Around the World in Another 80 Gays: Part 27) From Records to Records

Previously on “Another 80 Gays” : 53) Dame Carol Ann Duffy (b.1955) is the Poet Laureate, reminding us that the Ancient Greeks awarded laurel wreaths to winners of poetry and song contests as written about by 54) Theocritus of Syracuse (c.300 BC-c.260 BC), with modern-day contests making stars out of singers like 55) Clay Aiken (b.1978), who recorded his first professional album in the studio bought by 56) Richard Grossi.

The Larrabee West studio in which 55) Clay Aiken recorded “American Idol Season 2: All-time Classic American Love Songs” was located in a building at 8811 Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood. It was originally a bank built in 1922. It became a recording studio when it was bought by the singer-songwriter Gerry Goffin. In 1969, Gerry sold it to Jackie and Dolores Mills, and when their son Ken later took over business it was renamed the Larrabee West studio.

Many famous singers recorded albums and singles at Larrabee West, including Cher, Patti Labelle, Massive Attack, Snoop Doggy Dogg, Paul McCartney, Dru Hill, Peter Andre, and many more.

In 2004 the Larrabee West studio closed down as the main centre when the Larrabbee sessions moved across town to another studio. The property stayed unoccupied for a year, and then 56) Richard Grossi arrived. Richard was already known in West Hollywood as the manager of California’s oldest gym, Easton’s Gym. With his business partner Sid Krofft he had decided to reopen the premises as an lgbt nightclub. Using part of the building’s address as its name the nightclub opened in 2007 as “Eleven”.

As well as being the main fundraiser for the project Richard also organised many fundraising events in the club for various causes, such as Freedom to Marry and local concerns. The highest profile of the campaigns Richard was involved in was the protest against Russia during the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games. Along with many other bar owners in the area Richard showed his opposition to the Russian laws against the “promotion of homosexuality” by refusing to sell or stock vodka. He was photographed by the media with other bar owners pouring the vodka down the street drains.

Richard’s business partner, Sid Krofft (b.1939) was responsible for coming up with the initial promotion and entertainment for their new club. He got “People” magazine to host the opening party. The club was a success, despite the world economic downturn in 2008 onwards. Business did decline in the following years, but Eleven survived, though its restaurant wasn’t quite as successful. There was a boost after a revamp of the bar but by 2014 Richard felt the stress of running a nightclub was overwhelming and he sold Eleven to the owners of a gay New York Country and Western bar. Eleven became Flaming Saddles.

Sid Krofft was well qualified to come up with entertaining promotions. Entertainment was his life. He was the creator of some well-known puppet characters from television in the 1960s. The most famous of them was “H. R. Puffnstuff”. I remember the series well, especially the talking flute.

With his brother Marty, Sid created Krofft Puppeteer School in Sun Valley, California, in the 1980s. Managing the school was a television production specialist called 57) Michael Mealiffe (b.1940).

I mentioned Michael Mealiffe a few years ago when I wrote about Gay Games multi-medal winners. The most significant achievements in Michael’s swimming career are the records he has broken, not only as a masters swimmer but as a youngster, when he broke the world record in the 110 yard butterfly.

Michael left competitive swimming for a couple of decades and only returned to the sport after he had realised his true sexuality. He heard about the West Hollywood Aquatics Club (WH2O) and how they were in training for the 1990 Vancouver Gay Games and he decided to join. The club president at the time was Tom Reudy, the “Man From Atlantis” swimming double for Patrick Duffy whom I mentioned a few days ago. They were members of the same relay team that broke the world masters record.

At the Vancouver Gay Games Michael Mealiffe made headlines when he broke two world masters records in the 50m and 100m butterfly. This was a significant moment in lgbt sport. In 1990 when the AIDS crisis was still at its height, gay men were still stereotyped as not being athletic. It was the reason the Gay Games were created, to break that stereotype. Michael’s world record showed the world that gay men were every much the equal of professional heterosexual athletes.

This achievement might not seem much to us today when many lgbt athletes are visible and break records in the Olympics and elsewhere, but it is still significant enough to be featured with Michael Mealiffe himself, in a new documentary aired in July on Logo TV called “Light in the Water”. I won’t show a clip from that documentary, but I’ll show the clip below from the old Network Q series made in 1994.

