Stuff You Should Know - Remembering Stonewall

Episode Date: June 27, 2017

One of American history's darker moments, the Stonewall Riots were also the event that galvanized the gay rights movement in the United States. Today there's a monument in NYC to memorialize this important time. Learn all about this often overlooked story in today's episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey everybody, it's us, Josh and Chuck, and we want you to know we are coming somewhere near you. We're sure if you live in North America this year. That's right, we're going on tour, and why don't we just rattle through these dates?

Okay. Toronto, August 8th at the Danforth Music Hall. Chicago, August 9th, the next day at Harris Theater. Then we are taking some time off to recover after that two-day grind. We're hitting Vancouver, the Vogue Theater, September 26th, followed by Minneapolis. We're gonna be at the Pantages Theater again

on September 27th. That is correct. Yep, and then Austin, Chuck on October 10th at the Paramount Theater. Yes, and very special show in Lawrence, Kansas at Liberty Hall on October 11th. Yep, and then we're gonna do a three-night stand October 22nd, 23rd, and 24th at the Bell House

in Brooklyn, New York, and then Chuck, take it home. Well, take it home, literally, because we are finishing up November 4th right here in Atlanta at the Buckhead Theater, and this is a very special benefit show. And all the proceeds will be going to Lifeline Animal Project of Atlanta and the National Down Syndrome Society.

Yep, and for more information and to buy tickets, just go to sysklive.com. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and I'm Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry, and this is Stuff You Should Know. Stuff You Should Know!

Hi. Hi. I was talking to everyone else. Oh. I was looking at you, though. Sure. It's made it weird. I know.

It's a little disarming. So, this episode on the Stonewall Riots, or did you watch that documentary, Stonewall Uprising, by chance? Yes, I did. Yeah, I think one of the people interviewed in there said they preferred, or at least he preferred it, be called an uprising and not a riot.

I kind of like that. Yeah, I agree, because it lends it definitely a much more credible tone. Yeah. For a riot, it's just like, we're going crazy. We're going to steal stuff. We're going to bust stuff. And uprising is like, we've had enough,

and we're going to throw out this oppression. Yeah. So, this is being released. I believe, if my math is correct, 48 years and a day, it depends on when you count the beginnings of the Stonewall Uprising, because we'll get to it, but it started at 1 a.m. And technically, some people, when you go from night and today, still count that as the previous night.

You know what I mean? Those are people who are on drugs. You know what I mean? I was about to say, I used to do that, but then you said that. No. No. But anyway, the 48-year anniversary,

I thought about maybe holding off till the 50th, because I've wanted to do this one for a long time, but I thought, you know what, who knows what's going to happen exactly. Exactly. We could get hit by a bus. Yeah. And then we never would have done this podcast.

Right. There's no time like the present, Charles. Yes. Especially since we finally got a great article from the Grabster on this. Yeah. Man, that guy is so good. I read this article that he wrote,

how the Stonewall Riots worked. He called it the Riots. Yeah. I sent him an email just to say, like, dude, it is so nice to have you back. Yeah. Anyway, in fact, I need to get his email so I can echo that, because, you know, you read it, and it's just like the old days.

Good quality stuff. Yeah. You want to talk about Stonewall? Yeah. Let's do it. Have you ever been there? No, I haven't. I even stayed at Washington Park Inn, Washington Square Inn,

which is nice. And I had no idea Stonewall was right around the corner. I didn't know very much about it. I mainly just, I knew it as like, I had a very good idea. It was a rough idea, but I think I knew about the same as I know about, say, Attica. Sure. So I know sometimes people chant Stonewall.

Sometimes people chanted Attica. So there you go. That was about as much as I knew. You went and had a drink at Attica, though, so. Right. Some radiator hooch. Yeah, next time go there and grab a drink at the Stonewall Inn. I highly recommend it.

Oh, yeah. I definitely intend to, for sure, because I love that part of New York, too. Oh, it's the best. The village. So I had to go and look this up, right? Because I was like, wait, I'm starting to see people say West Village. They're also saying Greenwich Village. It's the West part of Greenwich Village.

It is. Okay. So it's both. It's Greenwich Village and West Village, but technically it is in the West Village of Greenwich Village, which is between Houston and 14th and Broadway. Houston. Houston. And I've been in New York enough times, my friend.

Yeah, I made a mistake. Just don't ever say Avenue of the Americas. I have. Plenty of times. Oh, no. Yeah. And I've gotten yelled at. Yeah.

And then I think the Hudson is the other side of the village. It's just my favorite part of town. Is it? Yeah. The village in the West Village is just, it's the best. You know, that's where it just feels a little bit more like Old New York. It's quaint. It's still kind of quiet.

Yeah. There's little treeline streets that aren't just on a perfect grid. You can get lost down there. You can find yourself down there. You can. You can pay a million dollars a square feet for real estate. Yeah. It's nice.

It's great. I like the Lower East Side a lot too, though, I have to say. Yeah. And you know what? Last time I was in New York, Emily and I spent, and I used to hang out some in the East Village. In fact, that's kind of where I used to go mostly because that's where my friends were back in the 90s and I went there and it is still nice and grimy. What?

