BARTab July 2012
“Take Me to the River”
Russian River
Occupy Guerneville: For Fun
by Jack Fritscher
Proud Mary, Rollin’ on the River! Guerneville is a dirty-dancing resort grittier than the Catskills. Prehistoric two-spirit Pomo Indians, queer Russian trappers (1812), and bachelor California loggers (1840) had no idea “Big Bottom” settlement would become “Stumptown” and be renamed “Guerneville” after sawmill owner George Guerne who clear-cut redwoods to build houses in San Francisco. Locals laugh at tourists saying “Gur-nee-ville” the way San Franciscans bridle at “Frisco.” Thank the Rainbow Gods, it’s not the Pines, South Beach, or Palm Springs with their status codes. Diversely eclectic, Guerneville is San Francisco’s backyard playground on the fabled Russian River where generations of GLBTs have retreated like Thoreau at Walden Pond to vacation, party, recover, and then retire in woodsy homes near world-famous wineries, while remaining part of the City ninety-six minutes away.
Never mind the 1% herd of white male Republican elephants wallowing in the woods every summer at the Bohemian Grove in nearby Rio Nido. More truly bohemian, Guerneville, like the Cannes of film festivals, has beauties sun-broiling on its croissette beach, Lazy Bear poolside weekends in its B&Bs, and leatherfolk and discomaniacs in its bar ancestry: Drums, Mineshaft, Russian River Eagle, the Woods disco, and down River Road, near the legendary nude cruising at Wohler Bridge (16 years older than the Golden Gate), the Rusty Nail.
Long before Philadelphian Peter Pender pondered purchasing posh property to found Fife’s in 1977, gays, hippies, pagans, straight red necks, and vegetarians (if pot is a veggie) lived the uncommercialized good life of “River Rats.” By DNA, Pender’s campy “Fifi’s” was a Polkstrasse cocktail bar; the Woods, featuring Charles Pierce, Sylvester and Sharon McKnight, was a clone of Trocadero; Molly Brown’s was the plaid-shirt Ambush; and Rainbow Cattle Company (1979), spun out of the original RCC (1977) on Valencia at DuBoce, a Folsom bar. 270
Eyewitness history is often local color. In 1961 in Sebastopol, my straight uncle who danced to Big Bands at Russian River venues during WWII, introduced me to Buck’s bar and the mystique of Guerneville where since the 1890s, San Francisco men and women, soldiers and sailors who stunt-danced together, had arrived by ferry and a railroad now gone. Years later in 1977, weekending, rebuilding a fixer, I settled nearby watching winter floods of waters and ever-evolving floods of visitors.
In the late 1980s, Wildwood resort became a kind of hospice of respite for AIDs patients supported by Radical Faeries and Russian River nuns who united gays and straights. But before that in 1980, as a concentric ring of fallout from the Milk-Moscone killings that divided gay San Franciscans from straight, some resorts at the River hung signs: “Straight Only.”
The tension was acted out one comical night at Molly Brown’s when two pals and I pulled our 3/4-ton pickup into Molly’s lot. Having worked late, we entered in our construction clothes, bearded and hungry for chicken dinner, ordering beers, smoking cigars. As quick as we moved off toward the pool table, the bartender called the cops. One of the two officers swaggered up to me at the pool table, crossed his arms on his chest, and looked up at me. He was short; I’m tall. “What you looking for?” he asked. I wondered was he “out”? “A beer. What are you looking for?” Shortie said, “Barkeep says you’ve come to break the place up. You’re threatening the customers.” OMG, my drag was working! The second cop ordered us out to his cruiser to check our ID’s. Staring out the windows, Molly’s patrons and the cops could not figure out our sexuality. Well, “Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner!” So I said, “You want me to sing ‘Over the Rainbow’?” The cops ushered us in to the bartender announcing: “They’re your kind.” The short one shook my hand, and, true pervert, I got off on his grip.