Wally Wallace: Gay Icon
Wally Wallace (1938–1999) founded and managed the Mineshaft, New York’s legendary Meatpacking District leather bar, running it for nine years and nine days from October 1976 to November 1985. Jack Fritscher was the first national journalist to write about the club, covering it twice in Drummer (issues 19 and 20, 1977–78), and returned to Wallace’s story in a nearly three-hour videotaped interview on March 28, 1990, later published in Profiles in Gay Courage. Wallace’s account ranges from Robert Mapplethorpe’s visits and photography, to the Mineshaft’s staged police raid engineered by Cruising director William Friedkin’s crew, to the club’s eventual closure under the combined pressures of AIDS and taxation. Fritscher’s interview is also available in full as a transcription and on YouTube.