Good Friends and Great Adventures
In 1997, KRON producer/reporter Craig Franklin included me in his retrospective “Herb Caen… A Chronicle”.
Watch me suddenly come up with the 2nd-funniest quip of what I guess we could call my career!
A year after Herb’s memorial service one of Herb’s closest pals, clothier Wilkes Bashford, told me that when I took off my pillowcase at Herb’s memorial service in Grace Cathedral he’d burst into tears. At my 70th birthday party Herb’s son Christopher Caen told me he did too. Helen of Troy had a face that launched a thousand ships. I have one that makes strong men weep.
In 2019 I learned from Jennifer Blot, Herb’s last junior assistant, that Herb sent a personal thank-you note to everyone who mailed him a submission. Not a form letter. He jotted down something that spoke directly to what the person had said in their letter. Then one of his two assistants had to type it up, get his signature and address an envelope. With me the three of them were spared even that small effort. Herb and I were TRULY each other’s favorite perfect easy creative partners. If still feels like a miracle.
Actually, it was a miracle. With my exact same talent, my easiest other options would have been to send my quips to another columnist. None of the others had more than a fraction of Herb’s audience. I could have spent my whole life doing standup comedy in clubs. I would have reached a few thousand people, one or a few times at best, instead of a million people hundreds of times each. There was no local TV comedy show. And even if there had been, I still wouldn’t have reached a million people hundreds of times each. A miracle! Thank you, Herb.
Herb Caen’s Gift of Fame Has Lasted for Decades
In 2014 Chief of Protocol Charlotte Shultz organized an elaborate celebration for the 40th anniversary of Beach Blanket Babylon in San Francisco’s City Hall. I watched from the balcony.
Afterwards I went down to mingle with the crowd. I ran into S.F. Chronicle columnist Leah Garchik, who introduced me to Will Hearst, descendant of notorious newspaper mogul lampooned by director Orson Welles in his 1941 cinema classic Citizen Kane.
Next, I ran into Bay Area Reporter columnist Donna Sachet and thanked her for running one of my quips that week. She in return thanked me for the quip.
S.F. Chronicle society columnist Catherine Bigelow and I each wanted a picture of the other.
I said hi to photographer Steven Underhill, who in a few months would take this picture of me with longtime friend, Catwoman Julie Newmar, whom I’d help write an acceptance speech for a lifetime achievement award presented at the Castro Theatre.
(Above) Will Hearst and Leah Garchik, Donna Sachet, Catherine Bigelow, Julie Newmar and Strange
State Senator Mark Leno was also there. He’d presented me with two Certificates of Recognition, one when he was a State Assemblyman and another after he became Senator. We always had fun talking.
I’d been good friends with Beach Blanket Babylon creator Steve Silver, but I’d never met his widow, Jo Schuman Silver, who took over after he died. When I introduced myself she said. “Oh my goodness!” and waved over her cousin, music mogul Clive Davis, told him I’d appeared in Herb Caen’s column every other day, and recounted an appearance I’d made in Beach Blanket Babylon way back in the late 1970’s.
The biggest surprise, however, came with Dede Wilsey. She’s on the board of directors of most of the major art organizations in the city. She practically single-handedly raised $200,000,000 to build the new Dede Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. Here she is coming down the City Hall stairs as Glenda the Good Witch. She was back in her civvies when I walked up, wearing the cap I’d been given on entry to the festivities, and said, “Hi, I’m Strange de Jim.” She didn’t say a word. She just handed her phone to the gentleman she was with, put her arm around my waist and smiled at the camera. I then handed the gentleman my camera, and he took our picture.
WOW! Apparently I’m still catnip for the ladies. No need to improve on a perfect meeting. I just bowed and walked away, wondering if de Dede was going to blow our photo up and tape it to the mirror I was imagining on her boudoir ceiling.
