 Good morning, everyone. I'm Doug O'Keefe, co-producer and host of Inside Leather History, a fireside chat. I produce these chats with Mistress Joanne Gatti. Today, I'm in the beautiful home of Alexei Romanov in Pasadena, California, on a beautiful sunny morning, and it's March 30th, 2019. Today is a distinct honor. I am interviewing a gentleman who goes way back in history, who's been part of a major part of gay and lesbian history. Alexei Romanov was part of the original protest at the Black Cat in Los Angeles in 1967. Alexei has been interviewed extensively about the Black Cat protests, so we're only going to speak a little bit about that today, but we're going to speak a lot about his leather history, which is extensive, and his other community history, which is also beautiful and extensive. So, Alexei, thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm honored, and I extend special thanks to you and to your wonderful husband, David. So, tell us a little bit about the Black Cat here. Who's this? This looks like Felix the cat. There was a bar here in Los Angeles in Silver Lake that was called the Black Cat. It became numerous other names after it. A couple of years back, we got it designated as a historical landmark, and that's because, I won't say the dates, because I'm 82 years old, and I can forget dates and superimpose them. I'm just going to say there was a raid on New Year's Eve at the Black Cat. The police came in undercover, and after they played old angzine, there was two people who were kissing. At that time, two males could not kiss in public. You couldn't show any outward affection. It was very oppressive. So, the gay bars were our places that we could go into. There were no open windows. Everything was blacked out or heavy drapes over it. Some of the places you actually went into, from the rear entrance on the alley, not to be seen. So, two people were kissing. It turned out that these undercover police officers grabbed them and started beating them. They claimed they resisted arrest. It turned out it was a brother and sister, and the sister was fairly masculately dressed. So, when they were kissing, it looked like two men kissing in public, and that's where the melee started. Now, there was another bar that was called the New Faces. It was designated by the logo, comedy and tragedy. There was someone who was going into the black cat. He was in a white dress, and he saw what was going on, and he ran down the block, and police officers who were outside followed him down. And they went into the New Faces. One of the owners, I was a part owner in the New Faces, was my partner, Leroy. Now, when I say that, the first thing you think of is a man, Lee Roy. That was her name. It wasn't Lee Roy, it was Lee, L-E-E-R-O-Y as the last name. They saw this person leaving the black cat. They followed him down to the bar. He went in there looking for sanctuary. He thought that this was a riot or something. And when the police came in, undercover, and said, Who is the owner or manager of this bar? They saw this woman, Lee Roy, L-E-E-R-O-Y as the last name, in a white dress, and they mistook her for the man who ran down the block. They broke her collarbone that night. They beat her severely. The bartender started to come across the bar because he saw his manager or owner being beat. They grabbed him, and they beat him, and they ruptured. He ended up in the hospital that night, and so did Lee Roy. That's thinking that this was gay people. So a couple of years back now, we had the black cat designated as a historical landmark. We may have a photo of that when you find it. I have a photo of that, yes. We had it declared a historical landmark, and the committee that awards these things asked us why we wanted that. I said so in 50 years from now, because I intend to be alive that much longer. Maybe some young person who may be 16, 17, or 18, asks, Where did my civil rights start? They will be able to go to a location as the straight community has pride in. Gettysburg, Selma, Alabama, Bunker Hill. This gay person can go to a location where there is a plaque. Now we also had another thing designated. There was an organization, early in gay rights, that was called the Manishin Society. I've got to tell you what the Manishins was. Originally, with the kings and queens in Europe, nobody could tell them what was right and wrong. So they had a jester, and he was called the Manishin, and he would be able to speak to the king of what he's doing wrong. During the McCarthy era, they demonstrated in Washington, across from the White House and all. But their requirement was that if you're a woman, you had to have a dress. If you're a woman, you had to look like a woman. And all men had to have suits on if they were going to go protest. Well, they did protest against McCarthy, and they were a good thing. There are steps off of Silver Lake here in Los Angeles to go up to where their meeting house was. And the founder of their organization owned the house. So one of the things we did is those steps had a street number. Okay. So we went to the city council, we got them to authorize the renaming of those streets that are called the Manishin Society Steps. Oh, that's amazing. Amazing. So they could be remembered. What feelings did you have when you were at the black cat for the dedication? What