Audio Interview, Bob Crystal, December 7, 2011

BOB CRYSTAL: I came out my freshman year

at college, which was 1967.

EVELYN BAILEY: You don't mind if I tape?

BOB CRYSTAL: No.

I was going to Cornell University.

And I came out in 1967.

And--

EVELYN BAILEY: Do I dare ask how old you were then?

BOB CRYSTAL: Well, you just add twenty-one--

CREW: Well he was a freshman.

BOB CRYSTAL: Freshman in 1967.

I'm sixty-two.

And I was very blessed.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Let's just kind of slow down just a little bit.

So if we were to talk to you a little bit about what

it was like being gay in the 1960s,

even though you were out into 1967,

I'm sure you probably had some sort of sense of--

BOB CRYSTAL: Yes I did.

KEVIN INDOVINO: OK, tell me about the '60s-- well I mean,

how far back do you--

EVELYN BAILEY: Remember.

Recall, remember.

BOB CRYSTAL: If you remember the '60s, you didn't live it.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah, right.

BOB CRYSTAL: There was something that

affected my life very strongly.

There was a phrase in New York state

law called moral turpitude.

And if you had moral turpitude, you

couldn't hold a New York State license,

which meant that you couldn't even be a hairdresser.

EVELYN BAILEY: Wow.

BOB CRYSTAL: So that if you had a conviction

of any kind of moral--

on any morals charge at all, and that included solicitation,

the first thing that happened was your license was revoked.

So that created a huge fear.

And when people talk about the Stonewall Riots,

they don't understand that there were people in that bar who

are willing to give up their livelihood, not just

an evening in jail, but they were willing to give up

their livelihood.

And when we talk about Gordon Urlacher being

willing to be the liaison between the gay community

and the police department in 1972,

he was doing a tremendous service to the gay community

by being able to erase or change the arrest records.

EVELYN BAILEY: Hm.

BOB CRYSTAL: Because there there were people who were teachers.

You had to be licensed to be a teacher,

you had be a license to be a hair dresser,

you had to be a license to be a plumber.

And if anybody filed a complaint against you,

and there was an arrest record to go with it,

at the Department of the Regents, which Regents

didn't used to be just education of high schools.

It was-- they took charge of licensing.

EVELYN BAILEY: Oh wow.

BOB CRYSTAL: And so on a guy or gal who was arrested on morals

charges was no longer able to work

and with reciprocity could not work in other states either.

Could no longer work in New York state,

in the licensed category-- doctor, lawyer--

EVELYN BAILEY: Plumber.

BOB CRYSTAL: Hairdresser, plumber--

KEVIN INDOVINO: Teacher.

BOB CRYSTAL: Teacher--

EVELYN BAILEY: Carpenter

BOB CRYSTAL: Well, carpentry, yeah,

because it was a union job.

EVELYN BAILEY: Probably stonemason.

BOB CRYSTAL: Well, most of the construction trades

were union in the '60s.

Unions were amongst the most liberal.

The individuals of the unions weren't, but the unions

themselves were most liberal.

They didn't do any of that stuff.

EVELYN BAILEY: Were you born in Rochester?

BOB CRYSTAL: No, I'm an Army brat,

I was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

My parents met under the GI Bill.

My mother was a Navy nurse, and my father was an Army Sergeant.

And he served in the Ardennes and they both got out and went

to University of Michigan, and discovered that the GI Bill was

not generous if you had one GI Bill

person in marrying another GI Bill person,

you ended up one GI Bill income.

EVELYN BAILEY: Hm.

BOB CRYSTAL: So my arrival was--

my conception was not a joyous event.

KEVIN INDOVINO: So when did you then come to Rochester?

BOB CRYSTAL: After I graduated from Cornell.

I had a choice of either going home

to live with mother and dad, or coming here and looking

for work.

I was getting unemployment at twenty-five dollars a week,

because--

EVELYN BAILEY: Now, at Cornell, was there--

was the Mattachine Society--

BOB CRYSTAL: No, it wasn't the Mattachine,

it was the Cornell University Gay Liberation Front.