In recent years Michael has become quite a philanthropist, donating to and supporting many lgbt causes and charities. In this he is supported by his husband, Oscar-winning song writer 58) Dean Pitchford (b.1951).

Next time : We find Fame by being Footloose, and Welcome the world to the Olympics in the lair of a James Bond villain.

Keeping Abreast of the Swimming Competition

One of the most consistently popular events at the Gay Games and other lgbt sporting festivals is swimming. There are currently 22 known male and female lgbt Olympic and Paralympic swimmers, 4 of them Olympic champions.

Do you ever think where and when the various swimming strokes were invented? People have been using most of them for thousands of years, but every now and again someone comes along who develops such a definitive method of performing a particular stroke that it is hard not to call him or her the “father or mother” of that stroke.

Such can be the case with Gen. Ernst Heinrich Adolf von Pfuel (1779-1860) who is often referred to as the Father of the Breaststroke.

Ernst was born into the nobility of the Prussia in the last years of the reign of King Friedrich II the Great. He was the son of 61-year-old Ludwig von Pfuel and his 24-year-old wife Sophie. Ludwig was Marshal of the Court of the Crown Prince and knew Friedrich the Great well.

As was customary for a young noble Ernst was sent at the age of 13 to a military academy. During his first years after graduating as an officer in the Prussian army Ernst met Baron Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811), an ex-army officer and writer. An intense love affair began. From their surviving letters it can safely be assumed that the couple engaged in what we know think of as BDSM, with young Ernst von Pfuel being the Master.

During his military training Ernst became an enthusiastic swimmer. However, he later found military life uninspiring and applied several times to be discharged. This was eventually granted and he travelled around Europe with von Kliest. This was also the period of the Napoleonic Wars and Ernst was called upon to serve his nation again and he re-enlisted into the Prussian army.

In 1806 Ernst von Pfuel was present at the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt in which Napoleon defeated the Prussians. This defeat provides links to my previous two articles. To celebrate his victory Napoleon ordered that the statue on top of the Brandenburg gate, the figure of Victory driving a quadriga, the type of chariot said to have been invented by Erechthonius/Auriga, be taken to Paris, the location of the current Gay Games.

The 4-horse quadriga statue on top of
the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin.

I’ll divert from Ernst von Pfuel for a moment to explain the fate of the quadriga statue because it will play a part in Ernst’s later life. The statue was crated up and sent to Paris. Napoleon wanted it to put in a place of honour in front of what is now the L’Eglise de La Madeleine, not far from the Place de la Concorde. However, the statue was damaged in transit. Repairs were put in the hands of the director of the Musée Napoleon (now the Louvre) who asked Pierre Fontaine if it could be put it in the museum’s Orangery. Fontaine is one of the probably gay couple who created the Imperial Style so characteristic of the Napoleonic era (see the section about the 2018 Paris Pride march). It was eventually moved temporarily out to Versailles. We’ll leave the quadriga there for the moment and return to Ernst von Pfuel.

It was while serving with the Austrian army in Prague that Ernst von Pfuel came up with the idea of a swimming school, the world’s first military swimming school, in 1810. What made him so focussed on swimming was the fact that thousands of soldiers across Europe over the centuries had drowned crossing rivers because they were either not trained in swimming or because they were weighed down by the army kit they were carrying. There was no definitive swimming stroke. Soldiers got across rivers using any stroke they knew. Some strokes were restricted by the kit on the soldiers’ backs.

Ernst believed a special swimming stroke used by all soldiers would be safer and easier for the purpose of troop manoeuvers. The technique, the one still taught around the world today, was inspired by the swimming action of a frog. Ernst’s original training method didn’t involve water. The illustration below from 1841 shows how swimmers were trained, suspended from a leather strap.

Apparently, many soldiers found the new breaststroke training highly stressful. After learning the stroke in the harness they were attached to a pole and plunged into the water where they had to use the breaststroke to stay afloat. It sounds very much like the old witch’s ducking stool. Soldiers were terrified of this part of the training.

Before 1817 Ernst von Pfuel took part in several other battles of the Napoleonic Wars, including the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Before that he was present at the defeat of Napoleon in Moscow in 1812. After the defeat England and Prussia took control of Paris. Ernst von Pfuel became Governor of the Prussian Sector.

