BijouBlog

By Will Seagers

After a tasty meal and a free trip to the Twilight Zone courtesy of Hamburger Mary's, It's time to strut across Folsom Street (diagonally) to the sister establishment of equal fame - The Stud - for music, dancing and (more) cocktails!

When TNT Enterprises opened up Hamburger Mary's and The Stud, it was a joint effort by the two original owners – (T)rixie N (T)oulouse. By the end of the 70s, Trixie had left San Francisco to live in Hawaii and open three more restaurants - Honolulu, Maui and Portland. When he left S.F., Toulouse took over H.M and Trixie's ex, Jimmy, ran The Stud.

I remember my first time in The Stud. It was packed with all sorts of men and women - colorful to say the least. There was quite a din coming from the roar of the crowd and the DJ booth - one of the first in the city. There was quite a mix in the sexuality, too. Gay and straight mixed nicely together without issue. If who you were hitting on was not receptive, it could be because they were either not turned on to you or they were straight! LOL. More times than not, people's sexuality was so pliable you might be going home with someone from "the middle!" It was the 70s and there was still the leftover free love from "The Summer of Love" of the Haight/Ashbury era of 1969!

Anyway, walking into the bar you would notice a distinct similarity in decor to Hamburger Mary's. Very rustic cedar shake walls and lots of great Deco lighting fixtures. The island bar was the prominent feature for sure. It was a huge narrow rectangle that spanned almost the entire middle of the room. The bartending staff was equal to that of Hamburger Mary's in terms of its eclectic mix. Some bartenders were very hot and others made up for that with their very individual personas. To the right and rear of the large bar was the dance floor and DJ booth. Great music was to be heard from many genres. Disco was just beginning to bud and it was featured there frequently at the end of the 70s by DJs like Chrysler Sheldon, George Ferren and John Rendazzo, just to name a few. Later Larry Larue would play host to new wave and punk music as the 80 were ushered in.

I was quite pleased to be invited to be The Stud's sound tech by Jimmy, the manager. I guess I was given good press by the folks over at Hamburger Mary's across the street! I used to frequent the bar to hear the sound system "in action." John, one of the DJs that I mentioned, liked having me in the booth for visits. I watched him spin and took notes. I told him that I was making tapes for clients around town. One night he asked me if I wanted to play. I was a bit timid at first... but, took him up on his offer. My brief debut that night and subsequent nights went well. This was the kick in the pants that I needed to pursue playing in public.

I had never known that The Stud's building was leased. Midway into the 80s the property owner, Alexis, came back to town and wanted the building back. The Stud was forced to move to its second location on Harrison Street were it remained until its closing just two years ago. Meanwhile, the original location remained a bar and was renamed The Holy Cow. I was their sound tech for a few months, then I moved on. One of the most distinguishing features of the newly renamed place was the life-sized fiberglass cow that was hung above the entrance!

The relocating of The Stud was really a good move. They managed to retain a lot of the feel of the original place - decor wise and people wise. And, it seemed to grow in popularity and fame. In its last ten years, it hosted regular periodic parties such as "Go Bang" with its creators Sergio Fedaz and Steven Fabus playing the best music out there! They crafted a very "clubby” feel that was reminiscent of many New York neighborhood dance bars. Sergio and Steve not only played but had top name guest DJs regularly. My last visit to San Francisco was in 2019 where I attended "A Tribute to the Troc." This was a party dedicated to the famous San Francisco disco Trocadero Transfer, also located in the South of Market region. Magical music from that era was skillfully played by Jerry Bonham that night. Familiar faces were in the crowd to celebrate and reminisce.

It is hard to believe that there is no more Stud! COVID and the crazy San Francisco rent prices brought the bar to its close. It was truly the end of an era! But, I am willing to bet there will be one more clever redo... after all, Third Time is the Charm!

Bio of Will Seagers:

Will Seagers (also credited as Matt Harper), within his multifaceted career and participation in numerous gay communities across the country in the '70s and '80s and beyond, worked as a print model and film performer. He made iconic appearances in releases from Falcon, Hand in Hand, Joe Gage, Target (Bullet), J. Brian, Steve Scott, and more, including in lead roles in major classics like Gage's L.A. Tool & Die (1979) and Scott's Wanted (1980). He brought strong screen presence and exceptional acting to his roles and was scene partners with many fellow legends of classic porn.

