Page 360 - Gay San Francisco: Eyewitness Drummer - Vol. 1

340 Jack Fritscher, Ph.D.

“Robert Opel Presents Rex,” Invitation, 1979. Drawing by Rex. Drawing ©Rex. Used
with permission. This announcement, the epitome of the zero degrees of separation in
the Drummer salon, was also published as a quarter-page display ad in Drummer 30 (June
1979). Rex and his work were profiled in Drummer by Jack Fritscher in his special “New
York Art” issue, Son of Drummer (September 1978). The bicoastal and reclusive Rex was the
official artist of Wally Wallace’s Mineshaft in New York. When a SoMa arsonist torched
the Barracks bath on Folsom Street during the night of July 10, 1981, the neighboring
studios of Rex and photographer Mark I. Chester were destroyed. The burning of the Bar-
racks and the flaming disintegration of Rex’s studio were fictionalized in Some Dance to
Remember: A Memoir-Novel of San Francisco 1970-1982, Reel 4, Sequence 3. The film, The
Rex Video Gallery: Corrupt Beyond Innocence, directed and photographed by Jack Fritscher
and edited by Mark Hemry, was a Palm Drive Video feature release (1993).

©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved—posted 05-05-2017
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