*Tour-ette at the Cherry Grove pier after a week of LGBTQ Pride and Supreme Court scandal! 6/27/2022

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*Tour-ette on a rainy Monday evening in Cherry Grove at the end of LGBTQ Pride Month. 6/27/2022

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Sybil Bruncheon's “My Merry Memoirs”… LGBTQ Pride Parades of the Past – 1987…

Here's Mummie walking down the entire route of the parade with her theatre pal Ron Coombs lending her moral support. My ride that year in a vintage convertible Mercedes had stood me up at the last minute right before the parade started (he had a hangover… or a date!), and there I was in my tiara by Larry Vrba and my coronation ball gown by Matthew Lombardi for NYC's first Night Of A Thousand Gowns. I’d been crowned the first Empress of NY by the Imperial Court System of America… Sybil the First - The Atlas Empress!... and the ball had been held in the newly renovated and restored Waldorf Astoria in their grand ballrooms… for the then unheard of sum of $250.00 a ticket! Can you imagine?

This was the old parade route too; starting at Central Park West at 70th Street, winding down to 59th, across to 5th Avenue, then straight all the way down to Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village, across to Christopher Street, past the historic Stonewall Inn and Sheridan Square, and then all the way down to the festival on the Hudson River. Mummy's feet bled for two days… yep! BLED!… and I limped for a week!

“But the show MUST GO ON!”, right? (I WAS the first Empress of NY after all) ... ah, good times!… good times...

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Sybil Bruncheon’s “My Merry Memoirs”… LGBTQ Pride Parades of the Past – 1996…

Here we have the Sybil Bruncheon Repertory Company (including Bob Gutowski & Jay Boehm, Jeffrey Wallach, and Marty Santoro all seen here, along with Jay Rogers, Thomas Stoehr, Douglas Huston, and James Takos) did a tribute to the 200th anniversary of the French revolution and the beheading of Marie Antoinette called "Those Naughty, Naughty Queens!". We built a working tumbril, and the entire company dressed as Revolutionaries and Sans Culottes selling toy-guillotines and headless gingerbread men to the crowds! And guess who got to be the Queen being dragged to the scaffold! Type-casting, I guess you could say!... and here I tried so hard and so often to treat my staff and supporting cast with so much kindness, generosity, and understanding… oh well. (Who would have thought that 25 years later with Washington DC in so much turmoil, our little caprice would be so very pertinent!) Ah, good times!... good times!

(photo by Matthew Kiernan, Sybil’s gown by Gefil Tefish of the Hefty Highness Hideaway)

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Sybil Bruncheon's “My Merry Memoirs”…LGBTQ Pride Parades of the Past - 1986.

Here's the cover of The NY Daily News from Monday, June 30th, 1986. At the time of the LGBTQ Pride Parade in 1986, even as I was headlining at the major clubs in NYC and around the country, I also happened to have been going through some serious misadventures involving a stock broker, the (now defunct!) brokerage house Thompson/McKinnon, a taxi cab accident, back due rent, and a major rent strike at the Ansonia! (talk about material for a memoir!)... and in the middle of all that drama there was the centennial of the Statue of Liberty with all the Tall Ships coming to town along with the President and foreign dignitaries to see it unveiled, newly refurbished and restored and with a brand new 24kt torch flame gleaming over the city. In the Pride Parade just days before the huge celebration on the 4th, I celebrated the centennial in my own way with my own "Liberty" outfit of gold lamé (by Cliff Boone and Morrie Breyer at A.Q.U.A.) and a custom-made torch (that actually lit up!). It was all great fun, and another triumphant parade for the LGBTQ community. But that's not the end of the story...  

The gloriously beautiful Monday morning after the parade, I had to face all the challenges of the rent strike, being broke, dealing with being swindled along with several other gullible guys, bills, deadlines, threats of eviction, blah, blah, blah, etc, etc. I knew I had to eat a good breakfast or I'd be nauseated the rest of the day with cramps, so I headed to the diner by my corner news stand!... and the nice Moroccan man behind the counter suddenly screamed gleefully at me pointing and waving a copy of the Daily News in front of a sidewalk full of staring commuters, "Derr! I tell you! I TELL YOU!! Derr is da lady! Derr is da LADY!!! You, meester! You ARE DA LADEEEE! Ha! HA! HAAA! YOU ARE DA LADEEEE!"...