It was at this point that the Brandenburg quadriga statue returns to our story. You may recall it had been languishing in Versailles awaiting repairs and for somewhere to display it. One of Ernst’s first actions was to see that the statue was returned to the top of the Brandenburg Gate. This single action turned him from a war hero into a national hero. He and his family were granted the honour of being the only people other than the Prussian king who was allowed to pass through the central arch.

In 1817 Ernst was appointed as tutor in war tactics in Berlin. It was there that he set up his second and most important swimming school. In its first 50 years this school trained 70,000 soldiers. Other schools were set up in Cologne and Magdeburg. They established Ernst’s breaststroke as the main stroke taught to German schoolchildren and it remains the main stroke taught in them today.

Ernst von Pfuel’s later years was characterised by high political and public office. At various times he was Prime Minister of Prussia, War Minister, and Governor of Berlin. He received many honours and hobnobbed with everyone from Chancellor Bismarck to Karl Marx.

He married twice and had a large family. He died on 3rd December 1866 in Berlin.

None of Ernst’s swimming school survive yet his legacy is still very much alive. Everyone now learns Ernst von Pfuel’s breaststroke, thankfully not in the original manner. Three lgbt Olympians have specialised in the breaststroke – Mark Chatfield, Amini Fonua and Theresa Michilak (Mark and Amini are also Gay Games breaststroke champions).

Before I finish I’d like to show you Ernst von Pfuel’s coat of arms (below). It has a symbolic connection to the lgbt community in that it contains not one but four rainbows.

City Pride : Gay Paris

The 10th Gay Games begin in Paris tomorrow. To celebrate let’s have a look at some of the city’s lgbt heritage. If you’re in the city for the games, or even plan to visit in the future, these glimpses into Gay Paris present just a small selection of its vast lgbt history. I’ll not cover the most obvious tourist attractions and sites but those that are less noticeable.

The map below gives a very simplified lay-out of the city. With a proper city map you’ll be able to home in more precisely on the sites I’ve chosen. I’ll give the current address of sites to make things a little easier. You don’t have to visit each site in numerical order.

First of all, there is the Parisian “gay quarter”, Le Marais (in orange on the map). This district has been a gathering place for many diverse and bohemian communities over the last century. From the 1980s the lgbt community has been making a more visible presence, and today it is claimed that 40% of lgbt businesses in Paris are based in Le Marais. It is also one of the most untouched areas of the city and still contains many historical buildings and streets.

1) No. 102, The Champs Élysées : This is the site of the terror attack of 20th April 2017. Three policemen were shot, one of whom, Xavier Jugelé, died. He was an active member of the French police lgbt group, Flag! Xavier’s civil partner, Étienne Cardiles, gave a moving eulogy at the national ceremony to honour him. Xavier was awarded a posthumous Legion d’Honneur, and he and Étienne were allowed to marry posthumously, France being a country where this is possible in special circumstances.

2) The Hôtel Regina : On 26th March 1903 the British war hero Sir Hector Macdonald was staying at this hotel. He went down into the hotel lounge after breakfast to read the newspapers. The New York Herald ran a front page story of him being charged with homosexual offences. Sir Hector then returned to his room and shot himself. Sir Hector was a massive hero in the UK and his suicide came as a shock to the nation, partly because they were unaware of the charges against him. It is believed that he is the army officer who still depicted on the label of Camp Coffee in the UK.

3) The Gay Memorial Stone : The intersection of Rue Montorgueil and Rue Bachaumont was the site of the arrest in 1750 of Bruno Lenoir and Jean Diot, the last men to be executed in France for homosexuality. They were strangled and burnt to death in front of the Hôtel de Ville (see no. 6).

4) The Museum of the Legion d’Honneur : Many lgbt people have been awarded the Legion d’Honneur, France’s highest honour. Among them are Xavier Jugelé (see no.1), artist Louise Abbéma and tennis player Amélie Mauresmo. International lgbt recipients have included Giorgio Armani, Lawrence of Arabia, Eleanor Roosevelt and Father Mychal Judge (9/11 victim, awarded posthumously).

5) Natalie Barney’s Salon : 20 Rue Jacob. US writer Natalie Barney (1876-1972) lived at this address for over 60 years. Many famous writers and artists flooded to her home every week to socialise and exchange views.