And I've never been able to find anybody in the records,

and I have a really memory for names,

but the one name I remember is Bob Roth, R-O-T-H,

and he and his lover founded the CUGLF,

and that had to be a pseudonym.

Because I've never been able to find him.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.

Yeah.

BOB CRYSTAL: And he and Bob Osborn born knew each other.

And Bob Osborn founded U of R GLF in 1960--

EVELYN BAILEY: 1970.

BOB CRYSTAL: 1970.

And Bob Roth founded CUGLF the right

after the Stonewall Riots.

EVELYN BAILEY: And did you know Larry Fine?

BOB CRYSTAL: Mm-hm.

EVELYN BAILEY: So Bob Osborn and Larry Fine--

BOB CRYSTAL: And RJ Alcala--

was the triumvirate.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Right.

BOB CRYSTAL: And Larry Fine is still tuning pianos in Boston.

And Bob Osborn was also a tax resistor

and an anti-war protester, and the IRS drove him out

of the United States.

And he went to Canada and he got a job working for Canadian

Bell, and he is the guy who designed the optical system

for the cable for--

KEVIN INDOVINO: Fiberoptics.

BOB CRYSTAL: He was a fiberoptics genius.

He's also the guy who tried to convince Xerox

that they should get into the computer business,

but they sold it to IBM.

It used to frost him.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Lesson learned.

BOB CRYSTAL: Well, he worked out of this kitchen,

and I worked with him, and he was

trying to teach me how to speak amaslan and all that stuff.

And he had a Xerox computer on our kitchen table.

We could never eat in the kitchen

because it was occupied by this huge computer hooked up

to the phone system.

And when Xerox made the decision to sell everything to IBM,

they literally made him give back his Xerox computer, which

was a keyboard built in, and a typewriter,

and the computer would take over and type right back.

And they delivered to him an IBM Selectric,

which did the same thing.

And it just-- you could see the steam coming out of his ears,

going, they don't know what the-- they're doing--

They'll be out of business in fifty years.

And sure enough--

KEVIN INDOVINO: Was right.

So Let's go back to 1967 then.

So freshman in college.

BOB CRYSTAL: It was the best of times

because it was the year of the generation of love, the love

generation.

There was a lot of sexual freedom going on

amongst the under-thirty crowd.

But as soon as people started thinking about their futures,

it became paranoid.

But there was a lot of free love going on.

It was pre-AIDS and post-penicillin,

so nothing was scary. (phone rings) I'm not us.

I'm on call.

They'll call back.

KEVIN INDOVINO: OK so let's just talk to me

a little bit about then being at Cornell University.

There for four years?

BOB CRYSTAL: Yep.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Right, OK.

Did you get involved with the CUGLF?

BOB CRYSTAL: Sure did.

KEVIN INDOVINO: OK, so talk to me about that experience.

BOB CRYSTAL: It was--

we were very young.

Our faculty sponsor was Dan Berrigan

We were very optimistic.

He taught us passive, peaceful resistance.

He encouraged us to go to the education route rather than

the demonstration route.

He encouraged us to ask for help from the administration rather

than demand concessions.

And it worked very well.

And when I graduated, I moved to Rochester to look for work,

and hooked up with Bob Osborn and Patti Evans.

Patti Evans was a student on campus at the time.

Bob Osborn was already a graduate student in physics.

And I forget what RJ and Larry were.

I think they were both graduate students, too.

I think Patti was the only undergraduate.

And they really were doing things like educating people.

That's how the Empty Closet started.

It started as a flier about what are gay people, why

do we want to be called gay, some of the lost issues

were why it's unfair why moral turpitude should not

apply to us, why the arrests of the police department

should not be condoned, and telling people

that if you get into trouble, give us a call.

We'll do what we can to help.

But it was an educational thing rather than a newspaper.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Now, moving to Rochester,

that would have been, what, 1971? '72?

'71.

BOB CRYSTAL: Winter of '71, '72.

kEVIN INDOVINO: So tell me, how did

you meet Bob and Patti and--

BOB CRYSTAL: They were handing out Empty Closets at Jim's.

