Jim Turnage's "How Sweet It Is" bakery has helped make him a minor media star in Cleve land. His sometime erotic-homoerotic, toocakes have raised eyebrows, if not dander, in some of the city's fabled social circles.
"Winters are pretty dreadful and the gay scene is somewhat limited," says Jeff Rhodes while butchering it up in the market where he works, "but I have a very comfortable feeling about Cleveland, its people and its future. I want to be part of that future."
"Cleveland is a big town for money, and the rich don't mix with the poor," ob serve Dennis Richards (left) and Michael Knowles (right). "That's true in the gay community as well. We're on the poor side, and the gay men we see who own houses and three or four cars won't have anything to do with us. Of course, we wouldn't have anything to do with them. That is the Cleveland attitude. The whole city is divided that way."
dead making a contribution or giving their time or talent to a gay organization."
Robert Kovach extends this "closetitis" to Cleveland's gay leadership as well. "During the Dade County battle," he explains, "I was one of the few people on the GEAR staff who didn't use a pseudonym, so when we were asked by the media to provide spokespeople, I had my public coming out. The next day, my office was jammed with people congratu-
"I used to believe the gay myth that when you're past 30, forget it. I'm discovering that I enjoy myself much more, accept myself more, and am more involved now than ever before," comments Scott Shiflet, who enjoys the personal contact his work in a record shop provides.
lating me on having the guts to do what I did."
Kovach's "gay chauvinism" now extends to indicating on his contributions to charities or political campaigns that "this is gay money." He says, "I want them know where their money is coming from."
MEDIA TAKE
The first guest on Noon Time, a popular talk
LAGE PEOPLE
show, has just been introduced to wild, albeit prompted applause from an audience composed mostly of mothers and their 5to 13-year-olds. I'm intimidated by the children as visions of sugar-plummed child molesters dance through my head. I feel as appropriate as a ham at Chanukah.
I have been warned numerous times that the first guest is a controversial local disc jockey who will lash out at anyone or anything he thinks will
increase his ratings. No outrage is too great for him to commit, including chasing his wife with a shotgun or threatening to broadcast in the nude on a city street. Homosexuals, I've been told, are a frequent and popular target.
The DJ resembles an overstuffed carrot that's languished in the refrigerator a bit too long. His orange jumpsuit matches his orange hair. He has one of those sloppy mouths with too many teeth that threaten to spit at anything in the way at any time.
"It's real good to be here," he responds to the host's welcome, "even though you got one of them queer faggots on the show." The attack has begun. "But that's all right," he continues, sputtering at the cameras, "cause by the time this show's over, I'm gonna have that nellie pansy converted. He'll be a 'born-again' hetrosexual [sic] out assaultin' women in no time." His chuckle is expectedly vulgar and its force covers the host with an unpleasant mist of excess mouth
moisture.
Strangely, his banter relieves me. If he can talk about "fags" and "queers" and "pansies" and "assaulting women," I can certainly address, in my own mild and respectable manner, the subject of gay rights-even to an audience of children.. Following a break for commercials and the standard news update, I am introduced and apologized to for the DJ's behavior. "It's difficult for me to take anyone that obnoxious seriously," I say calmly, "but that kind of behavior is a good example of what gay people in this country must. face. It is a reason there is a gay liberation move-
ment.
I sense the audience is sympathetic and curious. A little 10-year-old girl keeps popping out of her seat to snap photos of me. I wonder if she will enter one in her scrapbook over the caption: "A real, live fairy I saw on the Noon Time show."
At the end of the program, a well-dressed woman approaches me with some timidity. "Thank you very much," she says, her voice shaking a bit. "Where have people like you been. all this time? We've needed you."
A fourth theme to emerge on which a majority of Clevelanders surveyed seem to agree is that it is a city of couples. A high percentage of those interviewed by The ADVOCATE were, themselves, currently involved in primary relationships of from one to 16 years in duration.
"There seems to be a tendency in Cleveland for people to couple up instead of remaining single," David Feltham notes. "It's that kind of town. But as a result, everybody is into their own little social group and unwilling to let other people in. It is very cliquish in Cleveland."
"There are more gay couples here than one would imagine," Jeff Rhodes points out. "Those who have been together for a long time, usually older people, are not seen out in the community very often."
Closely coupled, apathetic, closeted-the self-assessment of Cleveland's gay population may be too modest and too reticient about the particular qualities and potential of this city of contradictions. It is too easy-perhaps too chic-to dismiss the pace of the city as provincial, the tone of the gay community as isolated and self-divided. Cleveland's gay lifestyle is a viable if not visible alternative to the transience and mobility of the coast scenes. However low-keyed and low-profiled gay life in Cleveland may be, it is far from bankrupt.
New World Hair Cutting
1846 Coventry
Cleveland, OH
371-1627
RSVP Cards and Gifts
Park Center Mall
Cleveland, OH
241-3212
Tish's Shoe Repair and Emporium
15603 Madison Avenue
Lakewood, OH
221-5963
BARS
Exedra
1762 East 18th St.
Cleveland, OH
The ADVOCATE, February 22, 1979
621-8414 Godmother's II
1014 East 63rd St. Cleveland, OH 361-5172 J.J.'s Disco 2402 St. Clair Cleveland, OH
566-9576
The Leather Stallion
2203 St. Clair
Cleveland, OH 881-1432
Nantucket Lounge
11624 Clifton Blvd. Cleveland, OH 696-9750
New Dimensions 1012 Sumner Court Cleveland, OH 621-6900
Pickwood Lounge 11633 Clifton Blvd. Cleveland, OH 221-6040
620 Club
620 Frankfort Cleveland, OH
241-9719
Traxx
1273 West Ninth St. Cleveland, OH 241-1769
The Vault
1281 W. 9th St. Cleveland, OH 241-8677
BATHS
The Knight House
1946 St. Clair Ave.
Cleveland, OH
579-0011
West 9th Street Club Baths
1293 West 9th St.
Cleveland, OH 241-9509
West 32nd Street Club Baths
1448 W. 32nd St.
Cleveland, OH
631-9702
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