Krista Sturgeon

Krista Sturgeon is a former employee of the Cubby Hole Bar and Crazy Nanny’s and an advocate for LGBTQ individuals suffering from eating disorders. Krista moved to New York City from Kentucky in 1987 and found her way into the lesbian bar scene where she made meaningful friendship and community. Krista was also a member of ACT UP during the AIDS crisis in the early 1990s. This conversation was recorded on February 12, 2020 at 1pm by phone from Brooklyn, NY to Boston, MA.

Gwen Shockey: The first question I typically ask in these interviews is for you to tell me about the first place you were ever in occupied predominantly by lesbians or queer women and what it felt like to be there?

Image courtesy of Krista Sturgeon.

Krista Sturgeon: I was born and raised in Frankfort, Kentucky. In 1987 I moved to New York City to go to the NYU film school. I was seventeen years old at the time and had never been to any kind of queer space at all at that point. I realized about my sexuality probably around the age of fourteen. I got into several colleges but I decided to go to NYU. I didn’t think much about it. The summer after my freshman year it was 1988 and I stumbled upon Gay Pride weekend! I went and thought: Yes! This is where I belong! After that I spent a lot of my time hanging out with gay men. Most of my friends were gay men. I felt a bit more like a gay boy than a lesbian. What I did for like three months after that was walk by the Cubby Hole every single day and I didn’t know from Adam what I was supposed to do or how I was supposed to go in. I’ve noticed that the only person mentioned as working the door there was Stormé [DeLarverie] and that’s not exactly historically correct. Stormé did work there but in 1988 it was a person by the name of Liz who worked there a couple days a week. 

GS: This was when Cubby Hole was in its original location on Hudson street?

KS: Yes. The real deal there on Hudson street. So, finally after about two and a half months Liz stops me and says, “Why don’t you just come in?” So, I did! The entrance of Henrietta Hudson’s is still the same as it was then, they didn’t change the entrance. There’s a seat right by the entrance with a window right there, like a little ledge sort of. Liz and I are talking and she cleared off the little ledge there for me to sit on. So, not only was I terrified to go in there but by the second night I had like my own little spot there where I could watch everyone come in and out. It was like rapid fire! First I’m only walking by for a couple months and suddenly I’m like above everybody at the bar! It was really cool! It felt really awesome! Eventually, probably four or five months down the line, I was hired to work as a bar-back there. Like I said, this was the first lesbian establishment that I had ever been in. I had been in clubs like Limelight and the World and I had gone out with gay boys a lot before this but as far as it being a strictly lesbian place, this was the first one I ever went in. I ended up getting hired and working as a bar-back. I actually worked back-up security as well for the entire time up until it closed. 

GS: Wow! How cool! 

KS: I made friends with everyone who worked there. There were celebrities who did come in there so that was pretty cool too. I mean especially for someone like me who didn’t really know what it meant to be a gay female. Back then we didn’t have “LGBTQ.” That didn’t exist. So, we had to identify as being lesbian because we didn’t have any other way of describing it. That’s not really how I identify now, but it’s how I identified then. 

GS: Had you come out to anyone prior to moving to the city? 

KS: No. Nope! Not at all. I had a Southern Baptist father and a very conservative mother so no, I had not. 

GS: Wow. Ok. So you were spending a lot of time with gay men… 

KS: Yes. I always felt more like a gay man than a gay female. 

GS: Can you identify why you felt so scared initially to enter into a space like Cubby Hole?

KS: Well, I’d been around all of these gay men and I knew how they operated and in Kentucky I’d never been around any gay person, male or female, so it was a totally foreign experience. Sort of like when you learn to ride a bicycle. (Laughing) It’s like you’re really scared when you’re a little kid because you’re like: I’m going to fall off and break something! Walking through that door absolutely terrified me because it was the absolute unknown. Literally every night I would go past and go past and go past and go past in front of the bar until one day Liz said, “Come here and talk to me.” She helped me walk through that door and the rest is history! I’m so glad I did walk through that door because I got to meet the amazing people who worked there and all the amazing customers that came in throughout the years. 

GS: It’s kind of an amazing visual to think about you moving from Kentucky and walking by and slowly building up to entering the space. Powerful! How did you find out about Cubby Hole? 

KS: From my gay boyfriends. They were the ones who were like, “Ok. You’ve got to go do this girl! Just go! You’ll love it! Just go.” That’s when I started walking past and even they were getting on my case saying, “Just go in the door! Nobody’s going to hurt you. Just go in the door.” I owe it all to the door person Liz because she’s watching me do this and probably knows what’s going on in my head and she was kind of enough to say, “Just come in. Let me buy you a drink.” And that’s how it all started. 