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Sybil Bruncheon's "My Merry Memoirs"... LGBTQ Pride Parades of the Past - 1984

Pride Month Memories... WHERE WAS I 39 YEARS AGO?:

On every Pride Parade Day, I spend the day thinking about Lou Maletta, the Gay Cable Network on Channel J, and all the adventures we had together there and around the city and with Mark Bailey and all our GCN friends in Cincinnati. Although I first officially met Lou in 1983, and then began collaborating with him on stage and club events, and three different cable TV series that ran from 1984 to 1993, I feel like I'd known him forever. Right after we taped our first show together at the beginning of November in '84, we began spending every week together working on exciting projects, fundraisers, upcoming shoots on location all around NYC, and in various downtown theatres in front of studio audiences, and of course, the Gay Pride Parade!.....this photo was taken outside the Plaza Hotel on our first parade together, and back when the Pride Parade was hours long, winding from Central Park West up at the west 70s, crossing 59th Street to Fifth Avenue, and then all the way down to Greenwich Village and back across Christopher Street past the historic Stonewall Inn to the Hudson River for the festival. As I said... HOURS!

This first parade we did together had so many funny and fascinating moments for us; the balloons began to deflate and pop almost immediately in the heat against the hot metal of the car! Every block of that long parade route stunned and surprised us! We had only been on that early incarnation of cable television (only ten channels and all on a dinky box of pushbuttons labeled "A" through "J" and perched precariously on top of your TV with NO remote!). But as we drove down the parade route, we couldn't believe the throngs of people that screamed out "Sybil" and rushed the car for autographs and photos (and this was LONG before the convenience of cell phones and selfies!). The buzz and the hoopla grew and grew, block by block of course as we moved farther and farther downtown we went.

There's Lou's partner of many years, Luke Valenti driving!!! Luke would have all of us convulsed with laughter whenever I saw him. Lou said that Luke made him laugh more than anyone on Earth, and that it was their secret to their long marriage!! Lou will certainly be in my heart and memory forever. I still find myself chuckling at all the funny times we had, the poignant moments we shared, and the many friends we loved... and lost. Lou's sense of humor was tremendous too, and his lifestyle fooled no one.....If you spent any time with him at all, you would see that he was an incredibly learned and sophisticated man under all the leather and paraphernalia!!!... and he revealed his classiness only when it suited him!!!! He was my producer with whom I clashed and bickered, and laughed and conspired! Lou was always happy for my successes, and gave great advice when I asked for it! We made some fun and funny shows together, some of which still exist in archives here and there, and we chuckled at the thought that we were often portrayed as the Bette Davis and Jack Warner of the Gay Cable world.......Many thanks, Lou, for so many gifts!!!......and sweet dreams to you, old friend.

(Photo by Diana Di Prima. Sybil's gown by Cliff Boone and Morrie Breyer of A.Q.U.A., and her jewelry by Jesse Galvez of J. Antonio and Larry Verba)

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Sybil Bruncheon's "KNOW YOUR GAY HISTORY!"... Robert Eselberger.

Darlings, so many young LGBTQ persons don't seem to know or care about their gay-heritage!... where they came from, what the struggles were, how difficult, and even dangerous it was to be an LGBTQ youngster in the not-so-distant past. It can be very, very discouraging and disheartening to older people who know all too well what the journey was to this point... and how much farther so many folks still have to go in certain parts of the world and even this country. That's why, as a public service, we will be helping to educate everyone about our GAY HISTORY!

Here's a photo of a notorious drag performer from Cherry Grove, Fire Island circa 1950. His name originally was Robert Eselberger, from Ronkonkoma, the son of the famous delicatessen owners, Eselberger's Kosher Catering! But he gave up his place behind the counter and at the Board of Directors table, and became "Shishka-Bobbie", an interpretive dancer and fire juggler who performed mostly to Alice Faye and Patty page records; Bobbie's biggest numbers were "With My Eyes Wide Open, I'm Dreaming" and "Hello, Frisco! Hello"... sadly, it was discovered in 1956, that the shish kabobs she served to the audience during her musical numbers were local roadkill, and possibly even lost house pets... Shishka-Bobbie was arrested at the Matawan Melody Tent after the first act, tried, and sentenced to seven years at the Manonkahottan Institute for Inveterate Discourtesy to Our Four-Legged Friends... She changed her name to Shishka-BARBIE and hosted the Saturday afternoon “Grill ‘n’ Greets” for the new inmates’ arrival. Her parents moved from Ronkonkoma to Akron, and changed their name to Hefflehoffer… they made a small fortune in the library paste industry.

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