Gays acknowledge Queen, too
By
NICHOLAS ASHFORD,
of “The Times” The Elephant Walk, a gay bar in one of San Francisco’s sleazier districts, was staging a “Royal Family look-alike” contest yesterday to coincide with the Queen’s visit. Over at the York Hotel Charles Pierce has been drawing capacity crowds with his impersonations of the Queen. In another part of the city the Rev. Cecil Williams, the flamboyant pastor of the Glide Memorial Church, has handed out colourful dinnerjackets, complete with ruffle shirts and cummerbunds, to 600 of the city’s destitute so that they could ape the lavishness of the dinner reception that was laid on for the Royal visitors.
The down-and-outs had been invited to attend an "alternative dinner” near the City Hall, intended to con-
trast the sumptuous Royal dinner with the frugal diet to which they are more accustomed. They were offered hot dogs and salad. The Royal menu consisted of scallop, salmon and lobster terrine, wrapped in spinach leaves with golden caviare and dill sauce, pheasant consomme, loin of veal with balsamic vinegar and shallot sauce, and a special strawberry dessert made in the Queen’s honour. San Francisco is a volatile city that tends to inspire extremes — the sort of place where the Mayor, Mrs Dianne Feinstein, is under attack by a coalition of homosexual and white panther anti-hand-gun control activists. It was no coincidence, therefore, that the city not only laid on the biggest demonstration of the Queen’s visit to California but also the most varied.
Although the protests began as an expression of disapproval of British policy in Northern Ireland, it quickly grew to embrace practically every cause in the demonstrators’ handbook — and San Francisco is a city of many and varied causes. The city’s huge gay community was one of the first groups to jump on the antiRoyal band-waggon, ostensibly because of last year’s dismissal of Michael Trestrail, the Queen’s detective, who admitted that he was a homosexual. A string of other groups quickly joined in, including the All Peoples Congress, the Grey Panthers, and the Committee in Solidairty with the People of El Salvador. Thousands of protesters gathered in Golden Gate park waving anti-British signs and a three metre effigy of President Ronald
Reagan before a gala state dinner in honour of the Queen. A ragged half kilometrelong column of demonstrators, waving Irish flags and signs protesting against Britain’s presence in Northern Ireland and emblazoned with such mottos as, “Reagan steals from the poor and gives to the rich,” paraded near the M. H. De Young Memorial Museum where the dinner was held. More than 200 guests were invited to the formal state dinner. The museum was refurbished at a cost of $U535,000 ($NZ48,650) for the event. Two huge effigies of Mr Reagan, one of them wheeled in a supermarket shopping cart, towered above the crowd, which espoused more than a dozen causes by groups as diverse as Communists and the Grey Panthers, a senior citizens’ organ-
isation. The number of protesters was far lower than expected. Hundreds of riot-clad police watched the crowd, pointing it towards the athletic field called Big Rec, a few blocks from the museum. The field is out of sight and hearing of the museum. Earlier the Queen, after suffering through storms and rowdy protesters on her tour of California, got a taste of the city by the bay from high camp to high tech, being entertained by the cast of a zany revue before a quick trip to the electronics industry in “Silicon Valley.” In the elegant, circular Davies Symphony Hall the Royal couple were serenaded by Tony Bennett, who sang “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” the city’s theme song. Mary Martin, recently injured in a car collision, sang “Getting to Know You.” !
Gays acknowledge Queen, too
Press, 5 March 1983, Page 8
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