GS: That’s so amazing. How did you realize you were gay when you were growing up in Kentucky without having any examples of what being gay looked like? 

KS: It was very interesting. I had clues when I was pretty young. There were certain things growing up that didn’t feel like they fit me. Without having the language or anything like that… This doesn’t necessarily mean you’re gay but I was a tomboy. I was a definite tomboy. I was the one girl that played in the baseball league. I think you had to be in middle school or fifth grade and they didn’t have softball back then so I played baseball. I was a second baseman. 

GS: That’s so badass! 

KS: (Laughing) Well, if you think that’s badass when I left Kentucky I ranked seventh in the state for golf! I started playing on the high school team when I was in fourth grade. 

GS: Wow!

KS: I’m not that athletic anymore though. But I was. If you look for instance at golf and if you watch the LPGA you get the idea that, you know, a couple of them are probably gay. It was that sort of thing when I was younger. I just knew that I was different. But I think what helped me realize and sort of even make a few strides, not to come out but to realize my identity, was through punk rock music. That is what helped make the transition into realizing who I was. You’ve got to realize that this was when I was in seventh and eighth grade. MTV just came on the air. I’m fifty years old so that was the first time MTV was ever on air and I’d go to the local record store, when we still had records, and grabbed a Sex Pistols tape and it became my favorite tape ever. Then I started following punk rock and new wave. I don’t know how much you know about early new wave but most of the guys were very androgynous. It was a whole androgynous movement. That’s what helped me figure out my feelings a little bit. I owe a whole lot to that early punk rock and new wave movement which really separated me from my peers back then. It was a definite stepping stone. 

GS: That’s so interesting and not the first time I’ve heard that the punk scene helped queer women especially validate their identities and feelings.  

KS: The Lunachicks who got back together! I saw L7 awhile back up in Boston. I still follow the Riot Grrrl scene. Some people when they move to New York City focus on finding famous actors, some people like finding famous writers, well my thing was music. It was always music. So, when I worked at Cubby Hole and later at Crazy Nanny’s I was privileged to meet a lot of famous musicians. That was the coolest thing for me, that it afforded me that chance.  

GS: Is there a specific person you were dying to meet that you got to meet at the bars?

KS: Yeah! But I probably shouldn’t say who it is. But yes there was and I did! 

GS: Jumping back to Cubby Hole, when you started bar-backing and spending more time in the bar, can you tell me about some memories you have from working there?

KS: Oh, absolutely. I never realized how small the Cubby Hole was. It didn’t seem that small to me. Crazy Nanny’s was a lot bigger. It was like three-hundred-and-sixty-square feet or something like that. I’ve been to the new Cubbyhole one time but the original one, I really didn’t realize it was that small. It didn’t seem that small to me. We were a really tight-knit group of people that worked there. We all worked very well with each other, there were hardly ever any disagreements – of course there always have to be a few – they were far and few between. We all got along really well. We had our regular customers. We actually had a pretty big following of regular customers too. We would always get people from out of town who would come and we did our best to make them feel at home and I think we did most of the time. That was really important to me. To make everyone comfortable who walked through that door or came through that door. I guess it was my southern hospitality maybe? I don’t know. But it was very important, at least to me. It was important to everyone who worked there to make sure whoever we were waiting on or helping had a good time. We tried our best because that was the lesbian bar at the time. I mean there were others but that was the one. Did anyone ever talk to you about the David Letterman interview? Madonna and Sandra Bernhard went on David Letterman – this was another thing that got tons of people coming into the bar – both Sandra Bernhard and Madonna who had been friends for a while at that point said something to the effect of, “Well, where should we meet afterwards?” And they both looked at each other and then looked in the camera and said, “The Cubby Hole!” You can only imagine how many people we packed into that three-hundred-and-sixty-square foot space after that happened. That was huge. That was absolutely huge. 

GS: Did you notice a shift in the types of women that were coming in after that happened?

KS: There was a change actually. We had more… I hate the term, but lipstick lesbians? We were very eclectic though and had all types of women but there were more lipstick lesbians there for a bit. Just as a side note, as you know Cubby Hole used to be on the corner of Hudson and Morton street and right around the corner on Morton street is where Madonna’s brother lives. I don’t know if he still lives there but at the time he lived right around the corner. 

GS: Did you ever meet Madonna?

KS: Let’s see. How can I answer this... I plead the fifth.

GS: (Laughing) Were the staff mostly queer? 

KS: We didn’t have the word queer but it was all gay females. There were hardly any guys working at the bar. Very few. Not that they weren’t welcome. That became more of an issue at Crazy Nanny’s and we can get to that later. Not that there was an issue with guys at Cubby Hole, they just didn’t come. If they did come they were welcome to come in they just didn’t come. 