And I and I wanted to meet somebody

who was going to do that because it was right up what

I had been trained.

I was hanging out at Jim's because there

was no place else for a young man who didn't

know anybody in town to go.

There was Jim's, and there was the Bachelor Forum,

and there was another one out at--

I forget where it was--

you had to get in a car.

The nice thing about Jim's was you could walk to The Bachelor

Forum and back.

Those were the days when walking didn't hurt.

EVELYN BAILEY: Was it Dick's?

BOB CRYSTAL: No, Dick's was downtown.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah.

EVELYN BAILEY: OK.

BOB CRYSTAL: Dick's 43.

KEVIN INDOVINO: The only one I know that was

way out there was the Dutch 22.

BOB CRYSTAL: That doesn't sound right.

It had blacklight.

It was two stories.

You walk in, and there was a room on the first floor.

There was just a bar, and you go up the stairs,

and you could see the blacklight reflecting,

and the walls were painted black with stars and Jupiter and--

KEVIN INDOVINO: Do you remember what area?

BOB CRYSTAL: It was on the east side,

and you had to go past the Bachelor Forum to get to it.

KEVIN INDOVINO: OK, I'm assuming the Bachelor

Forum was on Goodman?

EVELYN BAILEY: The Avenue Pub?

BOB CRYSTAL: No, that was Monroe.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah.

I'll have to do some research on that.

EVELYN BAILEY: We'll have to do some--

yeah.

BOB CRYSTAL: But it was--

but those were the three.

And there was very little going on anywhere else.

And I was very angry at the church,

because the church was not offering a haven.

I was on an ordination track back in the '60s and '70s,

and I got very angry at the church,

and even though there were people

in the church who were very sympathetic,

they too were afraid.

And they didn't want to lose--

what happened to me in Ithaca about moral turpitude

was one of the ladies from the local church came to worship

on campus and she plucked me aside and she said,

I know you--

you're anti-war, and you're a communist, and you're gay,

you're a homosexual, and you're an evil, immoral person,

and you shouldn't be in the church,

but I'll tell you one thing, my son

works for the Regent's Department in Albany,

and you'll never be a doctor.

Because she even knew I was a pre-med.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Hm.

EVELYN BAILEY: Wow.

BOB CRYSTAL: And I went to the chaplain

and said, (sound effects) and he said,

I have no control over her.

She's from downtown.

I said, can you talk to her pastor,

get her pastor back off?

Tell her to back off?

And he did and the pastor said, no she's

one of the biggest donors to the church.

And I said, to the chaplain, can you call the bishop?

The bishop said, no, it's a pastoral thing from local.

EVELYN BAILEY: Sure.

BOB CRYSTAL: So I got very, very angry at the church at the time

and came to Rochester.

And so I didn't get back into the church until mid-80s.

KEVIN INDOVINO: OK.

Talk to me--

EVELYN BAILEY: What was Jim's like?

KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah, that's what I was going to ask.

BOB CRYSTAL: What Jim's was like?

KEVIN INDOVINO: Tell me what Jim's was like.

I mean, I've always heard about Jim's, but nobody really

told me what Jim's was like.

BOB CRYSTAL: I never went to Jim's on Stone Street--

I never got-- or Front Street.

I never got to go there.

It was knocked down by the time I got there.

So was the Opera House.

But Jim's was opened up where it is now,

but it was only one storefront.

Right now it's four storefronts.

It's been remodeled so you don't see that it's four,

but it was just one.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah, where is it now?

Because I came out after Jim's.

EVELYN BAILEY: Liberty Pole Way.

(interposing voices)

KEVIN INDOVINO: So Eventually came

from either Liberty or Idles or Marcelo's? or one of those.

BOB CRYSTAL: I haven't been in ten years, so--

KEVIN INDOVINO: So that's--

EVELYN BAILEY: It was Marcelo's on Liberty Pole Way.

BOB CRYSTAL: And it started off with one storefront.

And it was just the bar--

ran the whole length.

And then there was double tables, booths.

Not booths, but just two seaters all the way back,

and then there was a little tiny dance floor.