The village? The East Village. Yeah. It's been, I don't want to say modernized, but it's been, what's the word? Not gentrified. Maybe gentrified. Updated? Yeah.

It's been updated a little bit, but it's still kind of a scummy, which is great. Yeah. No, it definitely has a feel to it still for sure. And a smell. Okay, so Chuck, I think we, you said you've been to the Stonewall before. Did you know much of the history? Yeah. I mean, that's why I went.

And oddly enough, I just happened to be there in the days following the nightclub shooting in Florida. Oh, man. So there were like armed guards at the Stonewall Inn and the, you know, because it's a national monument now. Well, I know a lot of people flock to Stonewall Inn after the Pulse nightclub shootings just to show solidarity and comfort one another. So the Stonewall has become this hub, this center of gay life in the United States, not

just in New York and then the United States, I would even say probably globally, it had that much of a significance. But what's interesting about the Stonewall, the Stonewall Inn, is that it also had that same significance just for a much, much smaller community of gays prior to June of 1969. But it has for decades and decades been a center of gay life. It's just there was pre Stonewall and post Stonewall and what that club meant to people really just changed by how many people knew about it. Yeah.

We're pulled to it. Yeah. Everybody say it. Thanks, man. So I think we should start as Ed suggests, as the Grabser suggests by talking about before Stonewall. Yeah. And a little bit about the sad state of life as a gay person, as a trans person, the whole

LGBTQ community, which of course they didn't call it that back then, but to be in that community in the 1950s and 1960s was, I mean, it's interesting to talk about this stuff because there's still a long way to go, but you can't help but look at the progress when you look at the way things were in the 50s and 60s. Well, what's crazy is that the 50s and 60s were a low point for, I don't know if gay rights is the right word, but the acceptance of the gay community by society at large, the 50s and 60s were a real low in that because prior to that, people were a little cooler with it, like straights were a little cooler with the idea of people being gay than they

were in the 50s and 60s and it's thanks to our friend McCarthy. Yeah, I got the feeling that there was a little bit of just the don't ask, don't tell philosophy going on and not the hammer coming down, which is what happened in the 50s and 60s. There was a big pushback and you're right, McCarthy had a lot to do with it. He was like, well, not only am I going to tackle McCarthyism, but while we're at it, let's castigate the gay community as well. I don't know if you remember or not, but we talked about Joe McCarthy being gay himself, most likely, or definitely, I can't remember, but in the midst of that, he spent time like

persecuting gays, even though he was gay himself, which is pretty, I mean, if the guy wasn't despicable before, that really does it, you know, 100% puts him over the fence. Yeah, and it's something that happens still, you know. But he almost, I don't want to say single-handedly, but his drive that whatever he embodied in the McCarthyism trials or hearings or whatever, he helped turn the tide back against gay people. It was going like okay for a little while, and then this guy comes along and just screws everything up, and then the next thing you know, the 50s and 60s, it's really, really bad to be gay, as a matter of fact, in the United States, outside of Illinois, every

other state in the union, if you were gay, you were illegal, just by being you. Yeah, you're basically breaking the law through a web of laws that essentially criminalize it, whether it was anti-sotomy laws or saying you can't dance in public with the same-sex partner, or you can't where, I mean, they actually had laws on what was called gender-appropriate clothing, where you had to wear a minimum of three pieces of clothing deemed appropriate for your gender, and because, you know, they saw a big threat with, you know, they called people, back then they called people dressing in drag, but we're talking about, well, we're talking about different kinds of people, but a lot of times they were transgender people

dressing like they dressed, you know, like dressing according to the gender they identified with, and they would bring in, they would find someone, they would bring in a female officer, and they would take them into a bathroom and either feel for parts or make them undress and check out their clothing and arrest them. Yeah, and it wasn't always, it didn't always even necessarily end in arrest, like these laws were used as tools of intimidation and just general oppression, and the cops were acting in large part as like this extension, the action extension of like that part of America that just found gay people odious, just the whole concept.

So everybody was just totally cool with the gay community being harassed and arrested and brutalized. There was a lot of violent crime and murders against gay people at the time. The newspapers didn't report virtually anything that had anything to do with the gay community. They were just complete open targets for exploitation and abuse, and it was just a terrible way to live. And as a result, a lot of gay people at the time just opted to act straight. They got married, they had kids, they just pretended in order to survive in the society

they were born into. Yeah, it was classified until 1973 in the DSM as a mental illness, aversion therapy was going on. I had never heard of this place and saw that documentary, Atosca D'Aro State Hospital in California. Yeah, I hadn't heard of it either. Oh man, they called it the doc howl for queers, where they would engage in shock treatment. They would show gay men pictures of naked men and then shock them, and they would give

them, there was one drug that they gave that supposedly... Yeah, had you heard of this? No, a drug that simulated the experience of drowning. They would give lobotomies. It's just unbelievable that this was happening in our country like 50 something years ago. Right, and so it's bad enough if your family is sending you off for treatment or whatever to basically be treated for being gay. Because again, the field of psychology and psychiatry said, this is a mental illness

and we cure mental illnesses so you can cure gayness. Let's just figure out how to do it and the most brutal means possible. So it's bad enough if your family sends you off, commits you for being gay. But I think what strikes me is even worse was some gay people at the time buying into the idea that they were mentally ill, that there was something profoundly wrong with them that made them just so different that they would submit to this kind of treatment as well. Yeah.