was going through your mind? Finally, we're acknowledged, not me, our community as being human beings and as being a necessity in life. And that we had full rights under our constitution, the same rights that any other person. Well, we're achieving it somewhat here in California. We now have the right to vote the way we want to vote because we get the candidates that we want to elect. Who not only support us, support the Latino, support the black, support all the other communities that certain people in this country want to put to the side again. We're not second class citizens, we're first class citizens. We vote, we pay taxes, we work and all of that. When you were fighting to make this happen, to bring the historical designation to the black cat, did you have resistance? How did other people feel about that? You know, at this particular time, if they're political, they don't, well, I won't say all, because in Washington, they don't particularly want to show intolerance. Because they want to get elected. So, it's a matter of, I don't care if you like me, you gotta respect my rights, you gotta respect my constitutional rights. I met a man 20-something years ago, we were the first two, we were on a front cover of Frontiers, which was a magazine here in Los Angeles. Because we were the first two to sign up for domestic partnership. We didn't have marriage then, but we had domestic partnership at that point. And they had this mass signing with all of these noted republics there, and we ended up on a front of Frontiers. We also were amongst the 18,000 when California offered marriage to get married in there. And then they tried to take it away from us, and they couldn't do it. But we have, this is a wonderful state, as there are many other wonderful states, but this is a wonderful state. Not all of it accepts us, but a lot of it, they tolerate us, and a lot of them absolutely accept us. So, and my partner, who is so supportive, David and I, we've been together for more than 20 years. How beautiful. And as I age, I'm happy. My life is happy. I look back on what I do, and what I did. And I'm proud of myself, because I talk to any young people that are willing to listen. Because if you don't know where you came from, you don't know where you're going. That's the truth. Let's take a big step back before you came to Los Angeles. You're from New York City. In the 1950s, you were exploring the gay scene of New York. I heard that it was an amazing scene. Tell us a little bit about that. What did you experience? Well, I was very young. My mother was in show business. And we had a little group of eight young, young people. And we called ourselves the Trunkers. Now, that's from the saying, born in a trunk. So we called ourselves the Trunkers. And when our family, when our parents, if they were performing on Broadway, we would go up 42nd Street to Bryant Park and hang out there and sit there. And it was a very different park then. It's right behind the library in New York. And one of the things was, it was bushy. And you were protected there and so and so forth. And you could talk and everything and get away from the city a little bit. And we would go up there and sit there. And at that time, there was this man, and I get a little sentimental and choked up with this, who would come to the park almost every day. He was 86 years old, which doesn't seem quite as old to be now as it did then. And he would sit there and tell us what it was like in 1890 to be gay. And I would sit there and listen to him. And he said, I came from a small town and I can't remember what town he mentioned. But he said, if the police found out that you were gay, they would come by your house or somewhere that they knew you would be. And they would beat you every night with clubs and with blackjacks things. And he was telling us they didn't want to put us in jail. They just didn't want us there. So if they made it hard enough for you to live there, you would go somewhere else. And where is somewhere else, a big city where you're really anonymous. And that brought him to New York with that. And he was a wonderful person. He was 86, and I'm 82 right now, and proud of it. And I intend to go along a long ways more. But he was 86, and we would go down on 42nd Street, walk down past Broadway to a place called Hornin' Harditz. It was an automatic. It was a place where it was a whole row of things that you would put coins in, open the compartment and take your food out. But there was someone behind it, it was freshly cooked. Someone behind it put it, replacing it, each time someone took it. And we were sitting there, the eight of us in him, we would have water, sodas, a little coffee or tea or something. And we were sitting there and he said, you know when you're my age and ready to leave this earth, if you haven't left your community and the world as a whole in a better place than you found it, you haven't lived. Wow. And I sat there, now all eight of us didn't get it. But I sat there and I looked up at him and I says, wow, just like you did. It was so precise and distinct of what he was telling me that I didn't want to waste my life. We couldn't get an apartment, two men together or a room. Apartments weren't big, nothing's big in New York City and I had a partner at the time. This is a little later, I was older. And