6) Hôtel de Ville : This will be the main social point for athletes at the Gay Games – the “athlete’s village”. Many events are planned to be held in the main square, including the start and finish of the International Rainbow Memorial Run (see below). This is also the site of the last execution of gay men in France (see no.3). The building is Paris’s city hall and the offices of its mayor. Bertrand Delanoë, Mayor of Paris 2001-14, was one of the few openly gay mayors of a national capital.

7) Convent of the Abbaye-aux-Bois : On the junction of Rue de Four and Boulevard Raspail the now-demolished convent was the home of a “lady boarder”, the enigmatic Henriette Jenny Savalette de Langes (d.1858). She claimed to be the illegitimate daughter of a Marquis and received favours from the French royal family. She also lived at several addresses in Le Marais (see above). After she died it was discovered that she was a man.

8) The Condé Cluster : This is my name for several locations on or near the site of the old Condé Palace which was split up into lots in 1779. The Condé Palace, or Hôtel Condé, was named after members of the French royal Family. It was the city residence of Prince Louis II de Bourbon, Duke of Condé, (1621-1686), the owner of the Condé Diamond, and I’ll write more about him later in the year.

Among the servants of the Condé family was the mother of the infamous Marquis de Sade, who was born in the palace.

The Théâtre de l’Odéon was built in 1782. Many lgbt singers, musicians, actors and performers have appeared here.

Pierre Berthier (1782-1861), geologist, lived and died at 2 Rue Crébillon. He discovered the mineral bauxite (the main source of aluminium) and invented stainless steel. He was put on the list of homosexuals kept by the police. For his scientific work Pierre was awarded the Legion d’Honneur, and is the only gay man of the 72 who are commemorated on the Eiffel Tower. Berthier’s home is currently the location of the publishers Bartillat.

The original Shakespeare and Company bookstore (see no. 9) was located at 12 Rue de l’Odéon and is commemorated with a wall plaque. It lasted until the Nazi occupation of Paris in 1941.

9) Shakespeare and Company : No. 37 Rue de la Bûcherie. The original bookshop was created by Sylvia Beach in the Rue de l’Odeon (see no. 8). This present bookshop was named in honour of the original in 1964. Both bookshops have been meeting places for many lgbt and bohemian writer and artists, including Djuna Barnes, Gertrude Stein and Allen Ginsberg.

Paris Pride Marches (Marche des Fiertés)
1977 : The first official Paris Pride march took place on 25th June 1977. Lgbt groups had taken part in previous annual marches organised by trade unions, but in 1977 they organised their own independent march. Around 400 people took part.

2018 : The route of the most recent march on 30th June 2018 was highlighted in rainbow colours on Google maps for several weeks beforehand. You may like to pause in the area around the Louvre. Much of what you see is the work of architects Pierre Fontaine (1762-1853) and Charles Percier (1764-1838), who were very probably a gay couple. They invented the distinctive Imperial style for Napoleon (I’ll mention Fontaine again in a couple of days).

International Rainbow Memorial Run – 4 August 2018
The Memorial Run was created in 1984 in memory of AIDS victims and, in more recent years, breast cancer victims. More information is in my 2014 article here. The 2018 Run takes places tomorrow (Saturday 4th August). It begins outside the Hôtel de Ville at about 10.40 a.m.



UPDATE : Less than a week after I wrote this article in which I mention the plaque commemorating the last two men executed for homosexuality in France, and this happens. There’s some very stupid people out there.

Star-Gayzing : The Chariot of the Gods

What have Pierre de Coubertin, Tom Waddell, Hercules and Erichthonius all have in common? You may know that Pierre de Coubertin founded the modern Olympic Games, or that Tom Waddell founded the Gay Games. You may even know that Hercules is reputed to be the founder of the ancient Olympic Games, so you may have guessed why I listed Erichthonius. He is said to be the founder of one of Greece’s oldest sporting festivals, one that I wrote about just after starting this blog 7 years ago. I call his games the Gayest Games in Ancient Greece, but the proper name is the Panathenaean Games.

To learn more about the Panathenaean Games go to the first article I wrote on the games here and follow the successive posts. Since I wrote them in 2011 I’ve done more research and am in the process of putting everything together in a book on the games.