Yeah, that clip and the Stonewall uprising with the... I don't know who that guy was that came to the school to talk to the kids. Just horrific. Oh man. Man, it's hard to watch, to be honest. It really is. So the Lavender Scare is what it was kind of called under McCarthy in the 1950s. And this is all pre-Stonewall and as Ed points out in the article, it was a dark time but

it was also a time where kind of underground the gay community was setting and when I say gay community and we say it, we're talking about LGBTQ as a whole, it doesn't roll off the tongue, so we're going to say different things along the way. But really what they were doing kind of quietly was setting the stage and laying a foundation for progress later on with these kind of underground societies, it was called the homophile movement and gay rights groups basically being founded. Right. The homophile movement was basically if Bob Newhart had been a gay activist, it was like

button down, penny loafers, getting along with everybody, being very quiet and pleasant, being an upstanding neighbor, like really, really taking care of your lawn, like that kind of stuff. Basically the point of the homophile movement was to point out to straight society that gay people were totally normal and the approach that they took was we're going to kill them with kindness, we're going to win them over by being nice and by being quiet and by not causing a fuss. Yeah, being good citizens.

Yeah, for sure. And one of the things that came out of this, the homophile movement, was a society called the Madachine Society, which is basically an underground gay, I guess gay liberation movement, but like a very slow, preppy gay liberation movement. Right. You know? Yeah, I like the preppy part. But it founded a network for the first time, like gay people could communicate with one

another through like newsletters that were set up by the Madachine Society and other small groups like them. It was a big deal, like they showed footage of them in the Stonewall Uprising documentary and they're all wearing suits and their hair is very nice and it's all like very well thought out. This is an accidental, but they're acting not gay at all, but they're holding signs saying that proclaim that they're gay and that they deserve rights. And I mean, that was an extraordinarily brave thing to do back then because if you were

out it as gay, and Ed, I think, very wisely points out in this article, back then you could be fired for being gay and Ed points out today you could still be fired for being gay. There's no federal protection against that. Right. It has gotten better. It's horrible that that's still not protected, right? But back in the day, if you had the wrong kind of boss and they caught wind that you

were gay, they could not only fire you, they could make it so that you would never work again. Yeah. Like your life would be ruined. So to stand there in a suit and tie in the middle of New York with a sign that proclaimed you were gay and being like 20, 21 years old or something like that and having your whole life ahead of you, that was a very brave act to do. Even though the Madison Society, I get the impression that they're fairly criticized

in the gay community for being really slow and kind of plotting and not doing enough and not being radical at all at the time. Not really pushing gay rights forward as much as what would come after. Yeah. But like we said, very importantly, they were laying a foundation for what would follow the Stonewall riots. Should we take a break? Mm-hmm.

So let's take a break and we'll talk a little bit about the refuge that was the Stonewall Inn. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slipdresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and non-stop references to the best

decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? You'll leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when

the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road.

Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you.

Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Uh-huh.

Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right.

So we set the stage for what life was like, uh, back then, uh, in the LGBTQ community. And, um, kind of more than anything, there was no, uh, there was no, and the irony to me is just inescapable. There was no meeting place. There was no way to normalize. Um, so what happens is, you know, you couldn't just go be gay and have a coffee with your gay friend out in public and be affectionate and just be a normal human being. So what happens is they ended up being driven underground and meeting in public bathrooms

and in porn theaters and as, uh, in New York City, they were meeting it in the backs of meat trucks, uh, for hookups and so this further stigmatized them as like taking part in like perverted quote unquote perverted behavior because they had nowhere else to go. So it was sort of like this feedback loop, you know, like had they had a place to go to begin with, they might not have been meeting in bathhouses and might not have had this stigma attached to them. So well, I don't know if they wouldn't have still been meeting in bathhouses, but I think they would have enjoyed having more places to, to not just hook up.

I think that's all that was available to them was just hooking up and that was it. Well, exactly. And there was one gentleman in that, uh, documentary that was just like, we, I just wanted to go place like to where I could fall in love with somebody and talk to somebody. Yes. Yeah. That guy, I can't remember his name, but he struck me as well. He was describing the stone wall.

He was saying like that was that place. It was one of those few places where you could just feel relatively safe being gay. It was like one of the few places you could slow dance. Uh-huh. Um, and the way that he said it, Chuck, was it was a place where you could find love. Right. It wasn't just about sex, although I'm sure there's plenty of hookups and apparently there was prostitution ring running, running out of the stone wall, but it was a place where

you could find, like, it was, there was just a vibe of love there, supposedly is, is what the guy was saying, I think, and there weren't very many places like that in the world at the time. Yeah. So the stone wall in itself was, um, it was a pair of brick buildings originally that were horse stables, uh, way back in the day. And then later on it was a bakery and then, uh, eventually opened as the stone wall in restaurant in 1934 and, uh, in the 1960s, uh, and this is a pretty fascinating part of this

whole story to me because I had no idea, but the mafia had a, uh, had a business idea where they would, uh, they saw an opportunity for gay people to meet and buy booze and buy cigarettes and load money into the jukebox. And so the mafia, uh, kind of under had these underground, uh, gay bars all over New York City that they ran. Right. They'd be like, Hey, we just hijacked the truck that was full of cigarettes and booze. We should just sell it to the gay people at illegal saloons.