I did start doing little things of activism and stuff like that. And I was going to school and I would go in and sit in Greenwich Village, I would go out and sit on the boulevard and sell my artwork. But I used to go around to the second-hand stores. There were thrift shops on those days, but they were called second-hand stores. And I'd buy up all of the silverware that was sterling silver. I had a mallet, I had an anvil, and I had punches and things. And I would beat that, all those forks and knives and things into jewelry. And I would go down to Lower Manhattan, way down. And there was a place that made prosthesis eyes, that's artificial eyes. And the ones that didn't match the other eye, they would sell. So I would buy them like 75 cents for a dozen of them in those days. And I would beat those eyes into my jewelry that I made, wristbands, necklaces and things like that. So you typically village sale stuff, I would have the things that they would buy them from me. And I sat on a little chair and a table I set up. And I sat next to a man, and this could be research, because he's famous. He was called Moon Doggy. He was blind, and he would play instruments, drums and things like that. I sat next to him there, because we each had our own little space on the boulevard. And I would sell my stuff. I also did a little artwork at the time. I would take slate, piece of slate. I would do the primitive paintings from France and from Europe of the primitive men like that. The blow paintings and things on this. And I would take the slate and I'd break it into pieces, and then I'd put it in a compression frame. And I would go up and sell Neanderthal paintings. Not that they were real, but I'll get back to the other subject. The Core Club was on 72nd Street. There was another one, the Cafe Ballet on 86th. And there was a big restaurant kind of like where you got your food up at a counter where everybody used to go into up there on Broadway after the bars closed. So that was the place to go. And they closed that four in the morning. And at the time, there were very few driver's licenses in New York City, though there was traffic, but not in our community, not that young. And you had to be 18 years old to go to the bars. So what they used to ask was for your draft card because you had to register for the draft after 18. And I borrowed a draft card so I could get into the bars from a friend. Well, I didn't realize he was a friend, but he was 29 years old. And I walked in, the doorman said, where's your draft card? And I handed him the draft card. He looked at it and it said 29. And he looked at me and he says, God bless you. Here, go on like that. But that's a little bit of the nature of what the bars were and all. Of course, there were very few bars that were owned by gay people. There were mainly family bars, and you knew what family they belonged to by the name of the bar, the golden pheasant, the yellow parrot or whatever it was at the time. And so I used to go to Artie's Cafe, the town cafe, and all of these places even before I was of age. But I'd like to tell you a story about in New York City when I had a partner who was around my own age. And I was in a laundromat because nobody has room for a washing machine and dryer in their homes. I was in a laundromat, they had cork boards, and there was a little advertisement on it that said, small apartment for rent with a view of the river. They didn't say the Hudson River or the East River. And I saw that and I called my partner up. I said, we've been wanting to move in together. Why don't we go see this place? He said, yeah. So he met me after he was off from work and all. We went to this. Most landlords lived on the premises that they were renting. And they would have the front apartment or something like that. And there were no leases. You paid the first month's rent and they gave you the key. But two men, two women could rent together, but two men could not. They wouldn't rent to two men. You were gay if you wanted to live together unless you were related. So we used to go in when we wanted to get an apartment together. And we would say, we're half brothers. We have two different last names because we had different fathers but the same mother. We got around things. Anyway, I went in, we looked. Well, a view of the river was if you climbed out on the fire escape, New York City, all the buildings are required to have fire escape. If you climbed out on the fire escape and you leaned about two feet over through this little crack, you saw about two inches of river. But the place was nice and comfortable. So we decided we were going to take it. We went back down to him. We said, we saw it. We'd like to take it. And he turned around and he says, what's the relationship between the two of you? And I stopped for a minute and I looked at my partner. I looked back at him and I said, he's my partner and my lover. And I looked back at my partner at the time. He was as white as the goat. His mouth was hanging open and looked at me as though to say, what the hell have you just done? And I only bring this up because I wanted people to know what it was like. What have you just done? And the landlord then says to me, he says, well, can you afford this place? I said, yeah, I work part-time. I'm out on the boulevard. I study for school and I sell