Page 478 - Gay San Francisco: Eyewitness Drummer - Vol. 1

458 Jack Fritscher, Ph.D.
He also posted warnings about violence: “This summer has been one
of the worst in terms of street crimes in the Village/Chelsea area.”
He told the following anecdote, characteristic of Mineshaft culture,
in Jack Fritscher Interviews Mineshaft Manager, Wally Wallace, March 28,
1990:

At one of our Mr. Mineshaft contests, one of the judges
thinks he recognizes one of the contestants [Michael Garrison]
as a man who seven years before had murdered the lover [Tom
Strogen] of a mutual friend [Rob Kilgallen] to both the judge
and me. So the judge tells me this during an intermission. The
two of us go to our mutual friend out in the crowd and he con-
firms this. [The contestant] had murdered the lover, had gone
to trial, and three years later he was out of jail, and now, a few
years later, was in the Mr. Mineshaft contest.

On another existing videotape in Wally Wallace’s collec-
tion — authenticated by reporter Bob Bailey in New York’s Gay Newspaper
Connection (June 11, 1985), the unsinkable Wally Wallace can be seen
calling winner-killer Garrison back to the stage, disqualifying him, and
humiliating him even as Garrison stands stripped to his contest costume
of chains, jockstrap, and Muir leather cap. “This is a man,” Wally Wallace
said, intoning the shunning to the crowd, “I never want to see again in the
Mineshaft because he took home a man who is no longer alive.”
Even so, males of every class, caste, and nationality felt safe and
secure under the omnipresent Wally Wallace’s watchful eye, his clothing-
check system, and his fire-safety regards.
Wally Wallace: Our building was safe, but the sex definitely
wasn’t. AIDS was still in the unforeseeable future.
Jack Fritscher: What was the dominant sexual activity at the
Mineshaft? It seemed, “Anything goes.”
Wally Wallace: The most basic thing was cocksucking, then
fucking, then fisting, then other things. Oh, rimming. And
a lot of tit play. S&M. You know, you start at the top and go
to the bottom.
Jack Fritscher: That’s gay sex to a T.

Reminding me of an after-hours joint that closed in 1978, Wally Wallace
differentiated his integrity from his competition: “The Toilet [an after-
hours club] hired pickpockets who worked for the house.” He handed me
an undated sheet from a Mineshaft Newsletter in which he wrote:

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