Yeah. That's nobody else will, and the reason no one else would was because since it was illegal to be gay, if you were a known gay person and you were at a bar, that bar could be shut down. So bars are like, you, you can't come in here. We're not a gay bar. There's no gays allowed basically. Right.

And not only was this, you know, legal, it was, it was encouraged by the law. So the mafia was like, well, there's, there's a huge market that's just needing to be satisfied here and we'll step up. No problem. Yeah. And, you know, before you go thinking the mafia was, was some benevolent group giving an outlet to the LGBTQ community, they, uh, they did do that, but they were aid trying to make money and B, uh, they were also, uh, you know, there were, there were instances

of, uh, blackmailing that would go on, uh, that they would get like, uh, maybe a straight acting, well-heeled gay man and as a target and say, all right, well, this guy's definitely got a good job and a family. So let's get his information and then hit him up for money or we'll out him. Um, so they weren't, you know, they weren't just benevolent mafiosos, uh, there was some, you know, untoward stuff going on on there and for sure. Yeah, one of them, like I said, was the prostitution ring at the stone wall in, they were dealing drugs at the stone wall in, um, and again, like the entire bar, the stone wall in as

a bar was an illegal bar, uh, and they weren't doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. They were exploiting like a vulnerable population, but it still, regardless of the mob's intentions, gay people took the place and made it their own, their own spot and enjoyed it as a result. It was also by all accounts, um, not only a dive bar with watered down drinks, but from the sounds of it, it was unsanitary, like just gross and, uh, not because of the clientele, because the mafia was, uh, I mean, they just didn't care. They weren't keeping it clean. The, I mean, they, they, there was the one guy in the documentary was like, I never bought

a drink there. He was like, that's the last place I was going to actually get a drink. Like I would go to meet people and make friends, but, um, no way was I going to be ordering and paying for whatever they were serving. He said they, they were serving like the beer out of pitchers and water buckets and stuff. Yeah. And he's like, there's no telling what was in that beer. He said that there was a rumor that, um, that some infectious disease had spread because

of the beer at the stone wall. It was like, it was a dirty, dirty place. But again, it was a place where gay people could feel loved, you know? Yeah. And one of the reason it was kind of allowed to, uh, to run to a certain degree was the mafia was paying bribes and giving kickbacks to the cops of the six precinct, which is where it was. So they sort of had a deal worked out.

I'm sorry to interrupt you, ma'am, but have you seen the documentary, the seven five? I've seen it twice. How amazingly good is that? Yeah. It's one of the best documentaries I've seen in a long time. I agree. And Adam Diaz, man, come on. Yeah.

That guy's like a real person. I know. It's amazing. Yeah. If you're interested at all in bribes and dirty cops and kickbacks in New York City in the, in the eighties, uh, definitely, definitely watch that one. Yeah. It was amazing.

The seven five, uh, which was the 75th precinct, correct? Yes. Which was a cop talk at seven five. Yeah, I think it's like, um, Jamaica, Queens, maybe. Yeah, I can't remember, but I guarantee you they're making a feature film about that at some point. Surely. It's too good to, it's like you can't write anything better.

So sorry, man. I interrupted you. That's right. You were talking about how the six was taken kickbacks from the owners of the stone wall. Yeah. So, you know, uh, they were taking kickbacks. So it was allowed to a certain degree because they were getting paid off. Right, and the, the place would still get raided.

Apparently it got raided fairly frequently, but when it got raided, the owners would be tipped off. It would be raided on like a weeknight when the place was pretty much dead and a lot of people weren't going to get hassled. And when it was raided, um, maybe there would be another bribe taken at the time. The patrons would basically be let go, but the whole process was just a process of intimidation. Right? Yeah.

You know, the idea of the ID on your way out the door, and if you were gay and your life could be ruined for being outed, you didn't want to show any cop your ID. Right. So the whole thing was just a bad jam. And the idea that it didn't do anything really, except maybe increase the, the kickbacks for the cops just made the whole thing even worse, you know? Yeah. And, uh, so this kind of went along for a while, but everything changed on the, uh, on the

night of June 27th and into the early morning of the 28th, uh, when deputy inspector Seymour Pine of not the sixth precinct, which is notable, but Manhattan's first division of public morals, uh, he led a different kind of raid with some undercover cops at about 1 a.m. And, um, everything changed that night. Yeah. That night, something was different. Like everything just kind of came together and just went a certain way. You know how like, do you watch basketball?

Sure. So it's astounding when, you know, one team can just be killed in the other team. Yeah. And then all of a sudden somebody on the losing team, like steals a pass and takes it back and just dunks it or passes it to somebody else for like three point and they sink it. And the momentum just completely turns and it can happen just like that. I have the impression that like in the course of, of the gay rights movement, this was one of those instances where a pass was stolen and taken to the other basket and just dunked.

