• this page was last updated on 26 June 2002

    • ...mentions...-The Cockettes



    In San Francisco Magazine June 2002

  • In truth, San Francisco's Halloween tradition started on Polk Street and in North Beach in the 1970s, featuring such legendary performances as the 1972 Palace Theater revue with the drag group The Cockettes and the late movie star Divine. resource

    The Hyde Street cable car gripman probably thought it was strange that a group of people waiting at the stop at Lombard Street at 6 a.m. yesterday were wearing blankets. He was downright chagrined when, after the car stopped, they all threw off their blankets and charged naked onto it. "Get off," he shouted, "Get off my cable car." They did, after a photographer had recorded the romp for a poster. Two regular male passengers didn't seem to mind much. -1970



  • Rolling Stone 1971-Alice Cooper/Cockettes

  • Since jumping from Mercury to RCA, David Bowie has added the decipherable touch to his recordings which they needed to reach more than the esoteric crew of rock critics that his two Mercury albums were embraced by. Consequently the newer records HUNKY DORY and now ZIGGY STARDUST are selling and Bowie is ripping up English audiences with a stage show designed to embarrass everyone from T. Rex to the Cockettes.resource

  • I de gayiga kvarteren på USA:s västkust fanns The Cockettes, en gospelkör bestående av utfattiga och slampiga transor som bara levde för att sätta upp sina fjolliga gospel- och dragshower runt om på västkusten. resource

  • Gay and gay-friendly venues such as the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club joined a growing number of American gay and lesbian companies, including Doric Wilson's The Other Side of Silence ("TOSOS," founded in 1974); The Glines (1976); Medusa's Revenge (1978); Ron Tavel and John Vacarro's Playhouse of the Ridiculous and, later, Charles Ludlam's Ridiculous Theatre Company; San Francisco's The Cockettes (1970-1972) and Angels of Light (roughly 1975 to 1980), and the Gay Men's Theatre Collective (which broke ground with its 1977 Crimes Against Nature).resource

  • Of course, everyone knows the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and the Cockettes; actually, a lot of this drag is from a member of the original Cockettes, which I forgot to mention, and he was incredible, and the Cockettes had like their 25th reunion or something like that this past summer up in San Francisco, there was some retrospective of the early movies like Trisha's Wedding or something like that, and there was a handful of them left; I think Goldie Glitters is still around, and Sebastian, who founded the whole thing and got the theater up in San Francisco and sort of put the whole thing together, he was up there, and he was saying that he wasn't sure that he was going to be able to recognize anyone because he hadn't seen anyone in so long; it was sort of a bittersweet reunion because there were so few of them and everyone has changed so much. They made history, they made queer history, and, again, there's so little documentation of that because no one realized the importance of it at the time. It was never going to end, the party was always going to be happening, we were all going to live forever and there was going to be free sex and drugs and rock and roll and big hair and lots of glitter, then this whole AIDS thing sort of came crashing down, but they were sort of leading the way as far as this whole theater behind getting made up... resource
  • Francis Ford: "I saw some pictures in Rolling Stone of a group called the Cockettes, and I thought OH! I have to photograph drag queens! This friend of mine said 'well I know these guys in Cudahy'. And I thought 'Cudahy?' They turned out to be La Petite Bon Bons, a group of drag performance artists. They were unbelievable. They'd do these letter writing campaigns. They'd write Hubert Humphrey and invite him to their 'gala ball'. And Humphrey would write back and say 'NO', but he'd really sign the letter with the official seal and everything. resource

  • ”Riktigt låg och barnslig fjollhumor, eller hur? Men gud vad vi älskade sånt…” Brett grin. ”Och älskar fortfarande. Vi tog det från drag- och gospelgruppen i San Francisco, The Cockettes. Och vi var förstås så nöjda över vårt namn att vi inte repade på flera veckor… bara sprang omkring och talade om för alla vad vi hette.”resource

  • MEANWHILE: What's going on at the gutted Palace/Pagoda theater at Powell and Columbus? Kok-Po "Sam" Ng, a developer out of Hong Kong, plans to turn it into a multiplex, plus shops and two restaurants called Milano Galleria. Remember when the Pagoda, featuring an outrageous drag show called the Cockettes, was the hottest thing in town? Truman Capote fell so in love with it that he imported it to N. Y., where Gore Vidal gave it the widely quoted kiss of death: ``A lack of talent is not enough.'' The Cockettes were soon back, feathers in the dust. resource

  • RuPaul:

    "I love Sylvester. (photo by Joshua Freewald) He was obviously one of the first drag queens I had ever heard about. I think the first drag, or I should say trans-whatever I ever heard of was Christine Jorgensen. She went to Denmark to have a sex change, it was big news in America. I must have been ten years old. And then in '72 I heard of Sylvester, but I hadn't heard his music. I'd seen a poster, with him and the Cockettes, the group he used to perform with. And it's registered in my head. And the next thing I guess I heard of after that must be Geraldine on the Flip Wilson show, in terms of drag, and there were of course others after that."resource


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