to make sure that anything you haven't gotten to say that you think's really important to say, what you maybe think is really important to say about Philadelphia lesbian/gay history.

 

PH: Well thank you. I think your questions have been good. And I haven't had an agenda so I don't have a conclusion.

 

MS: Do you think things got better?

 

PH: Oh things have definitely gotten better. It's funny how there's been such a long period where it looked like things were just regressing or that nothing was happening. And now that we have a president that can actually say the word gay and lesbian, there has just been this, and also I think sadly, because of AIDS, there's been an explosion of media attention, too. And so I think that some things have really changed pretty, pretty fast. Although we're certainly not there. But what was I going to say to you? Turn that off a second.

 

MS: O.K.

 

[interruption]

 

PH: Just that it really is a lifetime commitment for me. And it's something I just very deeply care about, trying to change things for gay and lesbian people. I'm happy to have spent my life that way except that it has cost me in that I have been in love with, mutually, not just alone, not been able to have relationships with a couple of very, very closeted women who just were terrified of being involved with somebody who is political. So that's been a cost. And then of course there's been just the cost of living on the edge of society, kind of financially, even though funny how I had my job income through winning the lawsuit. And so I do have a little pension from that.