transcripts

objects/videohistory003_transcript.txt

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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.

objects/videohistory004_transcript.txt

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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.