SIDEwalks - The Revolution Next Door

by Tom deignan

WHEN it comes to revolutions or other momentous events, New Yorkers are generally interested in precise locations — where exactly did the Draft Riots of 1863 begin, for example — as well as the big historical picture.

But sometimes you just happen to be near — not in — the right place at the right time.

Case in point — the famed Lion’s Head saloon on Christopher Street, Greenwich Village, once New York’s most famous literary watering hole. Thirty-five years ago this week, the gay rights movement is said to have been born at the Stonewall Inn, two doors down from “the Head.” On the night of June 28, Head regulars — many Irish American, famous or otherwise — gathered for their doses of talk and drink.

In the days which, followed, they got a unique perspective on what is believed to be a turning point in New York City and American history.

“I always remember that week,” recalls Pete Hamill, famed journalist and author, not to mention Head regular. “Like all things in the 1960s it lasted probably five days ... (The Stonewall riots) were absolutely typical of the way people did things in those days...you manifest it, proclaim it, shout it out loud. It was an important event, everybody (in the Head) recognized that.”

At the same time, to Hamill and others, there were other matters to tend to.

“Then we wanted to know when the Mets game was on.”

As noted by Hamill and others (including David Carter, author of the new book Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution), the more you delve into the story of Stonewall, a classic melting pot New York story emerges.

Within Sheridan Square on Christopher Street you had the Head, with regulars such as Frank McCourt and former Village Voice scribe/Norman Mailer-Jimmy Breslin campaign manager Joe Flaherty. 

For three decades the Head was the place for “drinker’s with writing problems.” Regulars disagree on whether or not the place could technically be called an “Irish pub.” Either way, the names of regulars reads, at times, like an AOH membership list, and the Clancy brothers were among the musicians who stopped by regularly.

Next door to the Head was a club which catered to many African Americans and jazz aficionados. It wasn’t the cleanest place in the world (the joke was you could get the crabs playing the juke box), but it had the hippest juke box around.

Finally, there was the Stonewall Inn. Who knows what exactly sparked the riots 35 years ago — perhaps the heat, perhaps the harassment of police officers and/or the mobsters who owned the place. (Some have suggested there was sorrow and anger lingering from the funeral of gay icon Judy Garland, who died earlier that day, but that notion has largely been dismissed.)

Either way, Head regulars settled in and watched history unfold.

“Everybody knew the Stonewall was there, it was just the gay joint two doors down,” Hamill recalls. “The basic reaction (in the Head towards Stonewall) was: What took so long? Why didn’t this happen earlier? There’d been gay bars downtown from the 30s ... all (owned by) mob guys. There were some Irish guys too who made a living catering to that. They were not necessarily gay themselves.”

Basically, mobsters and others ran such seedy joints knowing that their patrons had few other social options.

“When the thing broke out at the Stonewall, the cops put up barricades on Seventh Avenue,” Hamill continues. “I think all of Sheridan Square was blocked off.”

Hamill then recalls beloved barman Archie Mulligan serving a unique function so that Head regulars could get their nightly fix.

“Archie Mulligan...became basically the Head’s liaison officer, standing down at the corner of Seventh Avenue, right down where the entrance to the (Village) Voice was. He was at the barricade with the cops explaining who was who, so that the regulars could get to the Head. He was like being an Israeli at a checkpoint saying, ‘Look, this Arab is okay.”

Head regulars may have watched the Stonewall riots unfold from a mental (if not physical) distance. But the Head and its regulars were not immune to the changes of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

There were arguments over the Vietnam War and Northern Ireland and Nixon and, um, dart boards and ladies toilets.

Writer George Kimball has recalled, “I had been in Ireland for a few weeks...when the McCourt brothers arrived in Limerick to open their road company version of A Couple of Blaggards. 

“So the morning Frank got to town I dropped by the Belletable Arts Center, where the play was performing, to welcome him back to his home city, and had a cup of tea with him and the theater manager before I had to rush for some errands. We agreed to meet later that night after Malachy arrived, and Frank, who wished to look up some old friends, suggested that he might be found in a pub further down O’Connell Street called South’s. 

“Ah, I don’t know Frank,” protested the theater manager, whose name was Jerry. “A lot of the lads won’t go into South’s any more ever since they put in a ladies toilet.”

To Kimball and many at the Head, installing a dart board — or, worse, a juke box, which might cut off all the wonderful talking — “was almost intolerable.”

But he adds, “The 1969 record of 23 consecutive 301 victories posted by Finbar Furey and myself remains intact. (The most remarkable aspect of this milestone is the corollary accomplishment that in order to achieve it we had to consume the 22 drinks we had won in the process.)”

Such accomplishments were not quite as momentous as the events at Stonewall, but they were close. Well, they were close by, anyway.

Tom Deignan is working on a book about The Lion’s Head, from which this material was drawn. Contact Sidewalks at tdeignan@irishvoice.com