(Above) Mark Leno, Jo Schuman Silver and Clive Davis, Dede Wilsey as Glenda, Dede Wilsey and Strange
In 2015 I won 2 tickets to Usher House, in the San Francisco Opera House. Arriving early I found myself a few feet from the composer, Gordon Getty, billionaire businessman and philanthropist. Born the son of J. Paul Getty, the world’s richest man, he was richest man in America himself for several years. As long as I’d lived here he and his wife Ann had been the beloved leaders of S.F. society, and were especially close friends with Herb Caen.
I walked up to him and said, “Hi, I’m Strange de Jim, and I didn’t want you to have to go through life without getting to meet me.”
He replied, “Strange de Jim?! You’re the most famous person in San Francisco!”
I gasped. Now two of us knew! But I had to make a small correction. “I’m the most famous unknown person in San Francisco.”
He grasped it instantly and laughed delightedly, and I began to wonder if people appreciated him for himself even more than for his money. In any event, feeling our interaction had already been a tasteful touch more than perfect, I said it had been a pleasure meeting him and faded away to the lobby, where my guest Martin Hyland had arrived. We were delighted to find our seats were about halfway back in orchestra center, with Martin 3rd and me 4th from the aisle. The row in front of us was vacant. We were even more delighted when the Getty party filed into that row, with Gordon on the aisle and Ann next to him. I was about to ask Martin to get Gordon’s attention so I could say, “If I’d known you were going to start following me around, I wouldn’t have introduced myself!” But I decided I’d wait until after the show. Unfortunately, near the end an usher came by to escort Gordon to the stage for bows and a short speech.
However, Marty and I trailed Ann up the aisle, and I introduced us in the lobby. She said she’d always thought I was a composite character Herb had made up. When I told her her husband had said I was the most famous person in San Francisco, and I’d said I was the most famous unknown person, she said, “Oh, right, you had that mystery thing going for you!” I was impressed at how quickly she went from thinking I was imaginary to understanding me as a real person. (Sadly, she died suddenly of a heart attack in 2020.
“Billions of Virgins in Ecstacy” — The Semi-Fictional Memoir of Strange de Jim
In 1970s San Francisco, unofficial town fool Strange de Jim sets out to find the secret of the tingly portions, and inadvertently trips over the much bigger secret of True Love. Little does he know that others around the globe have already begun their own quests for the same Holy Grail.
Years later, an elderly erotic masseuse trained in the healing arts of India, a young Olympic gymnast with a most amusing sexual problem, and a ravishing triple-jointed Mininuko Courtesan are brought together with our astonished Strange. The world’s second-richest woman has planned the surprise Wedding of the Century. Our four characters are onstage. The whole world is watching…
On Sirius B telepathic hippos tune in as billions of virgins enjoy Earth’s first Orgasm of Light!
Don’t say we didn’t warn you!
Buy the book on Amazon
“San Francisco’s Castro” by Strange de Jim
You'll see how a quiet Irish Catholic neighborhood suddenly added "World's Gay Mecca" to its list of attractions, how opposites learned to live in harmony. Whether you use this knowledge to bring about world peace is entirely up to you.
San Francisco Mayor (now California Governor) Gavin Newsom, who’d read and enjoyed the book, moves my camera strap from in front of my lens and then poses for a publicity shot, 6/27/04.
REVIEWS
"San Francisco's Castro is a loving black-and-white photo collection charting the 150-year history of the neighborhood ... Strange skillfully weaves commentary and history with whimsy and wit." — From Dave Ford's witty 3-page San Francisco Chronicle review and interview 1/23/04
"Strange is the wittiest, most over-the-top character this side of Quentin Crisp. But his new book, Images of America: San Francisco's Castro, is a very serious, vital and informative pictorial history of America's gay Mecca, from 1870 until the present. ... It's a treasure chest. ... It's a breathtaking achievement." — From David Nahmod's Bay Area Reporter review and interview 1/1/04
"San Francisco's Castro has been flying off the shelves." — Jeff Thorpe, Manager, A Different Light Bookstore, Castro Street, San Francisco
What You’ll See in “San Francisco’s Castro”
You’ll see actual photos of all the events, with the story told mostly in the captions. You'll see the 1902 Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church, the 1906 earthquake, the 1917 dedication of the Twin Peaks Tunnel, the 1922 opening of the Castro Theatre and the 1936 first version of Cliff’s Variety.