Yeah. It's a nice sports analogy. Thanks. Um, you're right. There's something about that kind of momentum that can't be manufactured. Uh, it all just has to come together in an organic way. And, uh, it's funny, Ed did put in here. There was, uh, there were some people throughout the years that have, uh, said that the death

of Judy Garland earlier, uh, on June 22nd had, had riled up with the gay community because she was so big in the gay community, they're all upset over Judy Garland and that is what kind of helped kick off the Stonewall riots by all accounts. That's probably not true, but maybe they were grumpier than normal. Who knows. Maybe it just strikes me as such like a demeaning dismissive explanation, you know, like, oh, you guys were just mad because Judy Garland died. So you acted up and it just happened to, to work out in your favor, you know, right?

So, uh, what happened is a pine comes in, he's got these cops and their intention was to, uh, not only shut down a gay bar, but to shut down a mafia bar for selling liquor without a license. Uh, and like you said before, it was, uh, just a part of a series of raids that summer all over Manhattan, uh, for these underground gay bars. Yeah. The, the checkerboard had gone under on its own, but the rumor was that the cops had shut it down of a telestar, the snake pit, the sewer, um, they all went down either on

their own or because of police raids, but either way, the idea in the gay community was that they were in the midst of a major persecution. All of their places were getting shut down and supposedly among the police, they were shutting down mafia bars, but the gay community wasn't getting that. They were seeing that their gay bars were being shut down. So there was definitely a sense of persecution that summer in New York among gays who went to gay bars. Yeah.

Things were kind of, kind of simmering at this point. Yeah. And one more thing I want to give a shout out to, uh, David Carter, I believe his name is, he literally wrote the book on Stonewall that the Stonewall uprising documentary was based on. He's just, he's a, an historian of the Stonewall uprising. So most of the stuff that we have that's legitimate comes from this guy's research. Yeah.

For sure. Uh, so what happens is these cops come in there, they start the routine like you were talking about of, uh, exit the bar one at a time. We need your ID. They didn't just hurt everyone out in one big rush because they wanted that identification which is part of the intimidation. And so what happens is one by one, these people are filing out and they don't go home because they're hanging out outside waiting for their friends inside to get let out.

And this crowd starts gathering, uh, then the crowd starts, uh, building not only for the people inside, but as Ed points out in this article, um, other people in the community and in the village, this is, you know, it was a gay part of New York still is. And these, uh, these street kids start coming up and these, uh, transgender people and cross dressers and, you know, basically everyone in that community was something to gain and nothing to lose, start kind of hanging around as this, uh, uh, kind of a more intimidating, it feels like raid went on. Right.

Right. And, and they, a lot of them, they weren't like necessarily coming from down the street. A lot of them have been inside like the stone wall, yet another thing about the stone wall is it was one of the few places where, um, transgender people were welcome and it was actually kind of their bar, um, and like you said, as people were filing out, showing their ID and waiting for their friends, that crowd was growing bigger and bigger and they're growing on the other side of the cops. So now there's this crowd developing that, and the cops are between the crowd and the

outside of the stone wall. Yeah. Right. So they're kind of trapped. Yeah. It's a pretty tight area anyway. If you've ever been over there, the whole West villages like that, but where the stone wall is in particular, it's just not, you know, it doesn't face some big, wide open Manhattan

street scene. Yeah. And so the, the, the, this crowd's getting bigger and bigger, it's, it's hot. They're getting a little restless. They're starting to shout some stuff at the cops. Um, and I think there, there's a number of things that Ed says contributed as, as triggers or flash points from this, what should have been a routine police raid to harass, you know, gay bars or shut down a mafia owned bar, um, turning into this uprising.

Um, and there, there were, there were several things. One of the things is the context that was in was this is a time in the United States as a whole when social unrest was pretty prominent. Yeah. There were a lot of groups that were organizing and agitating just against the status quo and the establishment. And so the idea of pushing back against police brutality was definitely, you know, in the air in the United States, more than say, you know, five or 10 years earlier.

Yeah. I mean, this, this was a time of war protests of, uh, the Black Panthers. If you listen to that episode, and in fact, uh, as you'll see in the, the days following, uh, not even following the riots, but as the riots extended into days two, three, four, five and six, the Black Panthers actually showed up, uh, in support, which was great. Uh, so another thing that happened was the, uh, there was no backup. There were, there were not enough cops. They were calling for backup from the six, but the six had been getting kickbacks and

kind of the story goes that they didn't so much appreciate this other group, the division of public morals coming into their, their, uh, uh, zone and kind of taking charge of this raid. So they were like, you know, we're not going to send anyone right now, at least that's how the story goes. Yeah. Seymour Pine is actually interviewed in the, the uprising, um, documentary and he's saying like the radio kept cutting out every time he called for backup.

And he's like, that had never happened before. Um, so the, the insinuation is, is that, yeah, the, the six precinct was like, you're on your own pal. This'll teach you a lesson, but you can kind of understand from the six precincts point of view, like that it was fine. Like any, like three or four straight cops could handle any number of, you know, gay people coming out of a gay bar during a raid, right? Because gay, gay people were, were viewed as docile, effeminate, basically every, everything

that, um, the white male establishment viewed women as, yeah, like in all of the, in all of the, the repugnant ways, they also viewed gay people in exactly the same way, right? So the idea that the six precinct didn't send any backup wasn't like, these guys are going to get killed and we don't care. Right. It was, let those guys handle, handle, you know, this, the, the, the administrative part of this raid or whatever, they, they, they bit this off now they can chew it, right? Yeah.