In anticipation of the Gay Games in Paris which start a week today I thought it would be appropriate to write about Erichthonius and how he came to found the Panathenaean Games and be honoured by Zeus as the constellation Auriga the charioteer (star map pictured below).

The Panathenaean Games took place every year after the harvest in late July of early August – just around now, in fact. They were expanded, according to legend, by the hero Theseus after his return from defeating the Minotaur when he introduced the larger 4-yearly Greater Panathenaean Games.

Erichthonius was a minor god of ancient Greece. His link to Athens comes through his mother, the warrior goddess Athena, after whom the city is named. She needed some weapons and approached the blacksmith god Hephaestus to make some for her. Hephaestus was smitten with desire and tried to seduce Athena. Athena, protecting her virginity, fought against him. Some of Hephaestus’s semen fell onto her thigh which she wiped off with some wool and flung to the ground. From the ground was born the baby Erichthonius, whose name translates into English as “he came from the earth”.

A side note to this is the theory that this encounter between Hephaestus, who was also the god of fire, and Athena is symbolised in the torch relay that took place on the final day of the Panathenaean Games – the fire of the torch being taken from one of the city gates to Athena’s temple on the Acropolis. The modern Olympic torch relay takes this as its inspiration from which, in its turn, it has influenced the creation of other pre-games relays such as the Queen’s Baton relay at the Commonwealth Games, and the International Rainbow Memorial Run at the Gay Games (the route of Paris run will be given on Friday).

Athena wanted to keep and raise her child, but in order to protect her reputation as a virgin she kept to the baby a secret and raised it in a covered basket. She gave the basket to the safekeeping of the daughters of the king of Athens with the warning that they should never open it (shades of Pandora).

This guardianship of the baby Erichthonius was recreated during the religious procession of the Panathanaean Games. Two girls were given baskets by the priestesses of Athena. The contents of the baskets were kept secret from the girls, who carried them in the procession around Athens and back to the Acropolis. To this day scholars aren’t sure what was in those baskets, if there was anything at all. How one girl who was banned from being a basket carrier led to a gay couple indirectly creating democracy can be read here.

Needless to say, the temptation to open the original basket was too great for the Athenians princesses. What they saw inside drove them mad and they threw themselves off the top of the Acropolis. Various legends say that they saw snakes, or Erichthonius as half-human, half-snake, a common depiction of him, as in the illustration below.

“Erichthonius Released From His Basket” by Antonio Tempesta (1606),
showing the baby Erichthonius as half-man, half-snake.

After the basket was opened Athena chose to raise Erichthonius with her on the Acropolis. She taught him all the skills of a warrior. Naturally he became Athena’s biggest fan and put up a huge wooden statue of her on the Acropolis and started the Panathenaean Games to honour her on her birthday, just after the harvest. Erichthonius overthrew a usurper king of Athens and became king in his place, thus founding a line of legendary rulers.

Whether Erichthonius followed the tradition of being the young lover of an older soldier during his training isn’t likely if he was trained alone by Athena on the Acropolis. Besides, if he was half-serpent, or crippled like his father, as most legends say he was, then he wouldn’t have been admitted to the Athenian gymnasium anyway. Anyone with any visible physical “defect” (as they considered it) would not be allowed to train. Erichthonius may, however, have taken a young lover of his own a few years later. Nothing is recorded to say one way or the other. All we know is that he had a wife, a nymph, by whom he had an only child, his son and successor as king of Athens.

The reason Erichthonius was placed in the night sky as Auriga is because he is the traditional inventor of the 4-horse chariot, the quadriga, the type of chariot you can see on top of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. This he invented because of his physical disadvantage and couldn’t fight on foot. He got the idea from the chariot of the sun god Helios (also known as Apollo is later myths). The supreme god Zeus thought Erichthonius was so skilled with the chariot in both war and sport that he turned him into Auriga.

One interstellar fact of note concerning Auriga is that if you stand on top of the Sun (ouch!) and look at the centre of our galaxy, then turn around 180 degrees, you’ll see Auriga. More precisely you’ll see the point I’ve marked with a cross on the star map above. It marks the direct opposite position in the sky to the galactic centre.

I hope there are clear night skies above Paris during the Gay Games. Athletes will be able to look up at Auriga and give a salute to the para-athlete founder of the Gayest Games in Ancient Greece.