From that point on I was lucky to be writing the book when I could interview the actual people involved in the events, from the neighborhood turning gay up to the time of publication. You'll see Castro Street Fairs, Gay Pride Parades, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, the Café Flore, Sylvester, Lily Tomlin, Divine and Ginger Rogers, then the AIDS epidemic and the NAMES Project’s AIDS Quilt.
You'll see Harvey Milk Plaza, Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy, etc. Harvey Milk was a closeted gay Republican working on Wall St. In N.Y. Then he met Tom O’Horgan, director of Hair, became a hippie and moved to San Francisco, opening Castro Camera with his lover Scott Smith in 1973.
You'll watch Harvey Milk run for public office four times, until he became the first openly gay man to hold a major elected public office in the United States.
You'll meet Allan Baird, the Teamster official in charge of the Coors boycott, who became Harvey Milk’s close friend and ally, leading to Harvey’s becoming the first openly gay candidate to be endorsed by the Teamsters, firefighters and constructions workers unions.
On the cover of the book you see Harvey Milk marching from Castro Camera to City Hall to be sworn in as San Francisco Supervisor.
You'll see the spontaneous 40,000-person candlelight march from the Castro to City Hall when Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by former Supervisor Dan White. You'll see Harvey’s ashes and four of his lovers, the “Milk widows,” sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge to scatter his ashes at sea.
You'll see the riots and burning police cars a year later when Dan White was found guilty only of manslaughter.
You'll see how Most Holy Redeemer Church became, at 80% gay, the gayest Catholic church in the world, outside the Vatican.
And so much more…
Buy the book on Amazon
My Purrr-fect Friend
Dr. John Newmeyer and I have been best of friends for decades and still see each other at least once a week in non-covid times. I consider him one of the most honorable people I've ever met. I asked him to provide his life story and a little bit about our friendship.
"Life Story"
I was educated at CalTech (B.S., Physics) and Harvard (PhD, Social Psychology). My major career work was as Epidemiologist and Chief of Research at the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinics in San Francisco.
I helped to purchase and operate a 1,000-acre ranch in Napa Valley, where I planted a vineyard and built a winery, specializing in premium Pinot Noir and Chardonnay under the "Olivia Brion" label.
I am the author of four books, one of which (Mother of All Gateway Drugs, 2009) summarized my Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic work on substance abuse epidemiology. Among my avocations is the hosting of formal dinner parties, 450 of which have been "Full Moon Dinners" at my Victorian home in Pacific Heights, San Francisco. I also allow worthy charity groups to hold fundraisers there.
I am an avowed cat fanatic, as expressed in one of my books (Imagining Feline Civilization, 2015). Along with a group of friends, including my sister Catwoman Julie Newmar and fellow author Strange de Jim, I organized the "Lesbian and Gay CAT LOVERS OF AMERICA" contingent in the 1995 San Francisco Gay Pride march. (It was the year of her movie To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, the movie that would be played in San Francisco’s Castro Theatre in 2014 when Mz Julie would be honored with a lifetime achievement award.
Herb Caen’s son Christopher (below left) and John Newmeyer attended my 70th birthday party at the Cafe Flore and a few years later Christopher invited me to his 50th. I, of course, invited John Newmeyer as my guest.
De Amazing Armistead Maupin
Armistead Maupin on Facebook 7/7/19: “Yes, I knew Strange de Jim quite well. I still know him, as do many Castro Villagers who stroll the corridor between Starbucks and Mollie Stone’s. And he’s my FB friend now. Hi Strange!”