 

Early on in my career with Catalina Video, we had a pretty regular list of repeat actors we used in the movies we were shooting. As I mentioned before, a number of those actors were gay for pay or bisexual. I was 25 when I started with Catalina and before actually meeting these models, which included Johnny Davenport, Eric Manchester, Mike Gregory, Derek Jensen and Chad Knight, my friends and I would always scoff at the fact when someone said they were bisexual. It’s was just how the world reacted to the word bisexual at the time. We would roll our eyes on the set when the models had to watch straight porn to get hard in between shots. We thought that they were doing it for appearances' sake but they were really getting hard looking at the guys. You know, the way silly ass 20 somethings thought back then. In our minds it was always “cut and dry” - you were straight or you were gay, there was no in between. They were performing a gay sex scene so of course they were gay, right? Luckily life experience has shown us all to have a different perspective on things. Bisexuality is alive and well in the world.

 

Kurt Bauer & Mike Gregory

 

I became aware of a director named Paul Norman, a pioneer in the industry who some would call “The King of Bi-Sexual Movies.” He made The Big Switch and Passion By Fire in 1986, turning the industry on its head, and Bi and Beyond in 1987. I worked with Kurt Bauer from my first day on the set and many times afterwards in the movies Top Man, My Best Buddy, and The Big One, and he even did a non-sexual walk on in my directorial debut Runaways. Kurt also so happened to grace the cover of Bi and Beyond, which Catalina was distributing at the time, and it happened to be in our pile of tapes for models to watch while jerking their dicks to get hard. I borrowed it from the studio one day and took it home to watch. This was my first time watching a bisexual feature. The movie also featured Mike Gregory who I had literally just finished shooting for a movie called The Young Cadets. Watching Kurt and Mike performing with girls added another layer of understanding for me, opening my cynical mind to the fact that the world was not so black and white as one might think.

Unfortunately, an open mind was not something the straight porn industry was experiencing when it came to the idea of bisexual features. I felt like any connection to the gay world was just not something the industry would embrace, on any level, at that time in history. I think Paul Norman brought a sense of legitimacy to them, but they were not having any of it. At the yearly adult video conventions in Las Vegas, the gay and bisexual companies were literally in a completely different room or building! It was hard to get straight porn actors to even consider performing in a straight scene for a bi movie for fear they would be shunned. Paul and his fiancé Tori Wells became the toast of the town after she became a mega-star in the 1989 movie from director Andrew Blake called Night Trips. Blake shot it entirely on 35mm film, while most others were shooting on video. If you’ve never seen it and appreciate straight porno, it’s a “must.” Winner of the AVN Award for Best Film, Cinematography and Editing, it is truly the most stylish adult film I have ever seen. Tori Wells led a star studded cast including: Porsche Lynn, Victoria Paris, Randy Spears and Peter North. Did her mega stardom help move forward the acceptance of Bi movies, directed by her fiancé, within the industry? I’m not sure, but I feel like it opened the door.

Two actors that were able to go from gay movies to decades-long careers in straight movies under the radar without any push back from the industry were Jamie Gillis and Jack Wrangler. Back then, things weren’t streamed or online so it was easy to sweep the fact they performed in gay movies under the carpet. One of Jamie Gillis’ best roles was in Boynapped, re-released by Bijou - a Hand in Hand classic directed by Spencer Logan. Jack Wrangler (Gemini, Hot House, Heavy Equipment), well we all know his success story, and Bijou has tons of content featuring his hot-ass-self! Gay for pay? Or bisexual? I’m truly stumped. Another star that comes to mind is Matt Ramsey, made iconic from the desktop scene in The Bigger the Better with Rick Donovan, who went from gay movies to straight movies under the name Peter North. Luckily, by the time I met Peter North, the industry had come to its senses about bisexual movies and Peter was on my set shooting a straight scene with Leanna Foxxx for my Bi-Dolls series. I asked if I could credit him as Matt Ramsey instead of Peter North, but he respectfully declined, we came a long way getting him to act in the movie, but that might have been pushing it.