And then beyond that was the kitchen, which was I

think maybe a two burner gas stove and a refrigerator

and an ice maker.

And that was Jim's.

And then almost immediately they took over the next storefront

and knocked out the wall and made it into--

which was a restaurant-- or at least

they set it up as a restaurant.

And then they knocked out-- then they got the next one

and knocked that out and made it into a dance bar.

And then they got the next one.

So it eventually spread out to be a fairly substantial place.

When they got the fourth one, I was already not going there,

because it had turned into a let's go

hang out with gays, as soon as they

started referring to me as one of the gays, I stopped going.

Also, I paired off, and one phenomenon--

phenomena-- of gay culture is you pair off and disappear.

Yeah.

Well, talk me through a little bit more

about Jim's, about the kind of people

that you were meeting there.

I mean, what kind of crowd was hanging out there?

BOB CRYSTAL: It was--

every room had a different--

and that's what was really nice about it.

The front bar, the first room, by the time

it got to be three stores wide, and it stayed three bars wide

for a long time--

the front bar was the bar.

And people who tended to sit on the stool and lean on there

and talk to the bartender stay there.

And if you hooked up with somebody

in the other parts you wanted to talk to them quietly,

you would go into the one of the two seaters.

The middle part was the dining room during the day.

And in the evening, the music from the dance floor

came in there.

But you could hold conversations.

And that's where a lot of clubby--

you know, nightclubby stuff--

not nightclub, social center type of clubs.

Functions happen.

People would go there, have dinner, and then

stay after and having drinks, hear the music, dance.

You wanted to get up and dance, you

could go and get up and dance.

But there were tables that seated ten, eight, or ten,

and you could--

it was, the colonials chairs.

Who says people have good taste?

At any rate, but we would hang around there.

You could get something to--

bar food to eat if you--

I worked at the shoe store, so I wasn't getting there

until ten o'clock.

I was getting there cold because the last bus,

Rochester is very inhospitable to people who don't drive.

The last bus from Chili comes in at ten o'clock,

and the store closed at ten o'clock.

So I had to walk to Nick Tahou's to catch a bus

from Whiskey Plaza.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah, yeah.

BOB CRYSTAL: But I would get there about ten o'clock,

and that would be just as when it was starting to crank up.

Mark Hull used to have his own table.

We joked about, it should be engraved.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Why does that not surprise me?

BOB CRYSTAL: You know him?

EVELYN BAILEY: Yes, we've interviewed him.

BOB CRYSTAL: Recently?

EVELYN BAILEY: Yes.

BOB CRYSTAL: How's he doing?

EVELYN BAILEY: Well--

BOB CRYSTAL: Did he--

KEVIN INDOVINO: Besides being in a wheelchair,

I mean he's still pretty--

BOB CRYSTAL: Did he put his hands on you?

KEVIN INDOVINO: Out there.

He did not.

BOB CRYSTAL: Then he's changed.

KEVIN INDOVINO: I was expecting him to,

because I had been warned.

BOB CRYSTAL: Did he play?

KEVIN INDOVINO: Yep.

Yep.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yes.

The third room at Jim's, the third storefront, was--

BOB CRYSTAL: The third storefront was the dance floor.

And that was the one with the strobes,

and the mirrored ball, the disco.

That was the disco.

And that was very loud and very crowded and very sweaty

and towards the end of my traveling there,

it got to be straight people coming

to dance with the gay people, because the gay people

are so free and easy.

And it got to be--

I don't like being a tourist trap.

And Jim had started to age, and mellow out and be

a little bit more conservative.

And he was looking for what his life was going to be like.

He was only nine years older than I am,

and he was starting to wonder whether it

was going to ever have a two car garage and a house

in the suburbs.

And so he was thinking in those terms.

KEVIN INDOVINO: So when you first arrived in Rochester,

and this is kind of an extension of what we just asked,

what was your first sense of the gay scene in Rochester?

Was Jim's it?

BOB CRYSTAL: No, it wasn't.