Armistead Maupin is one of the nicest and most talented people I’ve ever met. In 1976 his Tales of the City began as a serialized daily fictional story in The San Francisco Chronicle. It immediately caused a huge stir, and soon had as many readers as Herb Caen’s column.
As Wikipedia describes it, “The series opens with the arrival of Mary Ann Singleton, a naive young woman from Cleveland, Ohio. She finds an apartment at 28 Barbary Lane, the domain of the eccentric, marijuana-growing landlady Anna Madrigal. Mary Ann becomes friends with other tenants of the building: the hippyish, bisexual Mona Ramsey; heterosexual lothario Brian Hawkins; and Michael Tolliver, a sweet and personable gay man known as Mouse.”
Presenting gay people as worthwhile loving human beings was simply not done, especially in a family newspaper. The editors were extremely nervous; but, as mentioned, the serial became immensely popular.
It was probably 1978 when I recognized Armistead on the street and introduced myself. I’d just written an article for New West Magazine; so I asked if he’d like me to send them an interview with him. He said sure and invited me to his apartment. We had fun talking with each other, and a day or two later he came to my place for a massage. We’ve been good friends ever since, with lots of friends in common, from Cal Culver and Lady Jane Montgomery to Andy Warhol and lots of local (and a few international) celebrities as well.
Armistead has gone on to spectacular success, publishing 9 novels in the Tales of the City series, plus some other books. According to Listopia Best Gay Fiction of All Time: Armistead has 6 novels in the top 100, including the first Tales of the City at #11.
The first three books in the series have also been adapted into three television miniseries starring Olympia Dukakis and Laura Linney. The first airing was on PBS. Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City received record-high ratings, Best Miniseries recognition from the National Board of Review, two major Emmy nominations and television’s most prestigious honor, the Peabody Award. It was the #1 show on most major PBS channels and in San Francisco outpaced the commercial channels, which seldom happens with PBS shows!
However, many conservatives were outraged by the program. This provoked official condemnations from the legislatures of Georgia, South Carolina and Oklahoma—and a bomb threat at the PBS station in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Powerful U.S. Senator Jesse Helms was talking about defunding both the NEA and PBS for showing what he called “filth.” With its very existence at stake, PBS bowed to the pressure and dumped the show. “And we thought we were making a beautiful loving show about family,” said the producer.
Subsequent miniseries appeared on Showtime. Additionally, a miniseries was made for Netflix that premiered June 7, 2019. In 2020 PBS, of all people, aired Independent Lens – The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin.
In 2007 Armistead married Christopher Turner, a wonderful young man who ran a website for younger men attracted to older men. Chris is an excellent fine-art, portrait and landscape photographer. They’re now living in London, and Chris has also become an on-line yoga instructor. Here’s a photo I took of them at the 2011 Castro Street Fair.
Logical families are one of Armistead’s major themes. We’re stuck with our biological families, who often reject people who are gay or otherwise different. Armistead’s diverse characters are logical family and thrive together. I’ve had a lot of fun imagining my logical parents, and it’s interesting my most logical are the same as Armistead’s (and we’ve both known both of them): Andy Warhol and Dame Edna Everage. So Armistead and I are logical full brothers.
Who are the people in your logical family? It’s fun to speculate. It’s also fun to speculate on what genius designed Armistead’s book covers to become one long picture.
Tales of the City
The first of nine novels about the denizens of the mythic apartment house at 28 Barbary Lane, Tales is both a sparkling comedy of manners and an indelible portrait of an era that changed forever the way we live.
More Tales of the City
The tenants of 28 Barbary Lane have fled their cozy nest for adventures far afield. Mary Ann Singleton finds love at sea with a forgetful stranger, Mona Ramsey discovers her doppelgänger in a desert whorehouse, and Michael Tolliver bumps into his favorite gynecologist in a Mexican bar. Meanwhile, their venerable landlady takes the biggest journey of all — without ever leaving home.