my paintings and my jewelry on the boulevard. And yeah. And he looked at me and he said, okay, here's the key. No, first he asked for the first month's rent that he says, here's the key. And he told me, you know, when Brent would be due each month. And I looked at my partner and he was like stunned. And then I looked back and tears came to my eyes. And I looked up and I said, thank you, Mother Brian. I will never lie about being gay again in my life. But if someone doesn't ask me, I don't walk around saying I'm gay, I'm gay, I'm gay, you know. But every time I've been asked in my life, are you gay or are you a homosexual? I've said yes. That's beautiful. And that's the story of Mother Brian. Did New York City have leather bars in those days or is that before they had them? There were bars that, not that people wore leather, but the leather culture was there. So Alexei, tell me about the bars in New York. I understand you actually had an amazing experience. Yeah. I went into a bar and I believe it was called the Cork Club. Cork Club. Cork. Cork, okay. Cork Club. On 72nd Street, I think I mentioned it before. Okay. And I got to meet some people and people of my own age which was underage to be in a bar. And I went home with somebody. I'll just use that term. All right. And we tripped. Okay. And then I came back to the bar at another time and he saw me sitting with another person. And he got jealous, very jealous. And I was there and I was getting ready. We were going to leave. And he stopped me from leaving. And he says to me, where do you think you're going? And I said, I don't know if it's your business. And he said to me, we're a couple. And I said, no, we're not. Now, the difference between, in case you don't know, between tricking and being a couple is that you've got a dedicated relationship and tricking you don't. I said, and he said, I said, no, we don't. And he says, you're mine. And I says, no, I'm not. I'm nobody's. So we spent a little more time. And I talked to the owner of the bar a little bit because he was, and he came over. He says, hey, guys, just settle down, you know. And I says, well, I'm going to be leaving. And he says, wait a few minutes and then take off. You said they threw him out of the bar? I believe they had thrown him out of the bar. And I got out the door. And all of a sudden I felt, I heard a bag and I felt a stinging in the back of my neck here. I still have the scar here from it. And of course, the owner of the club or manager of the club there came running out and they took me back into the club and all. And he said, we're not going to call the police because they were afraid of what might happen with the bar. Wow. The problem. He says, if you will allow us to take you to our doctor, he'll take care of you. And the rest of the time you come into this bar, anything you want is free. Okay. And you will never see that gentleman again. Wow. Now, I didn't know what it meant. But to this day, I've never seen him again. I went to their doctor, which was a family doctor, you know, and I went there and they paid me some money because I couldn't work the next day and that. And I never saw him again. Wow. So I don't know what happened to him. I don't know anything about that. But that was my first experience of anything like that. And that was out of a gay bar. So you, you took all route 66. You left New York down 40. Okay. I think it was Missouri. Okay. And I took 66 from one side all the way to California. All the way out here. Yeah. And at that day, at that time, it wasn't like when you went to every different little city, there was a, and I'm not saying anything about Home Depot. There was a Home Depot, a Lowe's, or one of the standard coffee shops or food places, a McDonald's or something like that. Each place you went to was totally different. And I got to see what it was like in the rest of the country and how nice the people were. You know, they seem to be trusting and really nice. I went in a 1949 Pontiac Chieftain, a convertible, fire engine red. And to just say how young I was, I took all of the lights in my dash out and I put cellophane around them, a saran around them, that was red. So my entire dash was red. Oh. And I had the convertible, which was fire engine red with the Chieftain's head on the front of it, the ornament. And it was coming across country, we stopped for breakfast in a place. And I had a German shepherd dog with me, which was my dog, with a friend, Bruce. And I didn't want to have the dog shipped or anything like that because that was difficult in those days. So we fixed up my back seat so it was a board that was all padded and it held the water bowl and a food bowl there so that the dog had things. And we came across country. So we went in to eat somewhere. I'm just showing how nice people are. We went across country and some woman, when we were going to pay our check to go out, the woman behind the cash register said to me, is that your dog out there? I said, yeah. She said, oh, your dog is beautiful. I said, oh, thank you. She says, wait here a minute. She went into the kitchen. She came out with this bucket, you know, a bucket. It had hand bones. It had meat that was left over, cuts of little pieces of meat. And my dog enjoyed that bone almost all the way across country like that. But I want to say how nice people