Jim-- I don't know where I got the knowledge from,

maybe from talking to people in New York City,

but Rochester had the reputation of being

the oldest gay community in New York outside of New York City.

There was a gay bar where the liberty pool is right now.

There was-- there's always been a baths.

Dick's was not anywhere near the first bar that was just

a neighborhood gay bar.

I went to Betty's.

EVELYN BAILEY: Betty's?

BOB CRYSTAL: Up on Lake Avenue.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah, it's--

EVELYN BAILEY: Oh, Bullwinkle's?

BOB CRYSTAL: Bullwinkles.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Bullwinkles, right.

EVELYN BAILEY: OK.

BOB CRYSTAL: And Rochester just had that reputation.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Why do you think that is?

BOB CRYSTAL: Because we had a very active gay community here.

Not gay community, we had a very active homosexual community

here, people who knew each other,

knew each other to be gay, who were not embarrassed about it,

and we're not married and living in the closet.

We had a lot of people like that.

EVELYN BAILEY: Were you at Jim's when it was raided?

BOB CRYSTAL: Yes.

EVELYN BAILEY: What was that like?

BOB CRYSTAL: I had just left, and I saw the cop cars coming.

And I-- it was not my finest moment.

I went home.

EVELYN BAILEY: So you weren't in the bar.

KEVIN INDOVINO: I would have.

BOB CRYSTAL: I was in the parking lot.

EVELYN BAILEY: OK.

And did that occur often?

BOB CRYSTAL: No.

It only occurred when they wanted more money.

EVELYN BAILEY: So--

KEVIN INDOVINO: Pay-offs.

BOB CRYSTAL: Jim was paying somebody off.

I have no idea who.

EVELYN BAILEY: OK.

And were you--

BOB CRYSTAL: And so was somebody at the Bachelors,

and so was somebody at--

even Bullwinkles, she was always giving somebody a free drink,

and I could never figure out why a guy would come in and sit

down and have a free drink.

But even if it was only that, there

was still ethical shadows.

But I think Jim was paying big money in the '70s.

KEVIN INDOVINO: I'm sure.

EVELYN BAILEY: Were you in town when Whitey organized

the Top of the Plaza thing?

BOB CRYSTAL: No.

I may have been in town, but I wasn't involved in it.

I don't-- my timeline is getting fuzzy from this distance.

KEVIN INDOVINO: So let's go back to then meeting with Bob

and Patti and Larry and Whitey.

It was on the Empty Closet when the meetings were

and where they were.

And I just--

I happened to live on Plymouth avenue.

EVELYN BAILEY: And where were the meetings?

BOB CRYSTAL: On campus.

In the student union.

KEVIN INDOVINO: And what was it about that

that drew your interest?

BOB CRYSTAL: That was the kind of gay liberation

that I had learned at school.

And it wasn't very long--

I mean, we're talking about, I got to Rochester

in November of--

November?

October of '71, and I went to my first meeting in '71.

So it wasn't like I was looking very long before I found them.

KEVIN INDOVINO: What was your first impression?

BOB CRYSTAL: Of them?

KEVIN INDOVINO: Of your first--

BOB CRYSTAL: Yeah, it was like coming home.

It was young people, optimistic, determined, hopeful,

and going about it with a plan.

That it was-- what they didn't have plans for

is what they were going to do if they succeeded.

All right.

So the Empty Closet was a flyer.

They had no idea what they were going

to do if it got to be the point where people

wanted to take ads out in it.

They had no idea what to do if they

had so much stuff to put in it that they needed two pages.

But Bob had a Gestetner and we ran it off on the Gestetner,

and I can remember sitting there,

after I moved in with them, I can remember sitting there

with the candle wax trying to cover up

the little hole in the silk because we'd hit the--

IBM had hit it too hard and taken off too much wax,

and we had to repair it.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Is there, that you know of, any photos of you

guys doing this at all?

Somebody have any photos hiding in the back of their closets,

or--

BOB CRYSTAL: They may.

I, when Bob died, I went up and got

all of the photos out of his closets

that I could get that he had saved.

Bjorna might have some.

EVELYN BAILEY: Bjorn.