Further Tales of the City
The calamity-prone residents of 28 Barbary Lane are at it again in this deliciously dark novel of romance and betrayal. While Anna Madrigal imprisons an anchorwoman in her basement, Michael Tolliver looks for love at the National Gay Rodeo, DeDe Halcyon Day and Mary Ann Singleton track a charismatic psychopath across Alaska, and society columnist Prue Giroux loses her heart to a derelict living in a San Francisco park.
Babycakes
When an ordinary househusband and his ambitious wife decide to start a family, they discover there’s more to making a baby than meets the eye. Help arrives in the form of a grieving gay neighbor, a visiting monarch, and the dashing young lieutenant who defects from her yacht. Bittersweet and profoundly affecting, Babycakes was the first piece of fiction to acknowledge the arrival of AIDS.
Significant Others
Tranquility reigns in the ancient redwood forest until a women-only music festival sets up camp downriver from an all-male retreat for the ruling class. Among those entangled in the ensuing mayhem are a lovesick nurseryman, a panic-stricken philanderer, and the world’s most beautiful fat woman. Significant Others is Armistead Maupin’s cunningly observed meditation on marriage, friendship, and sexual nostalgia.
Sure of You
A fiercely ambitious TV talk show host finds she must choose between national stardom in New York and a husband and child in San Francisco. Caught in the middle is their longtime friend, a gay man whose own future is even more uncertain. Wistful and compassionate yet subversively funny, Sure of You is the pitch-perfect sixth novel in Armistead Maupin’s legendary Tales of the City series.
Michael Tolliver Lives
Nearly two decades after ending his groundbreaking Tales of the City saga of San Francisco life, Armistead Maupin revisits his all-too-human hero Michael Tolliver—the fifty-five-year-old sweet-spirited gardener and survivor of the plague that took so many of his friends and lovers—for a single day at once mundane and extraordinary... and filled with the everyday miracles of living.
Mary Ann in Autumn
Following the success of his New York Times bestseller Michael Tolliver Lives, Armistead Maupin’s Mary Ann in Autumn is a touching portrait of friendship, family, and fresh starts, as the City by the Bay welcomes back Mary Ann Singleton, the beloved Tales of the City heroine who started it all. A new chapter begins in the lives of both Mary Ann and Michael “Mouse” Tolliver when she returns to San Francisco to rejoin her oldest friend after years in New York City… the reunion that fans of Maupin’s beloved Tales of the City series have been awaiting for years.
The Days of Anna Madrigal
The Days of Anna Madrigal, the suspenseful, comic, and touching novel, follows one of modern literature’s most unforgettable and enduring characters—Anna Madrigal, the legendary transgender landlady of 28 Barbary Lane—as she embarks on a road trip that will take her deep into her past.
Now ninety-two, and committed to the notion of “leaving like a lady,” Mrs. Madrigal has seemingly found peace with her “logical family” in San Francisco: her devoted young caretaker Jake Greenleaf; her former tenant Brian Hawkins and his daughter Shawna; and Michael Tolliver and Mary Ann Singleton, who have known and loved Anna for nearly four decades.
Some members of Anna’s family are bound for the otherworldly landscape of Burning Man, the art community in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert where 60,000 revelers gather to construct a city designed to last only one week. Anna herself has another destination in mind: a lonely stretch of road outside of Winnemucca where the 16-year-old boy she once was ran away from the whorehouse he called home. With Brian and his beat-up RV, she journeys into the dusty troubled heart of her Depression childhood to unearth a lifetime of secrets and dreams and attend to unfinished business she has long avoided.
Color Me (sorta) Bashfully Proud
I’ve been blessed with 4 Certificates of Recognition. The first was from the California State Assembly in 2007, written and signed by Assemblyperson Mark Leno in recognition of my latest book Billions of Virgins in Ecstasy, The Memoirs of Strange de Jim, as well as my “many years as a historian and raconteur of the countless tales of our city...”