GS: So, you said you worked as back-up security for a little while, did you ever have any issues with people?

KS: Ok. At Cubby Hole? We might have had a few asshole straight guys but nothing big. Nothing big ever really went down there. The thing is, officers patrolled the area and all of the bars in the Christopher street vicinity. They walked the beat all night long. At Cubby Hole of course we had our couple straight assholes now and then but nothing big. Nothing we couldn’t contain or take care of. Crazy Nanny’s was a whole different story.  

GS: And Elaine Romagnoli was the owner yeah?

KS: That’s correct. She was an interesting person. She came across as gruff but she actually was a very nice person. It was just a façade that she had. Actually, I got sort of in trouble for working there because I was not of the proper age to be working in a bar at the time. She came up to me and got really mad at me at first and at everybody else who was working there because everybody knew how old I was except for her. (Laughing) She was like, “Ok listen. You can keep working here but you can’t drink until you’re twenty-one.” I was like: Ok, I can make that deal. And I did. I did make that deal. So, she was gruff on the outside but a sweetheart on the inside. I love Elaine. I do. 

GS: Is she still living? 

KS: That’s a good question! About three years ago I tried to get ahold of everyone I knew that worked there through Facebook, which was the best way I thought I could find them. I was only able to find two people. I’d love to try to get ahold of Elaine. Not only did I work for her at Cubby Hole and Crazy Nanny’s but I worked for her at her restaurant one summer out on Long Island. 

GS: Yeah! I want to hear more about that! I didn’t even know she owned a restaurant on Long Island! 

KS: She sort of just took me wherever she went! I know she liked me. I haven’t talked to her since I left New York City back in 1992. 

GS: Before we go on to talk about Nanny’s and the restaurant are there any other specific moments from the Cubby Hole days? I also wanted to ask you whether you knew if Elaine was connected to the Mafia? 

KS: I can tell you what I was told! I wasn’t told directly, once again, but I was told that as well. There was no one I knew who could positively say so but Stonewall was owned by the mafia and all the other gay bars were owned by the mafia so it wouldn’t surprise me but I can’t say factually if that’s true. I was told by different sources that that was true but I cannot one hundred percent say that that was true.  

GS: Do you know anything about Elaine’s background? 

KS: Nope. I know absolutely nothing about the woman at all! She was very, very quiet about her past and she never talked about herself at all. I had no idea where the money came from to buy all the bars and restaurants and to run them. I know absolutely nothing about her. That’s because that’s the way she wanted it, you know? Nobody knew anything about her. The only person who might be able to answer that question would be Lisa Cannistraci who now runs Henrietta Hudson. She was a bartender at the Cubby Hole.

GS: Yeah. I’ve been curious about that just because so few places were truly owned and operated by women for women who weren’t connected to the mafia.  

KS: You’re not the only one who has ever asked me that question. That question has been asked by sooo many people and I wish I had the answer. She was just so private.  

GS: (Laughing) That’s ok! So, do you have any memories you’d like to share from Cubby Hole? 

Image courtesy of Krista Sturgeon.

KS: Let’s see! Cubby Hole was probably one of the first bars in the West Village to have a video screen where you could play a song and you could see the video so, working there you would hear Madonna’s “Open Your Heart” song like a thousand, million, gazillion times. Basically the only uniform we had there was baseball caps that said Cubby Hole. So, me and my friends had heard that song so many times that we could actually do the video. I can’t dance for crap and I definitely can’t sing but that song would come on late enough at night that we would just stand there and perform the video. We’d seen it so many times that we could do it. We nailed it. We could nail that. The second song that played the most there was K.D. Lang’s “Constant Craving”. That video wasn’t as interesting but I knew all the words. The reason I brought up the hats is that Liz had the same hat I did but Liz knew Keith Haring and he totally tagged her hat up big time. That was right after I met her because I think he died shortly thereafter. Wherever Liz is I’m sure she still has that hat. She would never sell it but that hat would be worth a lot of dough. It’s an original Cubby Hole hat, number one, but number two, Keith Haring tagged that whole thing up. There were a lot of really cool things that went on there but I probably can’t really say what they were without getting people in trouble. (Laughing) Let’s just say that from that time in 1988 to the time they closed their doors basically any queer – and I say queer because that’s the word I use now but I should say lesbian – performer, writer, director, etc. who was anyone came in that bar. We’ll put it that way and I’ll use it as a blanket statement. 

GS: Wow, that’s amazing. It must have felt like you were working at a really important place! 