can be, you know. And I got to see, I got to put my foot on that spot where you stand in four states or three states and everybody does that. And I had things that happened. Now one thing that was funny coming to California was that we stopped in Death Valley and we, I had to go to the bathroom and there was a ways there. Also we had picked up water on those things that you hung in the front of your car. It kept it cool because we didn't know how big Death Valley was. And I went down, they had these little bridges over the washes. And I was going to the bathroom relieving myself. And I heard this, and I thought rattlesnake. So I didn't stop to pull my pants up or anything. I was up the side of that hill. People were pushing their kids down in their cars. And going by, and I said to Bruce, there's a rattlesnake down here. He said, I've never seen a rattlesnake. New Yorkers. So we came down, we went back and we looked. It was a seed pod on a plant that was right next. But anyway, that's the kind of experiences we had that was fun. So tell us about coming here to California and the bar scene in Silver Lake at that time. Okay. I had a friend, a boyhood friend, Steve, who lived half of the time in California and half of the time in New Jersey. And his mother and father were divorced. His father lived here in California in Paramount. And his mother lived in New Jersey at that time. And so he spent time here. I called him up that snowy morning where they couldn't dump any more ice or snow into the East River, the Hudson River. And I said to him, I'm watching a kinescope recording, which here. And I've decided I'm going to move to California next year. I wanted to make plans to go. And he had lived here. I said, where would be a good place to come to? He said Silver Lake. And I said Silver Lake. I've never heard of it. He says it's a section of Los Angeles. And there's a lot of gay people there and lesbians. I put the lesbians at that time. It was gay girls and gay men. And the women were butchers or femmes. And the men were, you know, which the leather community keeps. To a degree. To a degree, you know. And so I made my plans. And I said to Bruce, who was a friend of mine back there, I'm going to California next year. And he says, why do you want to do that? I said, I want to get away. I had lost a lover a year, a year, not a year, but about six months before to cancer. And it wasn't the plague. It was cancer. And he died fairly quick. And we had been together since high school. And so I saw this kinescope with the palm trees, new freeways, the sun shining around, stuck in the middle of snow. And I says, I'm going there. And then I told Bruce, and Bruce said a little while later, he called me back. He says, can I go with you? I says, you're, I'd love to have somebody with me. So anyway, we did that trip. And we got into Silver Lake and it was so refreshing. Everything was so clean. Now the bars in New York were very different than they are here. How so? They were less specific to your style. Oh, OK. You know, there was Lenny's Hideaway, some of the other bars that are famous, you know, for things. And it just, there was a different feeling. Now I enjoyed the bars in New York. I'm not saying that. But I would say I made more friends when I came here quickly. You know, people in New York are very nice people. Yes. They are. But they're a little standoffish until they get to know you. You know? And I think I had that tendency at that time, too. But you very quickly found a home for yourself here. Oh, yes. And you are one of the founding members of Avatar. Yes. Please, tell us a little. That was a number of years later. Oh, OK. But that was after the... After Black Cat. Black Cat, new faces, the protest and the other things. What it was is I was living in Silver Lake. My first week of being there, I met at the time a Mr. California weightlifter, so and so forth. And that was interesting. It was the first time I was picked up on the street. And he said to me, he said, I told him I'm brand new from New York. And I'd like to, I'd like to show you the bars. Because I knew nothing about the bars. So he took me around that night. We went out to dinner. And he took me into Hollywood. He took me into Silver Lake. And then on Melrose, that was a span of bars. That's a street in West Hollywood. Yes. Hollywood. And we went to a dance club called the Apache. And all the waiters wore little loincloths. And of course shoes, but that's all. Yeah, okay. Like that. And for a while there they had a feather and all, but some people found that offensive. So they did away with the feather, but kept the loincloth. All right, sounds good. And there was dancing there and all. There was another place out here that was called a canyon club. It was on Laurel Canyon. It was like a little resort. You had to have a membership to go in. There was a huge dance floor that was a restaurant early in the evening. And then they took the tables away and put them up on the side. And there was a big dance floor. And there were two jute boxes. And I wondered why there were two of them. Until one of them, we were out on the floor. I was with a lesbian Camille and we were dancing. All of us, and men were dancing with men, women were dancing with women. One jute box went off and the other one went on. And everybody changed