The second (pictured below) was from the California State Senate, written and signed by now-Senator Mark Leno in 2012 on my 70th birthday. Unfortunately, there was a typo, so they had me return it and issued me a new one. That gave me the idea for a fun Facebook post, pretending the typo was putting "Strange de Jim" on the award instead of a much more logical "Armistead Maupin."
The third and fourth were in 2017 on my 75th birthday. They were written and signed by State Senator Scott Wiener and by San Francisco District 8 Supervisor Jeff Sheehy, who had it signed by all the other members of the board as well.
Dustin Lance Black
(Above) Tom Daley, Strange, Dustin Lance Black
In 2008 Gus Van Sant began shooting Milk, starring Sean Penn as Harvey Milk, on location in San Francisco’s Castro. Official publicity photographer was Dan Nicoletta. with whom I’d worked closely in writing San Francisco’s Castro. Dan had given a copy of the book to everyone on the shoot; so I could walk to Castro Street, watch the shooting and meet anyone. Most interesting was screenwriter Dustin Lance Black. His hero, Cleve Jones, Harvey Milk’s political protege and originator of the AIDS Quilt, whom I’d known for decades, introduced us; and we became good friends. I’ll skip the details, but Milk had its grand opening at the Castro Theatre.
And, as you may remember, at the 2009 Oscars Milk won Best Actor (Sean Penn) and Best Original Screenplay (Dustin Lance Black).
Here’s Dusty’s famous amazing Oscar acceptance speech: VIDEO
How did such a centered young person come into being? Dusty would publish his autobiography Mama's Boy: A Story From Our Americas in 2019. Here’s how it’s described on Amazon:
Dustin Lance Black wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay for Milk and helped overturn California’s anti–gay marriage Proposition 8, but as an LGBTQ activist he has unlikely origins — a conservative Mormon household outside San Antonio, Texas. There he was raised by a single mother who, as a survivor of childhood polio, endured brutal surgeries as well as braces and crutches for life. Despite the abuse and violence of two questionably devised Mormon marriages, she imbued Lance with her inner strength and irrepressible optimism.
When Lance came out to his mother at age twenty-one, she initially derided his sexuality as a sinful choice. It may seem like theirs was a house destined to be divided — and at times it was. But in the end, they did not let their differences define them or the relationship that had inspired two remarkable lives. This heartfelt, deeply personal memoir explores how a mother and son built bridges across great cultural divides — and how our stories hold the power to heal.
Dusty visited San Francisco from time to time, and we ran into each other a few times each year. Here we are with Cleve Jones at the Castro Post Office the morning the Harvey Milk stamp was issued.
In 2016 I was sitting in Starbucks when Dusty walked in with the gentleman I knew was his boyfriend. I went up and tapped Dusty on the shoulder. He turned around, lit up, hugged me and complained, “Strange!” Then he added, “I want to introduce you to my boyfriend, Tom Daley.”
I congratulated Tom on having just qualified for the upcoming Rio Olympics (British Diving Team). They ordered their coffees and then I asked Dusty if I could take their picture. He said, “Don’t you want to be in it too?” I quickly handed my camera to the Barista, who took the photo above.
Then I went back to my table. After they got their orders, Dusty came over to say goodbye. Luckily, I happened to have a copy of The Strange Experience with me. I just flipped through the hundred full-page photos and told him these were people willing to tell the public I’d given them a massage in which I’d treated them so honorably we’d emerged best of friends. Here are a few of those photos.
I told Dusty I was working on updating and retelling the story, showing exactly how anyone could do what I did. He said to let him know when I’d finished. That was in 2016. Amazingly, working at my usual breakneck pace, after Dusty barely had time to marry Tom in a huge wedding at Bovey Castle in Devon, England, publish Mama’s Boy, have, with a surrogate mother, a son, Robert “Robbie” Ray Black-Daley, who’s almost ready for college, I’m already able to say…
DEAR DUSTY, I’M FINISHED. CLICK AND SEE
Beep beep!
Love,
Strange
I’ll be sharing more adventures soon, so please check back.