Then there is Paul Barresi (alleged lover of John Travolta and porn icon). Now, that hot number is in a league all onto himself! YOWZA! I saw him in person once, wearing super tight black slacks, at a movie cinema in West Hollywood some hot chick. I was with Catalina editor Chet Thomas and he pointed him out to me while we were in line... Gay for pay or bisexual? Who the hell cares!!! All Chet and I could focus on was that hot hairy chest and tight ass on him! I’m sure there are dozens more examples I could give of guys who were or could have been gay for pay or bisexual, but quite honestly I can’t stop thinking about Paul Barresi right now, I think I need to go stream Men of the Midway.

Correction: Bi-Coastal, previously cited as a Paul Norman movie, was a 1985 movie by director Tom DeSimone. We at Bijou apologize for the mix-up. We do make mistakes and are happy when they are pointed out so we can correct them so that we can make sure that the history is properly recorded.

Bio of Josh Eliot:

At the age of 25 in 1987, Josh Eliot was hired by Catalina Video by John Travis (Brentwood Video) and Scott Masters (Nova Video). Travis trained Eliot on his style of videography and mentored him on the art of directing. Josh directed his first movie, Runaways, in 1987. By 2009 when Josh parted ways with Catalina Video, he'd produced and directed hundreds of features and won numerous awards for Best Screenplay, Videography, Editing, and Directing. He was entered into the GayVN Hall of fame in 2002. 

Sex Play, which appears to be an early 1970s gay porn “naughty picture book,” features an article by gay porn star Jim Cassidy entitled, “Why Be A Homosexual.” (Cassidy appears in several vintage gay porn flicks - Whatever Turns Ya On, A Deep Compassion, The Light from the Second Story Window, and Chapter 3 - available on DVD at those links and streaming at BijouGayPorn.com.)
 

But the piece needs some immediate context. This picture book's full title is Sex Play: A Marital Guide for the Gay Male, which is most interesting, because of course at that time gays could not get married, but it assumes that there will be gay couples in long-term but not legally recognized relationships: “homosexual marriages.”

And the forward/editorial by a doctor lends the contents of the book, mostly pictures of different sex acts and positions with some explanation about their benefits to a healthy sexual relationship; authority and credibility. For example, the good doctor proclaims, “There must be a basic reason for homosexuality – it's been with us since the beginning of time and at certain plateaus, during the world's existence, was actually approved of and considered highly aesthetic.”

Yes, true, but here's where pre-existent prejudices come to the fore, “A homosexual can be as masculine as any hetero male and sometimes even more so. If a list were published of the inverts in professional sports, every phase of government, teaching, scuba diving – you name it – it would certainly seem unbelievable.”
 

It's quite daring that he mentions gays as teachers, given the false claims that gay guys are pedophiles, but the use of the word invert really shows prejudice. More significantly, in the late 19th and 20th century, invert was equated with homosexuality, an inborn trait; male inverts inclined to traditionally female behaviors and interests, and vice versa.
 

Yet this theory seems to refer more to transgender individuals, looking at it hindsight, but, more significantly in the context of the times, the good doctor feels the need to show that the homosexuals aren't necessarily “nellies” but also that the masculine ones are the ones who hide their true inversion by living in the closet with a male lover. Very much a product of the times, this view: sexual liberation was occurring, but in the long shadow of the closet, a closet which confused often sex with gender.

Thus, perhaps, the question about why one should be a homosexual in the last article of the publication, seems initially to be almost a tautology. This article begins with the usual arguments that no one knows why someone is a homosexual, but one can spot the nelly ones; it's the more macho ones need to stay underground. Cassidy does allow for a “middle” category, “architects, artists, dress designers, hair dressers, and yes, teachers and members of the clergy ...” Yes, anyone can be a homosexual, but are there degrees by which one behaves as one? The author seems to assume that homosexuality most probably equals, to a great extent, sexual inversion.