partners without a word said. The women went with the men and the men went with the women and they started dancing to the new, to the new. And what it was, the canyon club had this thing that if that jute box went on that meant that the, not the police, but the sheriffs were coming in to look around and it had to look like a legitimate business. But that's a little bit of what California was. Tell us a bit about Avatar. Being one of the founding members of that because Avatar is so iconic and it's so important to our history. There are three of us left who are the founding members there. Because of the plague, AIDS, and because of our ages. And we were going to a rap group held by Guy Baldwin and we were ragging and we were saying about, you know, yeah, the leather bars is Larry's is all of this and a number of leather bars, I mean about five at that time, or six. And we were ragging about the, that there's nothing much to do to socialize that other than the bars. And Guy Baldwin looked at us, there are I think three of us at the time, or four. And he said, then why don't you do something about it? So we got together, Dan McCune, myself, Jason Whitman, and we started to think about it. And that's the birth of Avatar. What do you feel Avatar has accomplished? Coming out of the closet, in our own gay community, fellowship, knowing that other people have something in common with you. And I happened to get David, my husband. Your husband, yes. But you told me earlier when we were speaking before we began actually filming, you knew Harvey Milk. Yeah, yeah. Tell us about personally knowing this man. Well, I wasn't a buddy of his. Understand that, that's not what I'm saying. I met him, we talked. He had a camera shop up in the Castro. He was a very outward going person, if you were cute, he didn't mind saying, hey, what are you doing tonight, cutie? You know, or something like that. And a very friendly person. Very friendly. And I got the understanding that, I said, we talked a little bit, isn't it maybe a danger to be so open and, you know? Because we were still, that's when the Castro was started. I see. You know? And he was a very outward going person. Even when it happened and the riots happened up there afterwards. See, he expected that something might happen to him, but he never expected it to come from within City Hall. You guard yourself about with things. And he wasn't a guarded person. I mean, like I said, he was a type of person that he says he would say to you, if he wanted it, how about a kiss? You know? And I have, I was so tickled when they put out the post office, put out the Harvey Milk stamps that I bought a whole thing of it and I had it framed to remember him. That's beautiful. And, you know, there was, we had things in common because we had common goals of acceptance, not being closeted anymore. You know, when I first came out, if you were considered gay, it was a mental disorder. They could chemically castrate you. They could do shock treatments on you. Your family could have you confined. But not only that, that was what killed the man that had the decoder. The decoder than not. Yeah. Because he was a homosexual, they chemically castrated him for him to stay out of jail. He died from that. But coming back, here. Well, I overlooked a little bit here. Exploratorium, which was, I gather, part of Avatar. Please tell us about that. It was, it was a, we were in a hall we had to, so we did demonstrations there. No one was allowed to ask questions or to interrupt anything, but there was these scenes going on of what BDSM is about. And most people don't really understand it. It's not what they think it is. That's right. In fact, I did door duty there. This is after Avatar became a club, and we were doing fairly well. I want to talk about, at the beginning, it was Dan McCune, myself, and so on and so forth. There was a man, Peter Veros, who at that time, now I don't know if it was the plague, but the early form of the plague. He was artistic. He was very getting, get things done, and he was a designer, and he went, he designed our logo. The logo was the first letter of the Sanskrit alphabet, the A, Avatar. But there's two of them. The first letter symbolizes a higher power, and it's a deity that comes down to Earth when man is in trouble. And we were coming into our community. So he designed the Avatar logo, which I guess you've seen. You know what it looks like. And he had the patches, some patches, samples made, brought us back to the club, gave us three choices, and without a doubt, the founding members thought that that would represent us perfectly. And so we voted on the three different choices. He went back. He had those patches made for us. That week he died. And I had to go, I picked them up. He got the patches, the name things, and all like that. All ordered. And I had to go and pick them up. And he died that week. And so every time I still do orientation for new members when they come in, I take a picture of him out. I have it. And I tell them who he was and what he did. And he was the one that brought Avatar to us. The name. So we originally were 15 members that was considered the core. And then there were associate members after the core. In order for an associate to go into the core membership, somebody had to leave the core. It stayed 15 all the