BOB CRYSTAL: Bjorn Borg.

Bjorn--

EVELYN BAILEY: Borg.

BOB CRYSTAL: Borg.

She's not Borg anymore, she had a sex change operation,

she's Bjorna, and I can't remember her last name.

EVELYN BAILEY: Do you have a way of contacting her?

BOB CRYSTAL: No.

But she's in Fairport somewhere.

KEVIN INDOVINO: We can to track her down somewhere.

BOB CRYSTAL: RJ I don't think was into photographs.

Larry was, but I think he gave Bob all the ones that he had.

KEVIN INDOVINO: I was just curious, I would just

make note of that, that you have maybe some of Bob's photos

that might be of interest to us.

BOB CRYSTAL: Oh, I've shown them to you--

EVELYN BAILEY: Yes.

BOB CRYSTAL: I scanned them all in and shared--

I think I emailed them to you.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Wait a minute, you

sent me a disk or something.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yes.

BOB CRYSTAL: Yes.

KEVIN INDOVINO: OK, so I may already have them.

That's right.

OK.

They're on a DVD, right.

EVELYN BAILEY: Bruce Woolley.

KEVIN INDOVINO: You gave then to Bruce,

and Bruce gave them to me.

Right, OK.

Good.

All right.

So those are photos.

BOB CRYSTAL: I'm trying to think of the--

couple other people might--

Joe Alongi is another--

see, the problem is is that everybody was using--

I was, Bob and I were unique in that we were the only ones who

weren't using pseudonyms.

And Larry Fine and RJ were using their own names

on campus, but in a lot of stuff correspondence, out of town,

until they graduated.

Or until they got their degrees and certification.

I think that-- yeah, at any rate,

Bob Osborn was already so much in trouble with the government

that he didn't give a damn.

And he was so confident that his skills were so marketable.

And I didn't give a damn.

I just was so angry at everything.

That I just said, I'll starve to death

and then they can put it on my tombstone

that I was starved to death by being forthright.

So Joe Alongi the photographer.

He had a camera everywhere.

But that's not his real name.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.

I don't know who that would be.

KEVIN INDOVINO: We'll have to put something of Facebook-- who

was Joe Alongi?

BOB CRYSTAL: Yeah.

He was an undergraduate in 1972.

And he was either in photography or in--

what did the U of R have that would have attracted

photographers and writers?

EVELYN BAILEY: Optics?

BOB CRYSTAL: No he wasn't scientific.

He was-- maybe he was pre-law or something.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Police department.

BOB CRYSTAL: Yeah.

KEVIN INDOVINO: So, well all right,

so let's talk about the GLF.

And talk to me about your involvement with them.

And again, what was it like?

I mean, what were the kind of the conversations

that you were having?

BOB CRYSTAL: Bob was constantly bringing items to us

from Albany, and from the city hall,

that we should be discussing and we

were discussing how to go about educating people, and getting

people on our side.

We had the Mattachine as a good example,

but we wanted to be more active, and we didn't want

to be straitlaced about it.

I was there for the Mattachine's triumph, which

was only one year, and that was the Stonewall Riots,

was the best year for the New York Mattachine,

because the government came to the Mattachine and said,

the young folks are revolting, get them to behave.

So Mattachine provided the--

what do you call the people on that parade

route that have the armbands?

EVELYN BAILEY: Peacekeepers.

BOB CRYSTAL: Well they were more than that.

They were the organizers.

They were the first year of the organized march,

they were the people that took out the licenses

and interacted with the police department and the parks

department.

And that was their finest hour, because they

had been laying the groundwork for so long, and so

somebody in my position, somebody

who is not from New York--

I was from Long Island at the time--

but I was observing that.

And then I went down for the Stonewall riots.

First Stonewall Riots, I got there

after it was all over with.

Because I was a poor student, I couldn't get down there.

You have to raise the money for the Greyhound tickets.

But the second year I was there in advance, and Cornell--

we did ask silkscreen t-shirts.

They were lavender, tie-dyed, and then they

had two male and two female signs across the chest.