But, later in the piece, Cassidy makes some valid points about how young men, using the example of his own experiences in the small town of Delaney, are socialized to be around homoerotic situations, like locker rooms, but that these situations involve references to heterosexual behavior, boasting about “conquests,” even though these guys are experimenting with each other sexually in circle jerks and the like.
 

Perhaps referring obliquely to his own experience, he claims that, “once in a while, again more often than you would think, a true homosexual will emerge ...” Or, maybe, the person discovers he is already is one, was born that way, but there's a caginess going on here about the issue, followed, though, by some honest insight about how heteronormative sex/gender roles are constantly pushed on male youth, with emotionally damaging results to a young gay guy.

But, ultimately, Cassidy argues, it's all about “wildly throbbing cocks or hot, pulsating cunts.” Even the guy who feels like he must have sex with a girl, but then finds his true sexual fulfillment in a male relationship, having experienced both, he implies that sexuality exists on a spectrum, with bisexuality as a flexible, not rigid, center, an “and” instead of an “or.”

Thus, the supposedly restrictive social norms of a small town, with its rigid patriarchal gender roles, can actually, even for both sexes (though it's clear that the men who end up the choices, not the women, a serious, even lethal inequality reflective of the time this piece was written), end up transmuting into, as Cassidy claims, a “new generation [that] doesn't believe in merely love for the opposite gender; they are including their own sex for what it's worth, a delightful, sexual experience, although opposite from early training, and professing love for all people.”

Anyone can be gay; anyone can be straight; anyone can be bi. Homo, hetero, invert, whatever. Enjoy! The cause and the end result are the same.
 

Scotty Bowers, a legend in Hollywood’s sexual underground in the 1950s and 1960s, died at home in Los Angeles on October 13 at the age of 96.

When I found out about his book, Full Service, I must admit I was excited to read it, mostly because I always enjoyed titillating, “Hollywood Babylon” scandals. And here was someone who actually made satisfying the sexuality of Hollywood royalty of that period (and others) his business, literally.

He started his “infamous” gas station procurement network in the late 1940s, mostly hiring out young studs for closeted gay actors and others in the Hollywood business (and there were many).

According to his book, his career as a sex worker began in 1946 while he was working as an attendant at The Richfield Oil gas station located at 5777 Hollywood Boulevard, at the corner of Van Ness Avenue. In 1950, Bowers stopped working at the service station, and he then began working as a party bartender (one his party “tricks” involved using his schlong to stir drinks), while continuing his sexual services to both men and women. And he himself, because he was gifted with such a stunning endowment, according to Bowers, was quite popular.
 

I must admit I was surprised that the famous Hollywood actor Walter Pidgeon, whom I call Mr. Miniver (he was Mrs. Miniver’s [played by Greer Garson] husband in one of the most wholesome, inspiring, patriotic 1940s movies, Mrs. Miniver), was one of his first clients. It’s still sometimes difficult to separate the screen persona from the real person (and in Pidgeon’s case, he was married to a woman, of course), but that was Hollywood: ultimately, illusion.

What I found to be, according to Scotty (and I don’t dispute at all his reliability in this case, as many others do), the close to ultimate Hollywood illusion: the Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn romance. I remember when growing up, it was pretty much a given that these two were the romantic Hollywood power couple of the period (at least before Burton and Taylor came along). Yet, according to Bowers, both were gay (or in Tracy’s case, probably bisexual), and Scotty apparently was one of his sexual partners. Hepburn, who some have argued was really more fluid in her relationship to gender and sexuality, used Bowers as a means to “hook up” with several women.
 

But what I think when reading the book and also viewing the documentary (I made a special trip to see it), Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood, is that one can get distracted by all the Old Hollywood “scandal” and peccadilloes.

Scotty himself suffered many tragedies in his life that are perhaps closely related to, or perhaps not, his life a sex worker. He lived with a common-law wife whom he met right after his service in WWII, but they grew apart, and the daughter by this marriage, Donna, died young from complications after an abortion.

He did finally manage to find happiness with his last wife, but looking at the documentary, it’s clear Scotty suffered, especially later in life, from a hoarding disorder. I remember, and this behavior is that of a typical hoarder, a scene where he is going through memorabilia in a rented storage space stuffed to the maximum. Yes, there’s history made visible in the things he cherishes, but it seems buried, hidden, physically and mentally in clutter, multiplicity out of control.