time. Now, we had the gray braid on our right shoulder or the red braid. The core was the red braid. And the associate members wore the gray braid until they could join into the core. Well, there was a little uprising about that. So there was a kind of an argument about it. And they felt less than because they weren't core, that we shouldn't be just a core of people making all the decisions. And so we did away with associate membership and made it all members. So now an Avatar member is an Avatar member. And with that then came the next argument. Would we use the gray braid or the red braid? Now if you're a top or a master you wear the gray braid on your left. Same as your keys. If you're a bottom or a slave or whatever and a slave doesn't mean the same thing it did to other ethnic groups or a slave you wear it on the right side. Just like you did. Remember there was a key code at one time. Left, top, right, bottom. So, but we got this thing from San Francisco, the Exploratorium. There's a thing up there that you could go into. I forget what the hall is. It's out near the ruins there. And you go through all of these different scenes of things and they teach you about it and everything. So we decided to have the Avatar Exploratorium. You were forced to change the name though. They were going to sue us. The people who had the Exploratorium in San Francisco evidently they had patented a copy written or whatever. So we had to change the name. And there I met my husband at one of the Exploratoriums. He came in, he looked at me. I looked at him. A year before he walked into the same thing to see it. He was with a Los Angeles County Sheriff. And I looked at him and I said, because I had to ask, could I put my hands on you, anyone who came in? I'm not an officer of the law. So I said, can I put my hands on you? Can I search you? He said, yeah. So I'm searching him. And I went down and I got to here and I went, is that a gun? And he says, yeah. And my husband, David, was with him that year before, leaned over to me and when I said, is that a gun? He said to me, no, he's just happy to see you. And so I had to go to my board and say, is this okay? He's coming in. He's a sheriff. He's required to carry a gun with him 24 hours a day. So a year later, we're having the Exploratorium, my turn. David, I'm doing duty again because we always worked in the club and worked hard. And I enjoyed that contact with everybody who came in. And I'm up in the front, David walks in the door and I said, can I search you? And he says, what do you think I'm hiding? I've got tennis on, I've got shorts, and I've got a sweatshirt on. What do you think I'm hiding? And I says, I'll find out. And so they're made a match in heaven. But anyway, that's what we do and that's what we did. We have a function coming up in the near future. How do you feel Avatar has evolved? Well, a number of us have gotten older. I think it's finding its way. It's not exactly the same as when it started, nor do I expect it to be. I'm not the same as when I started. But I've had experiences in my life hurtful and joyous. And if you accept that, that some things are going to hurt and some things are joyous, you can live a much better life. As I said to the kids a couple of years back, I was on the Founder's Float at CSW. That's our gay pride out here. And afterwards, they had me go on to the main stage to talk to the people, and I looked down and there were two or three thousand young faces looking up at me from the dance floor. Probably wanting me to be offstage as quick as possible and back to the music. But I looked at them and the first thing I felt to say was, hello family. And they went crazy clapping. I said, you know, we have gained some rights. If you don't use them, you'll lose them. And they went crazy. And that was talking to all those... I had talked to more people in that one day than I probably have talked in my whole time now. And that was it. And CSW honored me as a Founder. Fantastic. You know, and it was the raids that we had, the demonstration here that we had. That's a black cat. You don't see anyone smiling on this picture. They were afraid they were going to be outed. They would lose their jobs. They'd lose their livelihood and their homes. But they showed up anyway. Yeah. Two years ago, we duplicated this picture with the mayor of Los Angeles and the city councilmen. I'd like to share these two really quickly because I think these are very indicative of the history that you're sharing with me today. And with whomever may be watching this video. This is a photo of you when the plaque was dedicated to the black cat here in Los Angeles. They had me unveil it. Yes. That's a wonderful photo. And here... And one thing I just want to mention. Yes. Right now, I went down a couple of months ago and someone put a card up here. And it said, thank you. Oh, yes. Right up here in the corner. This one is a beautiful photo that your husband David shared. And I'd like to... Oh, here it is. Here's the card. Oh, I see. But this photo, your husband David shared. And I think this is a beautiful photo indicative of who you are and what you've done for us as a community fighting for what's right. Isn't that David there with you? Yes. He's next to me. And my dearest friend Tom is next to him. Yeah. With your black cat shirts. I love it.