Like what's going to happen? They're not going to fight back. Exactly. You know, that'll never happen. That was the idea. So all this is going on, they're being filed out, filed out, this crowd is growing, tensions are brewing and, um, here's where it gets murky and, and apparently there's a lot of, uh, versions of the story and even some in fighting, uh, within the LGBTQ community on

who actually started it. Uh, some people say that, uh, someone named Marsha Johnson, uh, yelled, uh, from the bar, I got my civil rights and threw a shot glass through the bar mirror, uh, it was called the shot glass heard around the world. Other people say, uh, someone named Jackie Hormona, uh, started it and other people say this, uh, one lesbian woman being stuffed in a cop car was battling so fiercely that she kind of got things going. Yeah.

Supposedly she shouted, why don't you guys do something to the crowd as she's like fighting a bunch of cops? Yeah. To me, it doesn't matter who maybe lit the fuse, so to speak. Um, it could have been any number of people as far as I'm concerned. Yeah. Sure. Yeah.

I mean, it could have been that it could have been, um, the, the people started throwing pennies at the cops and then pennies turn into bricks and then somebody, um, set some garbage on fire outside of the, uh, the, um, Stonewall and, and essentially something changed, right? The tone changed, it turned as if you were a cop, it turned ugly real quick and whatever started it, it started to, to, to move fairly quickly and Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector Seymour Pine of Manhattan's First Division of Public Morals said, uh, we need to get into the safety of the bar, which was really saying something about what the mood or the

crowd was like. If all of a sudden the inside of the Stonewall Inn was now the safest place to be. Right. It was, it became their refuge. Ironically. So they locked themselves in and, uh, did not stay in there for too long. I mean, there were still some patrons in there. There was a reporter in there supposedly and, uh, yeah, he was from the village voice.

Yeah. And then they, uh, the people outside ripped up a parking meter, um, knocked down the door and by all accounts, the cops were in a bit of a state of shock because they didn't see this coming. Uh, I think a lot of the protesters were surprised at themselves, uh, that they were standing up as one and, and being physical with these police officers. Yeah. And one of the, um, one of the people who was there who was interviewed in the, um, documentary

was saying, uh, like they, the crowd like saw it. They saw that the police were scared. Yeah. And like the crowd was feeding on that. Like it was just feeding the crowd that to see the cops who had always been in control, who were the ones who had abused, you know, this community for so long, we're now suddenly scared for their lives. Just, just this crowd was just eating it up and it was feeding the energy that they were

working off of. And Chuck, apparently there's one of the cops is so scared that he threw his gun at the crowd. And from what I understand, no, that's what I'm saying. From what I understand, no shots were fired, which means that it would have been full with bullets. So basically that cop was like, here, here's my loaded gun. Yeah.

That's weird. That's what you're supposed to do in an old Western when you run out of bullets, right? Or with Superman, right? You shoot at him and then all the bullets bounce off his chest and then you throw your gun at him and he ducks. So weird. All right. Let's take another break.

Uh, the riot is in full swing at this point and we'll come back and finish up and tell you the end of the story right after this. Yeah. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?

So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough

or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass? And my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear.

And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one.

Uh-huh. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.

So Chuck, I feel like we should, well, we're describing the rest of the riot. We should be playing Yackity Sacks just to give it a light touch. So it was, um, one of the, one of the accounts that I saw apparently compiled by David Carter was that, um, it was, it was a, it was a gay riot. Right. There were a lot of transgender people dressed up, women dressed up, um, doing a kickline at the police. Yeah, like a Rockettes kickline and singing.

Right. Um, one transgender woman hit one of the police with her purse. Uh-huh. Um, there was, there was a, there was, you know, definitely that element going on. The cops were apparently really caught off guard by this time that the, I think the sixth had gotten the word and we're starting to send backup because the, the, they had heard that the, these cops were now holed up inside the stone wall and there was a riot going on outside.

So they were sending backup, but even the backup and trained riot police were like powerless in the face of this completely bizarre riot, right? They were used to a certain kind of riot. They were not used to a gay riot and, and it was throwing them off big time. Well, it's funny to the, uh, the, the, uh, one of the guys in the documentary said the next day he was talking about all the, the, the fake jewelry in the sequence on the street and he was like, it looked like just like a field of like shimmery diamonds and things. So this is, you're right.

This is unlike any riot they had experienced. And, um, uh, I guess this was precursor to SWAT was New York's tactical patrol force. Yeah. It must have been contemporary SWAT was like called out for the, against the black panthers in LA for the first time. It would have been like maybe that year, the year before, but New York wouldn't have had a SWAT team by then. Yeah.

