Page 129 - Gay San Francisco: Eyewitness Drummer - Vol. 1

Gay San Francisco: Eyewitness Drummer 109
Joseph W. Bean at the San Francisco home of advertising and circulation
manager John Ferrari. (See John Ferrari, Drummer 115, April 1988, page
94; Drummer 145, masthead.) The purpose was to raise travel cash for
International Mr. Leather, Guy Baldwin, a Drummer columnist and a
psychotherapist who had appeared in Jim Wigler photographs in Drum-
mer 128 (May 1989), page 30, and on the cover and in the centerfold of
Drummer 132 (August 1989), and in Drummer 139 (May 1990), page 58.
With an RSVP invitation suggesting the dress code of “formal leathers,
dress uniform, or black tie,” the creme de leather crowd was that year’s
quintessence of the drop-dead salon around Drummer. Behind the cha-
rade of that party, who was doing what to whom, and what was the truth
of that salon?
(For Rashomon details in this Gay San Francisco: Eyewitness Drum-
mer, see the volume titled The Drummer Salon.)

“SPEAK LOW WHEN YOU SPEAK LOVE”

Marlon Brando’s film The Wild One (1953) exposed leather culture
and shaped Drummer in a good way.
John Ford’s film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence (1962) forecast
leather history in a bad way.
When the unruly biker Brando is asked, “What are you rebelling
against?” He snaps back: “Whatcha got?”
When the reporters conspire about how they should report the truth
about the man who supposedly shot Liberty Valence, revisionism wins
when one says: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
Some messengers should be killed.
Some seigneurial “historians” should stop quoting crap.
Revisionism is a cover up that is the worst kind of journalism, the
worst kind of history, and the worst kind of lie.
Before the Titanic 1970s and the era of Drummer pass into the hands
of historians, it is time to blow the whistle.
It is time for extrapolations and disinformation and agenda to stop.
Legend is gossip and lies.
Fact always trumps legend.
Truth is a boner.

©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved—posted 05-05-2017
HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK