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 Montalvo: A test shot and some audio.
 Can you say like something?
 Carrington: Like…I mean
 Be like, “Hi, my name is Gary.”
 Hi, my name is Gary.
 And where are you from?
 Kansas City, Missouri. Born and raised.
 Born and raised? Never left? Never went anywhere––
 Um well, I lived outside of Kansas City for about three years when I was in St. Louis for school.
 You know people talk about living, I've even talked about living
 and moving somewhere else, but I'm I mean this is my city.
 I love Kansas City.
 I don't think I would be happy living any place else.
 I can go visit but, no.
 This is home.
 I'm boisterous.
 It's very rare that I don't speak my mind.
 I'm boldly, I've gotten
 learned. how to be honest and transparent with people.
 That was something I had to learn.
 I did learn that.
 But I'm very, I'm supportive.
 Like I said, I'm honest, you know, I'm someone you
 can if I say I'm gonna do something, then you can
 best believe that it's gonna get done.
 I always stand by my word
 Our gay community here in Kansas City, when
 I came out, it was surrounded by a whole lot of
 con artists.
 And what I mean by that, it was a whole lot of, oh, I can help
 you, oh, I can teach you, I can show you, but it was all based around sexual things.
 So you had to be real leery
 and real conscious about who you spent your time with and who you were getting to know
 During that time, that's when my
 gay family really showed up for me.
 That's when they turned into my gay family.
 Hey, don't worry about it.
 We got you.
 And that's when I started
 realizing and seeing the the workings
 of people who were outcast by their own family, but that
 found each other and came together and built a family.
 And we've been those people stayed my
 friends to this day, so yeah, that’d be my family.
 Who are the specific people?
 Well one, my gay mom, they called her Mother Gooch.
 She passed away.
 She passed away in 2013.
 Then there was uh my gay dad, which was Carver,
 and he I think he passed away in
 2018, 2019.
 But they they were just together.
 I mean, they didn't live together.
 They were just best friends.
 And together as a group on a daily basis
 they just showed me, well not just me, the group of people they
 took in, like their kids, because Gooch was the type of person that
 I was the only person there.
 When I got to Gooch’s house, there were four other, you know,
 males that she had took in, having the same
 situation and she just raised us as a family, like
 she was like he was really our mother, you know, hey, rules and
 regulations, you know have to pay bills, you have to keep the house cleaned, stuff like that.
 This, I'm assuming, is the House of Carrington?
 or is it just a—
 No.
 At the time that this was forming, right as I was going off to school is
 when the, I won’t say the Ball[room] scene, but when the family thing
 was real popular and going around.
 But when I got to the St.
 Louis, we had never actually formed a family here.
 So when I got to St. Louis and started hanging around those people
 and that group of my St. Louis family, that's when,
 you know, one of my friends Sable, he was a female impersonator.
 He was Sable Carrington, just said, “you're going to be my son.”
 And he said, as of right now your last name is Carrington.
 And when I came back to Kansas City,
 by then it already got around, “oh, Gary, Carrington, Gary Carrington, Gary Carrington.”
 And that's when I started the Carrington house here in Kansas City, that
 I was the very first one here in Kansas City, and that's when I started everybody else.
 Okay, yeah,
 You’re the Godfather.
 I love that.
 What was what was the scene like at that time, like were
 you having fun, like going to the clubs and stuff, uh, were you having a good time?
 I guess I was having a good time because, like I
 said, they were teaching me a lot. and then in the gay family group, and
 that they're one of the things that were always teach us, it's not
 where you go, it's the people you're with.
 So, of course, all the clubs back in those days were designed.
 They were not designed for us.
 You know, they didn't play any of our music.
 You know, of course they let us in, take our money, but it wasn't designed for us.
 So, as long as we stayed together with the people we
 were with, of course, we had a good time because of the people I was with, not where was
 not where I was at, it was the people I was with.
 But back in the day, the clubs were very much adamant, you can tell, they were not designed for us.
 That's still how it is today. [laughs]
 To this day! In 2025. To this day.
 Because when Soakie's–
 Soakie's became such a hot item. Soakie's became that
 little small space became such a major
 foot in the gay community, but it was a foot in a Black gay community
 Back then pre-partying was, you know, the big thing.
 So let's go here, have a couple of drinks, and then by the
 time we get we having a couple of drinks here, everything will be ready to go. where we where we used to party at.
 So we would go down to Soakie's and stay down there for about maybe a couple
 of hours or so, and then it started catching on.
 The more and more people started coming.
 And then Tish, Jerry started talking to
 "Soakie" [Salvatore A. Rinaldo] about doing things down there.
 And that's when he found out he was like––
 They said in order for them to get a 3 o'clock license,
 They had their food revenue had to go up. because
 I don't know what it was, but they said, you know, they had them sell so much food
 in order to get approved for three o'clock license.
 So that was our goal.
 So we did that.
 We would tell people go down there for lunch. At night, we would go down there and buy sandwiches.
 and we finally got the license.
 And then that's when that took off and we started like remodeling and taking, making, changes.
 because the man was making money.
 He didn't have no problem.
 He was an Italian, he was making money.
 Sounds like he was pretty accepting to you all.
 That he was.
 Whatever we went and asked for him, whatever we went to him and said we
 wanted to do or thought about doing, if it wasn't a problem, he didn't have any issue.
 Like I said, we went in. He was this old Italian man.
 These are Black gay people coming into your establishment.
 I mean, you serve lunch, you know, to people who are––
 you know, working in The Mob or whatever, you because that place was packed during lunch.
 In Downtown, that was a place.
 Businessmen down in your their their suits and making deals.
 They're sitting here eating hoagie sandwiches and drinking beer.
 And now at night we want you to flip the script
 and turn it into...he was very open
 Hell, he remodeled the four times for us. He was very accepting.
 Why do you think he was so willing
 to change the the shop at night?
 I believe it was Tisha [Taylor] and Jerry [Colston]
 I believe whatever conversation they had––
 And Eric [Robinson]?
 Yeah, yeah. I believe whatever conversation they had, they convinced him to trust them.
 And they within him trusting them, you
 know, they brought us on. "Hey Gary, I need you, you know, to be a, you
 know, to work the door for me" as those things started forming.
 My little brother Danny, before he passed, "hey, Danny, I need you to be a bartender."
 And I think
 they showed him what they could do and he trusted
 them and then he realized, hey, I can trust these people.
 Then it got to the point that [Soakie] wouldn't even come in.
 You know, he would, Soakie was usually there seven days a week.
 It got to the point that he would show up on Fridays.
 Fridays to write the checks and pay the bills for the liquor, and
 pay everybody payroll and he leave everything to Jerry and Tisha.
 What was it like, like, when Soakie's
 shut down, how did that impact you and the community and stuff?
 When I got the call,
 When Tisha called and said "hey, you need to come down and clear
 out all yourself out of the dressing room because, you know, they're not renewing our license, they're shutting this down."
 This is right before they started out remodeling the Power & Light [District]
 H&R Block, but we knew it was coming.
 They were getting ready put us out of there because they were redoing Downtown.
 it was a a blow, because we had been there, we put, and I
 do mean blood sweat and tears, we had painted walls, we had made floors.
 We had took out furniture.
 We had you know, hung doors.
 Our dressing room was an old storage room and we had to go in and hang
 light and clean out and gut and redo just
 so we have a place for the dressing room. so it was it was kind of bittersweet.
 When we went down and we cleaned out the dressing room and took mementos.
 I still have a bar stool from Soakie's in my house right now.
 [chuckles] I stole one of the bar stools.
 So and we took mementos, and so like I thought it was bittersweet and
 then it took us it took the community a minute to realize, okay, Soakie's not here anymore.
 It's done.
 What are we gonna do?
 If we can get one person to say, hey, I want to open a business here
 in Kansas City and I want to be a Black gay bar, that bar is going to make money because it's a need.
 It
 it's a need.
 Because we' can go into any bar in the city any and
 they're all, you know, catering to the our other counterparts, we
 can have a drink with whatever, but it's not gonna be for us.
 It's not designed for us.
 You know, it's not made for us.
 You'll take us in, but
 I believe that's what we need.
 I just need one person to say, hey, I'm gonna open this bar.
 And why is that so important?
 Like, why was Soakie's so important?
 Like, why are bars for us so important, or important to you?
 Well, important to me because it was basically our seat at the table.
 It was our voice.
 You know, at that time back in that era, everybody, you know,
 first of all, gay wasn't as out it is now,
 wasn't looked up on as it is now, so accepted.
 Back then, so it was our place.
 It was our place we could go and be us.
 We didn't have to put on any airs we didn't have to, you know, conduct
 us, we didn't have to we could go and just be us, be open and free.
 See, at the other bars, we have to, you know,
 you know, the way we talk and joke and play with each other,
 you know, they think we're fighting, or they think there's a problem or
 issue, or you know, I can tell that
 the drink I just ordered is not the same drink that you––
 You understand what I'm saying? The service [was different]. And I sense that. And I just got tired of faking it.
 And I think that's what Soakie's was. Soakie's was our place.
 Because a lot of people came to Soakie's, and they never even went inside the bar.
 They would come down park in the parking lot, pop their trunk, put
 out their lawn chairs and their cooler and sit right there in the park because they were around their people.
 They felt home that they they felt at home, so that's where it was.
 and that's the need here in this community that
 we, as a Black gay community, we need a place where we can say, hey, this is ours.
 This is us.
 A place where we can walk into a bar and see, you know, pictures of
 entertainers that went to win national titles, that does such-and-such, and we don't we don't have that here.
 We don't have any place that honors or
 respects or mentions, you know, anybody in our Black gay community
 because we have no voice.
 We have no place.
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 Starla: Got my good side?
 Nasir: Yeah. [chuckles]
 N: So to start…
 Can you just tell me what's your name?
 S: My name is Starla Carr.
 N: Starla Carr.
 And where are you from?
 S: I'm originally from Cali,
 uh West side.
 I'm originally from.
 Los Angeles and now I live in Kansas.
 N: How long have you been living in Kansas?
 S: More years than I care to admit to
 probably a good 30 years.
 I have come to love Kansas, um
 especially small town life and I never thought I'd be this person, but
 the older I get, the peacefulness, the friendliness,
 I just I can't see myself living in a big city ever again.
 but as a kid, it was extremely frustrating
 because it was exciting being in Cali, even
 though it was dangerous and violent at times.
 Like it was exciting, you know, and I got I
 had a really great childhood as far as like I got to do a lot of stuff
 I...
 am frequency.
 I'm a vibe.
 I am I'm a lot of things.
 but it's hard to really quantify exactly
 who I am because I'm still learning myself even now, at my big age. um
 I
 am very much about duality of a lot
 of things because I'm an artist.
 So there is the masculine
 and feminine parts of me that
 that duality that kind of bounce back and forth.
 There is the artist in me that is creative
 and and traumatized and
 that bounces back and forth.
 I am
 there's this new part
 of me that is chronically ill, and so, and
 then there's a part of me that feels like I can do anything I want to do.
 So there's there's a lot of duality
 within me, but if I had to sum it up in one little sentence,
 I just am frequency.
 I knew I liked girls way back in, like, at seven or eight.
 I had a crush on a girl at church school.
 And we were like best friends.
 And so she was come over to my house spend the night.
 I would go to her house and I just thought she was just the most beautiful thing.
 Like, I when I look back on it, I realized that that was a crush
 and that wasn't that was the
 beginning, but I've always just loved women
 in a way that it's like, for me, is women are just everything, like,
 not just the beauty or the romantic side of it, but
 just the way we navigate the world, how
 strong we are, like women are just
 everything.
 There was some conversation about Soakie's being
 a gay bar, and of course that made my little spidey
 sensors tingle cause I was like "ooo, gay bar" um and
 At this point, were you going to other gay bars?
 I didn't know of any others. Yeah, I didn't know of any others.
 I would eventually come to find out that there was a
 couple of gay bars in Lawrence, Kansas and I
 would also sneak there on my own and go a couple times.
 but I didn't know of any other place but what I
 heard about Soakie's and um it
 was a friend of one of the guys
 that I was in [a former rap group] with that was like yeah,
 they have epic fights at Soakie's.
 and I was like what?
 And he was like yeah, everybody just hits in the parking lot, watch the fight.
 And I was like, okay, and
 he and he was like I was like, let's go.
 And he's like I'm not going to Soakie's,
 That's a gay bar.
 I was like, we could just sit outside and we don't have to go inside.
 and so we went and sat
 outside for like a couple of hours and it
 was, which we've come to unpack is 'Parkin' Lot Pimpin''
 is what they call it, but we like the parking lot
 that was in front of Soakie's was pretty big,
 and we sat at the back we drove and parked our car
 at the back of the parking lot and just sat and watched
 people walking around in out the club wasn't any fights going on.
 It was just a normal night and
 we just sat there looking at people and talking like the
 whole couple of hours, but then I was like okay I got to get inside.
 I got to get inside there.
 And um
 I had a friend at the time named Casey and Casey,
 young lesbian, uh has dated
 somebody who was coming to Soakie's.
 And so
 I think she was the first person that took me
 and and at this point I've been out for a few years.
 I'm still trying to find my own as a
 lesbian, like what does that mean to me?
 and I've gone all the way from femme to masc
 and I think and I'm
 super comfortable as the masculine version of me.
 And
 plus I felt like which is weird to say, but
 I felt like dating was easier as a masculine lesbian.
 But anyway, we started coming to Soakie's.
 and then I found out by coming that uh they had entertainment.
 And I was like, okay, this is cool.
 Uh, I'll never forget a shout out to
 [Mama Mamie], and she's gonna love to hear this, but Mama
 Ma' was uh she used to sell
 food outside the club and there was a lot
 of times she was our door person for Soakie's and
 her smile was so well–
 warm and welcoming like we would chat outside
 and, you know, about plates or whatever, and then there
 was a store next door where they sold like sex supplies and what not.
 and um she ended up working over there.
 And so going in and out from bar to over
 there, it was just like she became a familiar face to me and
 definitely a comfortable comfortable person to talk to
 and um very sweet, and uh we're still friends to this day.
 And she ended up also being a show director
 at a different club which I performed at but um we formed a friendship. um
 um I started dating at the club, uh
 came into a long-term relationship with someone who was
 entertainer there and um yeah,
 and then when I got with who was now my ex when
 I got with her, she was more established
 as an entertainer theirs.
 And as she was performing and
 whatnot, it's like we became the parents
 of all of these younger uh gay
 performers and entertainers.
 And as you know, there's different houses.
 So she had her own house, the House of Beauty.
 The weird thing is, and this is just a very me thing because I'm very much
 I'm
 very much the kind of person who gets along with everybody socially,
 but I've never fit in a clique.
 I've never fit in a group.
 So I was never asked to be in any house, by the way.
 but because I
 was with her, by proxy, I was in the
 House of Beauty because I was her girlfriend, even though
 she never even asked me to be in the house, but I was in the House of Beauty and so
 as a parent figure,
 I really love that role.
 I to this day, I still have
 gay family that call me 'unc' or call me 'pops'
 or call me whatever, and I if it feels good,
 it feels really good that they look at me like that, and
 to be able to be that person you can come to for advice
 or and that's what I became in
 that role was almost a masculine fatherlike
 figure to a lot of queer young people.
 And I think just because of the
 nature of my personality, which is I've always had kind of an old soul, um
 people started calling me up for advice for
 what to do or how to handle a situation or what was going on in their personal life.
 And I very much clung to that role as
 well as an entertainer, but
 that was important to me and all of that happened at Soakie's.
 Every person that I met came in contact
 with had the honor privilege of performing
 with or around, like all of those connections
 came from going to Soakie's.
 Soakie's was family. um
 there there were so many people that
 I had hard conversations with in the club
 uh that
 I needed to have conversations with people who understood me.
 Um
 There was dating.
 There was romance. um
 there was it was just
 everything I needed to be in this little hole in the wall clubs,
 like community um
 we lost so many people and
 we'd lose somebody and then we show up that night at the bar.
 and you could be sloppy drunk or you could be
 crying or you could be upset.
 We always did benefit shows um when
 someone passed and to try and raise money for the family, um
 there... where else are you gonna do that?
 You know what I mean?
 Like I had I've never seen that habit in my life uh
 where someone's love one partner
 spouse, whatever's passed away,
 and then this community comes together just
 to give them money or perform for them.
 And that was unique to me. um
 there was real
 hard situations um
 of couples that broke up.
 Like the thing about it is, Soakie's on
 the outside looking in, there was always this
 perception of violence from people in the club.
 There was
 a perception from the outside looking in that
 oh, the queers are out there doing whatever,
 the drag fights and what not, but what they don't understand is
 when you come up
 without support, without help,
 without finance, you
 end up in those kind of violent situations.
 Like, I can talk about it maturely now as an adult,
 but every single fight I ever saw was
 real shit like this was not
 little light hearted things.
 This was I've been with this person for 13
 years and were not together any more.
 in in the straight world
 a divorce, but we didn't have words and language for that.
 It was a break up.
 It happened and everybody in the club knows that no longer
 you with this person now you're with this person and now people are big in sides and
 yeah, it was violent.
 It was raw.
 It was real, but we it was still in an environment
 where there was love.
 It's not going to look like anybody
 else's version of love, but
 you knew there was safety and love there, and
 yet there were fights, and yes, there
 was drugs and there was everything else there just like the
 real world, but we had family and
 even like I'll never forget this is a true story.
 There was a
 a pageant that we had, and when we had the pageant
 we would open up the garage area next to Soakie's so we had more room.
 And there was a
 group of straight guys, I'm assuming straight guys, I don't know, that came to the club.
 and um one of my
 gay kids uh was going back
 and forth between behind the stage and the dressing room.
 um, one of my best friends who
 was the DJ from my group who
 wasn't even gay, who was the DJ there that night.
 uh, I saw one
 of my kids walking past this guy who
 was headed back towards the back dressing room,
 and one of my gay kids, their spouse,
 uh, was talking to some guy who
 was trying to hit on her and I'm watching.
 I'm sitting in the cut, and I'm watching.
 and I see her actively like I
 have somebody go away, and I see the aggression
 level going up from this straight guy like you know,
 "You aint gotta be with them"
 and I see that my child, that's how
 I consider it, doesn't see what's coming, and
 I just started making my way over just in case.
 and the two
 the couple went through the back way to
 go back to the dressing room, did not see that this
 guy was headed towards them.
 Their backs were turned, and I stepped in between, and I was like that's not what you want right there.
 I need you to turn around and head on back the other way.
 "Well, who are you?"
 And by the time he said that
 *motions*
 it was like Gary, it was the DJ.
 It was like
 protection.
 And they tossed him out.
 But that's what we did for each other.
 And and it was
 in the real world, you don't have that protection.
 If I'm walking down the street with my lover and we hold hands
 or we kiss, Gary's not gonna pop out or
 somebody else, you know, bouncers that I love and care about.
 They're not gonna pop out and just be like, hey, leave them alone.
 You know what I mean?
 Like, so
 it definitely was
 something that I absolutely needed.
 And the friendships,
 um which have lasted well beyond the building,
 um are still there.
 We're still there, so it was very deep.
 I don't I don't even think some some
 day maybe I'll fully realize how deep it was because I'm still unpacking
 uh a lot of the lessons that I learned there.
 But yeah.
 ....that was Soakie's.