And there is a picture of Osborn and the GLF, and that's--

EVELYN BAILEY: Yes.

BOB CRYSTAL: We met, but that didn't count.

That's not how I got connected with them.

KEVIN INDOVINO: OK, yeah, I seem to remember that picture.

BOB CRYSTAL: Yeah.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.

So at the university--

BOB CRYSTAL: At U of R.

EVELYN BAILEY: U of R--

BOB CRYSTAL: We met in the conference--

EVELYN BAILEY: What role did you play in that group?

Were you a speaker?

Of Speaker's Bureau?

BOB CRYSTAL: I was a Speakers Bureau, I worked with Karen,

and Patti and I went to Brockport a couple of times.

But we also went to the U of R, and spoke.

We spoke at RIT.

MCC was not in the picture at that time.

We were also foot soldiers in Bob Osborn's campaign.

I mean, if you see the picture of Bob Osborn marching to City

Hall, that was '72, or--

yeah '72, when he sat down with Mayor Ryan?

Or was it Mayor Lamb.

EVELYN BAILEY: I think it was Ryan in '72.

BOB CRYSTAL: But at any rate

KEVIN INDOVINO: It seems like a little early for him.

EVELYN BAILEY: Maybe.

BOB CRYSTAL: If you see that picture

of Bob and RJ and Larry, there's a set of pictures of them

in Albany.

And then there's a set of pictures of them

on Broad Street marching from the Central Trust Building

into the old city hall.

And when they-- on both of those--

Pattu and I and Joe Alongi, several other members

of the URGLF were there too.

But the fearsome threesome were the photography.

The newspaper, the media got a hold of their pictures better.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Now, was this a march to city hall?

BOB CRYSTAL: Yeah.

KEVIN INDOVINO: OK, and what was the goal

or the mission behind it?

BOB CRYSTAL: To get publicity.

To get an article that gave our side of the story.

And it was to end the discrimination

to get the city of Rochester to write a nondiscrimination

clause.

It was that early that we were asking for that.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah, we didn't really

you ever get that until--

EVELYN BAILEY: Now.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Johnson, right?

EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.

BOB CRYSTAL: Yeah.

EVELYN BAILEY: Right.

Were you involved in the radio show?

The--

BOB CRYSTAL: Yeah.

Green Thursdays.

EVELYN BAILEY: What was it?

BOB CRYSTAL: Green Thursdays.

EVELYN BAILEY: Green Thursday.

And where was it?

CMF?

No, WCMF.

KEVIN INDOVINO: OK, let's go back, why was it

called Green Thursdays?

BOB CRYSTAL: Because if you wore green socks on Thursday,

you were queer.

KEVIN INDOVINO: So this was a queer show, then?

It wasn't a--

BOB CRYSTAL: Yeah.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Oh, OK.

On WCMF.

How things change.

EVELYN BAILEY: Maybe we should institute Green Thursday again.

KEVIN INDOVINO: So I don't want to lose sight of the GLF.

We'll get back to the Green Thursdays things in a second.

So you're doing marches on city hall,

and just take me on through throughout your involving

with the GLF.

BOB CRYSTAL: And then the other thing as a soldier, that I did,

was, I was the one who took over and handing out

the Empty Closets in the bars.

And I was also the one, when the police were putting the good

looking blonde guy in tight blue jeans on Court Street

Bridge with his thumb out, and people stopped and asked him

where he was going, he would hop in and say,

I'm going to Jim's, and if they knew where it was,

he arrested them.

EVELYN BAILEY: Wow.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Police entrapment.

BOB CRYSTAL: And they had a black Maria in RSBs parking

lot, and that was where Jim's patrons parked

after six o'clock.

RSB just shut down.

And the person giving him the ride would pull in and park,

and he'd get out and he'd be arrested, put in handcuffs,

and the decoy would take a little bow,

and the guys in the black Maria would (claps)

and then the guy would be put in the black Maria and left there.

So the first guy arrested was in that black Maria

for at least three hours.

In handcuffs, on a hard bench, in a black truck that you

didn't know what was going on.

Not allowed to talk.