We did an episode on SWAT. So you can go listen to that and correct us at will. Yeah. But, uh, so they call in the tactical patrol force, uh, things are definitely serious at this point and, uh, there were probably, you know, between 600 and 1000 people, uh, people started calling people on the phone, uh, you know, get down here. It's going down and, um, the crowd swelled in, you know, when you got 1000 angry people from the LGBTQ community that had had enough after years and years of mistreatment, um,

it was pretty serious affair. Yeah. For sure. I mean, anytime people are throwing bricks at cops, it turns serious pretty quick, right? Yeah. Um, because you said before, like the, the layout of the streets in, in the, um, West Village are not like in a neat grid, the cops would chase the rioters or the, um, the protesters, whatever you want to call them at this point, down one street and then the crowd rather

than running and dispersing would just turn as a whole down another street and come back around and then they would be chasing the cops. Yeah. And this whole like chase and, and like just, just changes in momentum, like we were talking about earlier, um, and it just went on for hours and hours and hours, basically until daylight from what I understand. Yeah. So eventually, um, this crowd dispersed, but, uh, it did not end there.

Uh, this went on for about six days and, uh, another guy in the documentary said that he felt like people were even more angry on day two, um, kind of once word got around, um, but on day two, three, four, five and six, it was a little bit different. Things actually, they got a little more organized, um, and not in a, in a violent way. Like, you know, here's how we're going to take them down strategically. But, uh, like we said, people started coming out, Black Panthers came out, hippies came out, civil rights processors, tourists came out. It became a, like Ed said, as a counterculture event.

And, uh, before you knew it, it was, it was kind of the first big major, major gay protest was going on. Right. They, um, basically anybody who wanted to fight the cops was like, let's go do this. And they, they did for, like you said, two, three, four, five, six days. Yeah. It was coalescing, it feels like. Day two though, day two seems to be like the, the, the day when everything really came together

because there were still more protesters than cops apparently, although the cops changed tactics. They were no longer like hitting people with clubs in the legs. They were hitting them in the head. Right. They were like a lot of people with head injuries laying around. It was pretty grisly and brutal, but the protesters were still like fighting pretty hard. Sure.

And in the midst of all this, there were also people giving speeches. They were chanting gay power. There was a, a, a political tone to it that hadn't been there the night before. Right. And that, that wouldn't be there necessarily for the following nights because a night, I guess three, um, there were more cops than, than protesters from that, that moment on. But one of the, one of the other things that, that really kind of egged this whole thing along as well was that the next night after this, this riot and protest and, um, at following

the raid, the Stonewall Inn opened again for Saturday, so they opened up on Saturday and it was just a, they just put out a welcome sign for all of the protesters saying, come on back. It's not done yet. Yeah. So eventually everything quieted down after those six days by that next Sunday and, um, but this, this would not be the end. It was really just kind of the beginning of what was to come, um, a few months after that

they had a, a commemorative march in New York and, uh, across the United States. And then that was just one March and then a year later on the first anniversary of the riots, uh, they had what would become the first gay pride march. They didn't call it that at the time. Um, and, and the, and the documentaries, it's really moving when, uh, they're talking about, you know, at first they didn't, you know, they said they didn't know if it was supposed to be from Christopher street to, uh, to central park and they said, we didn't know if we were going to make it that far.

We didn't know if there would be 10 of us or 12 of us. Uh, it was just sort of uncertain. Uh, you know, it was obviously way before internet and so there wasn't, you know, communication like you have today, uh, but what they had were leaflets and they handed out thousands of them. Uh, and there were a few hundred people at first, but all these, uh, people from the LGBTQ community were apparently lying the streets in support and as they marched, they joined in.

I think, I think there was a lot of fear to, you know, hold up a sign and join a march until they saw other people doing the same thing. And so they kind of joined in. And by the time they got to central park, you know, there were thousands and thousands of people, uh, in what would be, you know, the first, uh, pride parade in the United States. And apparently the, the, the time that was scheduled, like the parade finished in about half the time they had allotted for it because everybody was moving so quickly because they were so excited and so nervous about what was going to happen.

But it, yeah, it turned out to be the first gay pride parade. The guy called it the, they called it a run. Yeah. That was pretty funny. Yeah. But it's pretty amazing that as it went, it just attracted support. Like that's a heck of a parade. When the bystanders get sucked into the parade, that's a good parade right there.

Yeah. So out of this grew, uh, the gay activist alliance, the gay liberation front, um, Ed pointed out an irony that it really never occurred to me. But one of the reasons it's considered sort of the birth of the modern gay rights movement, he said is because it was not the start of the gay rights movement. And like we said earlier, there was that foundation was already there. Uh, this was just sort of the catalyst. They weren't starting from scratch.

They had these groups that were together and they were kind of just, I think, waiting for this, for something to happen to really bring them attention. And, um, even though there were, uh, uh, some uprisings in 65 and 66 and 67 in San Francisco and LA, they weren't, um, although the New York Times didn't cover this like they should have either. But those weren't covered by major newspapers at all, uh, just underground newspapers. So they never really, uh, kind of got the, the coverage and they weren't as noteworthy as Stonewall ended up being.

I was reading about that to the, um, Compton Cafe, Compton's cafeteria riot in San Francisco and I think 1967, um, was a pretty big riot actually. And it was a transgender, um, riot where transgender women who were, um, working the tenderloin as sex workers because it couldn't get work anywhere else, um, they, they were just sick of being brutalized by cops and one of them was being arrested for being transgender. And she threw her cup of coffee in the cop's face and the whole riot, just the whole, the, the place just rioted. Like it was, it was just an explosion of, of violence in the face of brutality.