KS: Oh, absolutely. One-thousand percent on that. During that time period more and more people were starting to come out! Every-day-people too, not just celebrities. We were all starting to feel the waters changing and starting to feel like it was safer to come out but that was still in the early, early stages. You can google this and you may have already seen it but the picture of K.D. Lang and Cindy Crawford on the cover of Vanity Fair? That was an amazing photo. There were a lot of people starting to express their sexuality during that time period. That was the very beginning of it right there I think. 

GS: It must have been such an exciting time to be in New York. It also must have been kind of a hard time because that bar was open right at the height of AIDS.

KS: Yeah. I knew Larry Kramer and was part of ACT UP. 

GS: Were you? Oh wow! 

KS: I wasn’t involved in the first couple of things he did because I had just come to the city back when he had just started it but shortly thereafter back in ’88 I met Larry Kramer and I was part of ACT UP. I’m an activist still. I help LGBTQ people with eating disorders but that was my first entry into activism. 

GS: How did you find your way into ACT UP?

KS: Well, there wasn’t social media and we basically had no technology so people would go around taping things to telephone poles and that’s how I found out about it. 

GS: Wow, you really found your way into the center of it all then! 

KS: Yeah! I was this poor kid just waiting to get out of Kentucky! I was on fire ready to hit the road running! 

GS: Yeah! And you mentioned you made friends with a lot of gay men – did you lose a lot of friends to AIDS? 

KS: I lost more people than I can count on my fingers and toes. It was hard. 

GS: God. I can’t imagine. It seems like it was a really intense mixture of emotion then. You’re a young person finding yourself and right away losing so much. That’s so intense. 

KS: Yeah. That’s why I got involved in ACT UP because I was losing friends and it was time to force the government to open their eyes and time to force the drug companies to open up their eyes – I mean if you think about it we almost lost an entire generation of gay men. There’s an age group of gay men that is just completely gone. Almost, not all of them, but their gone because of that. I got involved with that before I even went to start working at the Cubby Hole. I read that Lisa at Henrietta’s still does a lot of activism. Oh! I almost forgot the most important part! Nobody is going to know who the hell I am if you use my real name. After working at the Cubby Hole for a couple of months I came in with a hickey on my neck so from then on they called me “Hickey”. (Laughing) So, if you say my name to anyone they’ll have no idea who the hell you’re talking about! Just say Krista a.k.a. Hickey and they’ll know exactly who you’re talking about. 

GS: That’s hilarious! 

KS: It was horrible! (Laughing) One wrong move and for the rest of my New York City career I was known as Hickey! I hated it but I couldn’t make them stop so it just kept going on and on and on! 

GS: Oh my god that’s so funny! So, talk to me about why the first Cubby Hole closed?

KS: That’s actually a really good question! I don’t have the exact answer but I do know that part of it was a space thing. I know Elaine wanted more room for a dance floor and a pool table and lots of room to move around. There could have been other reasons but I think mostly she was looking for a bigger space because especially Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights you just couldn’t move! There were so many people in there you just couldn’t move. 

GS: Did Crazy Nanny’s open up right after?

Image courtesy of Krista Sturgeon.

KS: Right after. I helped paint the inside of that place. I’ll send you a picture of my hat and I still have my Dr. Martens that I had on when I painted that place and I have lavender and grey paint on my boots still from painting the inside of Crazy Nanny’s. Me and my girlfriend at the time deejayed at Crazy Nanny’s for a few months we were known as the Dyke Martens! (Laughing). We thought it was pretty clever. That’s the name we deejayed under. I wish to god I still had a flyer. 

GS: What was it like opening up Crazy Nanny’s? You mentioned in your email to me that you felt like a jack of all trades?

KS: I was! I was a jack of all trades everywhere. Before I went to work there though I worked for a while at Elaine’s restaurant. The name of the restaurant was Bonnie’s by the Bay. I don’t know much about Long Island at all but Montauk is on one side of that little bay and her restaurant was on the other side of the bay from Montauk. 

GS: Do you know if the name of the restaurant was a reference to Bonnie & Clydes? Didn’t she run that bar? 

KS: She did! That’s a very good question! I don’t know. That summer when we worked there Elaine gave me and two other females this little cottage that was right there on the bay free of charge and she still paid us for working at the restaurant. I knew nothing about restaurants but I was a prep cook.

GS: You were a jack of all trades! 