KEVIN INDOVINO: And this was what, still 1970's?

BOB CRYSTAL: '72.

KEVIN INDOVINO: 1972.

OK.

BOB CRYSTAL: And what happened was

is that as a result of our protests, first of all,

everybody denied that there was--

I also noted, and and tried to get pictures

of, and I couldn't do it, the cops writing down the license

plates in the RSB parking lot.

And they had a little card file--

this is pre-computer, so it was three by five cards,

and you can pretty much see when somebody is getting out,

he's got a little box with a lid that opens he pulls cards

out and writes on them.

You know damn well what he's doing.

This is not just always discussing recipes

with the cop next to him.

So we argued that with Mayor Ryan also.

We had more than one meeting with him, or we tried to.

But we did do several demand letters to him.

And one of them was that we demanded

that this behavior stop.

And he wrote back saying that there was no such thing.

That that didn't happen.

And at the same time, the sheriff--

name just went right out of my mind-- his son was gay.

I can't remember his name.

EVELYN BAILEY: Pat Mahoney?

KEVIN INDOVINO: I think John Noble mentioned it once before.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah.

BOB CRYSTAL: At any rate--

EVELYN BAILEY: And this would have been in '72, '73?

BOB CRYSTAL: '72, '73.

And what we did was we appealed to all the men

who could possibly have any influence at all to please

if they are out at all, tell people

that could affect the police department.

And as a result, those card files

never did get acknowledged.

But they stopped being used and in '73, late '73, early

'74, Gordon Urlacher was appointed as the liaison.

And he started off with me, and he moved over to--

who took my place?

At any rate--

Whitey, maybe?

EVELYN BAILEY: Possibly.

It will be in the Empty Closet.

BOB CRYSTAL: Yeah.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah.

BOB CRYSTAL: But it started off, I

was one who had the first meeting with him.

So when he had his scandal, I was so sorry for him.

The poor guy, he had a heart of gold

when he was dealing with me.

He was young.

He was very sincere.

He couldn't possibly believe that the police department

would be doing things like that.

And he promised that he would help.

And then apparently he found out a lot of crap going on.

At any rate-- but he was a good guy.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Who, at this time,

was editing the Empty Closet?

BOB CRYSTAL: Jay.

EVELYN BAILEY: Jay Baker.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Jay Baker was?

OK.

EVELYN BAILEY: And you moved off campus.

BOB CRYSTAL: We moved off campus because we were asked to,

and Mark Hull let us rent for a minimal amount the building

that he owned at Bull's Head, where his stamp store was

upstairs from.

EVELYN BAILEY: Do you know why you were

asked to move off of campus?

BOB CRYSTAL: I think because Joe and Patti were the only members

who were still students.

Again, it was not the University of Rochester

wanting to help a community organization.

They were very much, how much of this is a student body?

And when we left, the students tried

to keep it going as the U of R GLF, and we just--

all the townies just formed the GAGV.

EVELYN BAILEY: Was that women as well as men?

BOB CRYSTAL: The first year, yeah.

That was also the period when the women

were pretty upset with us men for being gay male chauvinist

pigs.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Let's talk about the move, when

you moved over to Brown Street.

BOB CRYSTAL: Yeah.

It was an old pharmacy.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah, did you still retain the Gay Liberation

Front name, or did that stay with the U of R?

BOB CRYSTAL: We left that with the U of R.

That was intentional.

KEVIN INDOVINO: OK, so what did the men's group

become known as?

BOB CRYSTAL: We formed the Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley.

So that groups could form under it.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Right, OK.

BOB CRYSTAL: But the name came from the--

the big argument was, were we going

to be the Rochester Gay Liberation Front,

or are we going to be--

my argument was Gay Alliance of Rochester, GAR, Gay Activist

Alliance, GAAR.

KEVIN INDOVINO: So when you guys were over in Mark Hull's space

on Brown Street, you were already Gay Alliance?

BOB CRYSTAL: Yeah.

KEVIN INDOVINO: But there was a woman's group that

went over to Monroe Avenue.

BOB CRYSTAL: There was a women's group within the GAGV called