Hidden and buried, yet now, no longer a secret. Scotty helped others keep secrets, but he never made his sex life a secret. He gloried in it. And I also think it wasn’t just a case of someone who knew he could use his sexuality as a commodity. Of course, he did, if one interprets his legacy very literally. Old Hollywood needed and wanted him to keep its illusion of heteronormative glamour intact.

But in doing so, he ended up exposing that illusion, not out of spite, but because in a world that was built on dreams and illusions, he actually fulfilled in the most primal, honest way the personal dreams of the stars who embodied on screen the dreams of people who probably got their gas pumped (and much more) at the Richfield Oil Gas Station.

On March 24, 1962, bisexual (or gay) boxer Emile Griffith knocked out his opponent, Benny Paret, at Madison Square Garden. In round 12, Griffith trapped Paret in a corner; by that time, his opponent had stopped punching back. Griffith held his opponent's shoulder to keep him in position while using his free hand to hit Paret.
 

The audience was shocked; the famous author Norman Mailer, who wrote about it in his essay, “The Death of Benny Paret,” claimed it was the hardest he had ever seen a man hit another man. At this point, the referee, Ruby Goldstein, stepped in, an awarded Griffith a win by a “technical knockout.” Paret slid to the floor; he was carried out on a stretcher and died ten days later in a hospital.

There's a back story here to this admittedly brutal incident, and it ties into the intense homophobia of the time, and the double life Emile Griffith had to lead. He visited the gay bars during that period, and he even hung out in the then-seedy Times Square where, the time before the fight, according to Donald McRae's book A Man's World: The Double Life of Emile Griffith, he “laughed and danced with the Hispanic gay crowd and the old drag queens.”

Before this fight, Emile was able to live this life: be a man's man in the hypermasculine world of boxing, and apparently hold court with the queens of the period on women's hat styles (in fact, he started out working in a women's hat factory, and his shirtless physique (he requested permission to work that way in the heat) caught the attention of the owner, who got him involved in the world of boxing).
 

But, in the weigh-in before the fight, Paret called Griffith a maricón, which means faggot. Members of the press and officials from the New York Boxing Commission witnessed this exchange. And, in pre-fight interviews with the press, Paret's manager portrayed Griffith as effeminate and thus an unworthy opponent for the hypermasculine Paret. Paret also touched Griffith's ass when he called him the slur, apparently enraging him.

The consequences of this homophobia were indeed deadly. Even though Griffith told a television interviewer that he was proud to be the welterweight champion again, and expressed hopes for Paret's recovery, Paret's death resulted in insults and hate mail. And many sources claim that even though Griffith continued to box for 15 more years, he lost his enthusiasm for the sport. Emile blamed himself for the incident; it always haunted him.

Griffith married a woman in 1971 by the name of Mercedes Donastorg. After retiring from boxing in 1977, he worked as a corrections officer at juvenile detention facility in New Jersey.

But Griffith was still struggling with his overall identity. In 1992, he was viciously beaten in New York City after leaving a gay bar. He was in the hospital for four months with serious kidney damage, and under the care of his adoptive son, began a slow mental and physical decline, but also some serious soul-searching.

He told Sports Illustrated in 2005, “I love men and women the same, but if you ask me which is better … I like women.”

Yet, another reporter for the New York Times, Bob Hebert, about that time, asked him if he was gay, and Griffith struggled to answer. He said he no longer wanted to hide, and he wanted to ride that year in the New York Gay Pride Parade.
 

Other interviews with him do emphasize that he did not like labels about his identity.

Yet the one label everyone remembers him by I think should not just be that deadly fight, but his place in the International Boxing Hall of Fame; no other boxer in boxing history had fought more championship rounds, not even the great Muhammad Ali.

Emile Griffith died on July 23, 2013 at the age of 75.

There's a complex legacy here in Griffith's struggles and triumphs, and documentaries and plays and books and even an opera have struggled to understand and express a turbulent double life that exploded savagely in a literal arena which glorifies a violence it claims to sublimate.