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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 1, 1988)
Thanks, Aleson, for a job well done To the Editor: I'm writing this letter primarily as a thank you from myself and from an entire community. Aleson MacFarlane. manager of Club 927 since early 1985, resigned her position in mid- December. During her tenure, the changes she instituted at the Club altered its entire character. For the First time in memory. Club 927 really became part of its community. As lesbians with widely diverse lifestyles and beliefs, we have few places to gather and be comfortable. The change was gradual, but the Club went from a cruise bar where dykes went to get sloshed and get in fights to a nightclub and accepted community center. When she began as manager, Aleson was tough, but she got the drug deals out of the restrooms, and identification really got checked. She changed the decor, the music and a whole lot more. I know. I was producing burlesque shows when she took over and she flat-out cancelled us. She stressed the importance of the C lub’s image and results show she knows her stuff. Aleson worked well with her entire spectrum o f colleagues. Her staff was as committed to excellence as she was. Their enthusiasm, com bined with her management and public-relations aptitude, attracted top performers and the customers who follow them. I've performed many times during the past three years, and management at Club 927 was a joy to work with. The Club joined the Lesbian Community Project as an associate member. Effective, con tinuous advertising, efficient operation and word o f mouth brought more and more different women in. The benefit events Aleson helped arrange attracted organization business and substantially improved com munity attitude about the bar By last fall, even Tuesday- and Wednesday-night business was standing-room-only. I even started scheduling my business meetings there during daytime hours. Nearly all the fights stopped. I loved watching Aleson break them up. She never used physical force. She’s not overbearing physically, her voice was enough. Those fights stopped because, even sloshed, the customers respected her. We do respect all she’s done for us and for the Club. I’d like to wish new management the best and urge that the 927 maintain its cooperative and open relationship with all parts of the les bian community. I join with many others in the community in sincerely hoping that Aleson will lend her tre mendous energy and skill to involvement in other community organizations and projects. W e’ll miss her at Club 927 — but we bet the Club will miss her more. high and bowls to 13 inches in diameter. Other unusual items taken were living ivy wreaths — not fenceable and certainly not useable in quantity. W'e at Dragonfly Gardens believe in serv ice, quality products and trust. It hurts when some one we feel is a customer breaks into our store. The person who did the burglary knew our store and was precise, deliberate and tidy. The ex pense of cleaning up the glass, broken doors and destroyed locks will be absorbed over time, but the violation o f trust will stay with us much longer. A reward is offered for information on this burglary — our third since opening. Sarah Lizio Dragonfly Gardens Drag and sexism cited up to and lives out the theory that there are two sharply distinct sexes and never the twain shall overlap or be confused . . . these hominids con stantly and w ith remarkable lack o f embarrass ment marking a distinction between two sexes as though their lives depended on it It is wonderful that homosexuals and lesbians are mt>cked and judged for ‘playing butch-femme roles’ and for dressing in ‘butch-femme drag, ‘for nobody goes about in full public view as thoroughly decked out in butch and femme drag as respectable hetero sexuals w hen they are dressed up to go out in the evening, or to go to church, or to go to the office. Heterosexual critics o f queers' ‘role-playing’ ought to look at themselves in the mirror on their way out for a night on the town to see who’s in drag The answer is. everybody is Perhaps the main difference between heterosexuals and queers is that when queers go forth in drag, they know they are engaged in theater— they are playing and they know they are playing. Hetero sexuals usually are taking it all perfectly seriously, thinking they are in the real world, thinking they are the real world.” Kerry Hart Portland To the Editor: Just a note in regard to Lee Lynch’s “ Cravat C aveat” — a quote, actually, from philosopher Marilyn Frye’s essay “ Sexism ” : Rosanne King Portland Tidy burglar has good taste “ It is quite a spectacle, really, once one sees it. these humans so devoted to dressing up and act ing out and ‘fixing’ one another so everyone lives To the E ditor Someone with obviously good taste and tidy habits broke into Dragonfly Gardens on Christmas. The thief preferred vases of quality, both in price and design. What the thief took was quite unusual — things that will stick out in people's minds. Missing are black vases and bowls with crane and flower designs; vases up to 14 inches A TASTY MIDDAY D p t? a X 3 JEvJES i wW\y Food Front A sampling tare of lunch Sat., Feb. 27th treats Professional Insurance for Portland since 1937 C O M M E R C IA L PERSO N AL LIFE & HEALTH CO O P IE P A T I VIE G P OC 1ER Y 9am to 9pm Daily N W Thurman at 23rd Place 222-5658 Tri-Met Bus Routes 15 and 17 ■ ■ ■ Downey Insurance Agency 610 SW Broadway Portland, Oregon 97205 (503) 228-8327 The City's Natural Grocery Community Owned — Open to All Lesbian Community Project presents a personal theater performance for women PIECES of TRUTH performed by Cindy Lucrecia, Kaseja O, La Rosa, Mara, NiAodagain directed by Bethroot Gwynne assisted by Hawk Madrone February 20 8 pm W estm inster Presbyterian Church 1624 NE Hancock $6 ($5 fo r LCP Members) "W ha t would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would crack open." - Muriel Rukeyser Tickets at A Wom an's Pace Bookstore ASL C H ILD C A R E AVAILABLE For more info 233-9079 S.W.9thAYamhffl 2#95lO Just Out • 3 • February 1988