Author Phillip Crawford Jr
gets tattoos of vintage ads for alleged
Mafia-controlled gay bars which he wrote about in his
groundbreaking book "The Mafia and the Gays"
FORT
MYERS, Fla., April 26,
2024 /PRNewswire/ -- For decades the Mafia
controlled much of LGBT nightlife in many cities across
the United States including
New York and Chicago, and author Phillip Crawford Jr wrote about this
relationship in his groundbreaking book "The Mafia and
the Gays" which first was published in 2015 and
then followed up with a second edition in 2022. To mark the
historic ties between organized crime and the gay scene Crawford
has gotten a sleeve inked on his right lower leg involving vintage
ads for several alleged Mafia-controlled gay bars from
the 1970s and 1980s, and written an essay to accompany the
photographed tattoos.
The leg sleeve shows the same images which gay men decades
earlier saw when flipping through the bar rags distributed
throughout the 'gayborhoods.' The ads are surviving
ephemera which bring life to and evoke the identity of those gay
bars from that era when the LGBT community lived on the edge of
society and in partnership with the Mafia.
The tattoo is an apt medium by which to mark this history
because tattooing once was a lifestyle adornment only
among marginalized subcultures such as the gay scene and the
hoodlum life. During the 1950s and 1960s before the liberation
movement the homosexual rubbed elbows with the criminal in a shared
underworld which rejected societal mores. The tattoo was their mark
as members of a motley assembly of anti-heroes in post-war America.
The tattoo scene was an alternative reality from the middle-class
suburbs.
Phil Sparrow once was an English
professor at DePaul University in Chicago, but in the early 1950s the gay prof
fled the straight jacket of academic life to open a tattoo parlor
on skid row. In 1953 Sparrow's shop became known as a congregating
place for homosexual activity among new enlistees from the Great
Lakes Naval Training Station, and he was advised by a naval
intelligence officer that the "Navy was going to declare [his] shop
off-limits."
Among the tattoos on Crawford's lower leg sleeve is one of
Jamie's which allegedly was owned during the
early 1970s by the Outfit on Chicago's near north side. The young tough
smoking a cigarette has a dollar sign on his belt buckle to tip off
that Jamie's was a hustler joint, and his cocky pose against the
entrance door promises good trouble inside.
Also included is the infamous Mineshaft which operated in
the meatpacking district on the west side in New York City from 1976 until closed by city
officials in 1985 as the AIDS crisis was exploding. The ad
illustrates an idealized macho man — muscles, tank top and a
mustache — with a miner's hat which puts the "MINESHAFT" name up in
lights. The place allegedly was owned by the Gambino
family but managed by a gay man who created the club concept.
Freddie Mercury and Robert Mapplethorpe were among those who
patronized the Mineshaft where primal desires became living dreams,
and the scene there provided the inspiration for the 1980 film
"Cruising" with Al
Pacino.
This collage of tattooed ads expresses the zeitgeist of those
bygone days, and is an homage to the gays and the mobsters who made
it all happen.
Phillip Crawford Jr
Author
phillipcrawfordjrauthor@outlook.com
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SOURCE Book Author: Phillip Crawford
Jr