And the, none of the papers mentioned it, didn't even get mentioned. Yeah. The mainstream media would not touch anything that gay people were doing, including rioting in the streets of San Francisco, um, just, they just wouldn't talk about it. Well, and yeah, and like I said, the times while they did cover it, it was, it wasn't a back pages thing, but it definitely didn't get the attention that any other kind of, like, you know, violence against police would have gotten at the time, right? But, um, the LGBTQ community didn't, they just didn't stop basically.

They said, you know, we're going to turn these into groups and marches and rallies and parades and protests. And that was really the significance and, and the legacy, uh, that Stonewall had today is it, it really just was sort of a, uh, pardon the pun, kind of a coming out party for the entire movement. Yeah. Yeah. It was a debutant ball for the gay community.

It was. Yeah. That's pretty cool. I think that was the key was organizing, like taking that momentum and organizing it, turning it into something big. Yeah. I think that's probably the key with anything like that. Yeah.

And I think it also, um, I think it brought together that community in a way that it hadn't before. Um, it seems like they always sort of supported one another, but there are in word or were in our divisions of, you know, kind of straight acting masculine gay men and lesbians and the trans community. But this seemed to bring everyone together, uh, of all races and, um, just apparently the, the entire riot and, and, uh, protest scene was just incredibly diverse. Right.

You know? Yeah. Don't watch the movies. Yeah. So they're bad. Yeah. One of the heroes in one turned straight and marries a police woman in the end. I mean, the, the documentaries are good, but there, there's been two movies, 95 in

2015. The one in 2015 was just an abomination, basically. Yeah. Documentaries are rarely bad. Almost never bad. Yeah. The, the, it's the, the movies, movies. They're not that great sometimes.

Yeah. The one in 2015, Roland Emmerich made this movie. Why is that name familiar? I know that name. It's called Independence Day in Godzilla. Oh, okay. Like, I have no idea what he was doing with this thing. Maybe he, I don't know.

Maybe he's gay. Maybe his heart was in the right place. I have no idea. Like, I don't know anything about the guy, but all I know is he was, uh, roundly criticized for whitewashing, uh, what happened in fiction. And he said it was fictionalized, but like, why fictionalize it? Why just cast a bunch of handsome white dudes when you can tell the real story? You know?

Right. Yeah. And then when it touched the pump, I think it bears repeating like there's a lot of discussion about who did what and who played what role in, in the Stonewall uprising. And I think the, uh, transgender community in particular feels like yet again, they're being put in the, in the back seat behind masculine, white, gay males, um, when, when in fact they may not have played as big a role or may have played an equally significant role to trans, the transgender community that was there at Stonewall.

Um, but, um, historically speaking, the transgender community or sub community or sub culture of the gay community has, has usually taken a back seat to the, what, I guess what you would just call that, that white masculine male community. Yeah. And, and I can understand being upset about that if, if, if, you know, if you're transgender. Uh, so in 2016, uh, and I guess I was there right after this, um, because it was already a monument, the Stonewall Inn and, uh, the cute little tiny Christopher park right there next door, uh, out front, uh, was designated a national monument by President Obama, uh,

the very first such dedicated to gay rights and the Pride march still ends on Christopher Street every year and I say go and have a drink there. It's a truly historic place and it's a landmark. And I would guess now they've cleaned it up enough so you won't catch anything from the house beer. Yeah. It's not, uh, they don't have buckets of beer. Well, they might have buckets of beer, but it's like Corona's in a bucket of ice.

I gotcha. You know. Yeah. Find your, find your beach. Uh, you got anything else? Nope. Man, go watch the, uh, Stonewall Uprising American experience documentary, everybody, especially the part, the footage of that first Pride parade.

Yeah. When it ends in the park, it'll just do your heart good. Agreed. Uh, if you want to know more about the Stonewall Uprising, you can type Stonewall in the search bar at howstuffworks.com and it will bring up this excellent article by the Grabster. And since I said the Grabster, it's time for listener mail. You know what? We're going to forgo listener mail this week in favor of our annual call for, uh, iTunes

reviews. Awesome. How about that? So, uh, one thing that always helps the podcast out, um, people are always asking what they can do besides spreading the word is if you go and leave a review on iTunes, or I guess it's now Apple podcasts, right, um, it helps us out. And even if it's bad, well, that didn't help us, but no, that doesn't help. Don't listen to Chuck, everybody.

Listen to the first part, but not the second part, just, you know, leave your honest review and assessment and, uh, all that helps us out and it's been very effective over the years at keeping us viable and vital. So, uh, yeah, we'll be back next week with listener mail, but we would very much appreciate that. Well, thanks. And, uh, if you want to let us know that you left us a nice review so we can say thank you.

You can tweet to us at syskpodcast and I'm at Josh, um, Clark on Twitter as well. Uh, you can hang out with Chuck on Facebook at Charles W. Chuck Bryant or at facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com and as always join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the I heart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I heart podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to frosted tips with Lance Bass on the I heart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.