KS: I was! It was like, if she asked me to do it, I did it. Unfortunately the most famous dish they made was this chicken dish with garlic so I had to peel garlic all night long and if you’ve ever tried peeling garlic for an extended period of time it burns the ends of your fingertips really bad. Finally about halfway through the summer someone thought to give me a pair of latex gloves. But it was still fun! I made the best of it. The restaurant was seasonal so it was only open during the summer and towards the end of the summer she only did dinner and not lunch and dinner. And then after that closed that’s when we moved back, well, actually it sort of overlapped when she opened Crazy Nanny’s. We would drive back into the city every Monday to pick up things to bring back out. We’d go to South Street Seaport to get fresh seafood and bring it back out there. For some reason, once, the chef and sous chef couldn’t do it so they threw me in the van and told me to go get it. I hadn’t driven at that point in like ten years maybe? They made me drive the van and it was horrible! I went to go through the tunnel and I clipped the passenger side mirror and I thought she was going to kill me. I said: Well, that’s what you get for making me drive in! I told you I couldn’t drive! Cubby Hole was still open and she told me to parallel park in front of Cubby Hole I was like a nervous wreck! I couldn’t parallel park it so I went in and I got Lisa from behind the bar and it was early afternoon and no one was in there so I went: I will watch the bar, you’ve got to go out there and parallel park that thing I’m a nervous wreck and I can’t do it. She did it thank god. That was the last time I drove ever. Right after that Crazy Nanny’s opened and a bunch of us helped fix it up. So it all happened rather quickly. It didn’t take long at all. 

GS: Was it mostly a lesbian clientele at the restaurant in Long Island? 

KS: No, it was not a gay restaurant it was just a regular restaurant. I started looking back last year because I couldn’t remember the name of it so I looked it up, looked it up and I finally found it written up by the New York Times or somebody like them who wrote up the restaurant and gave it a really good review and that’s when I remembered the name of it but I don’t think it was there very long after that. It shut down a year or two after that I think. 

GS: So, it was mostly the same crew of people who moved from Cubby Hole over to Crazy Nanny’s? 

KS: Yep! Same crew but even more so now. We had to add more people because it was a bigger space. Liz was no longer there, Stormé didn’t work there at all, we had a brand-new bouncer and of course at that place I was just a jack of all trades. Whatever they needed me to do, I did. Except for bartend. I was never allowed to bartend because at Cubby Hole they let me bartend one time at the back bar and I was such a heavy pourer that they were like, “You’ll never bartend again.” I didn’t know how to bartend. I was a heavy pourer and they were like, “Nope! That’s it. That’s one thing I’m not going to let you do.” So, it was everything else but bartending. 

GS: Can you describe the layout of the space for me? Of Crazy Nanny’s?

KS: So, you walk in the front door and if I remember correctly it was sort right where Seventh Avenue and Grove street meet and sort of turn. You walked in and there were two staircases on either side or if you walk straight in the bar was probably ten paces in. The big bar was downstairs. You keep going sort of straight when you walk in the door that’s where the pool table was. If you looked straight where the bartenders would be that’s where the jukebox was. It was not a video jukebox, it was just a jukebox. If you went up either staircase the dance floor was in the middle of that room. If you went up the right staircase you would go up two more stairs to get to that bar and there was seating up there. There was also seating all around the outside of the dance floor. Initially we had a really big problem because Elaine did not have a permit for dancing. I remember this very well. Even though we were deejaying there we weren’t the only ones deejaying there. She had deejays a couple nights a week. The guy who lived next door, he was the biggest pain in the ass. If it got even slightly loud upstairs he would call the cops. It got to a point where we had to stop for a while and finally Elaine got the proper permits that she needed because they were going to take the liquor license away. This guy was just too much. Finally she got everything she needed and there was no problem but it was a little touch and go there for a while. I was only there until 1992, so I wasn’t at Crazy Nanny’s for that long… 

GS:  Giuliani wasn’t mayor yet but it sounds like it was still challenging to host nightlife in the city?

KS: No, he wasn’t mayor yet. It was challenging before the paperwork was taken care of and then it was no big deal. It wasn’t like the police departments fault, it wasn’t the mayors fault, it was just this guy who lived next door who was a prick about the whole thing. The police honestly didn’t want to have to keep coming back and they were trying to work it out with us and not him but they had to do their job. They were actually trying to do their best to try to work it out. That guy was just not having it. In the end everything worked out. It was just a little touch and go there for a while. We had another bouncer there and I cannot remember her name to save my life. She started a little bit before I left New York City.

GS: Was the clientele pretty similar to the original Cubby Hole?

KS: A lot of people right around this time in 1991 and 1992 started asking why lesbian bars were segregated – racially segregated and segregated between men and women – because it was starting to become an issue! It really was! It wasn’t done on purpose. 

GS: Was Cubby Hole mostly white?

KS: Yes, the Cubby Hole was. Not on purpose. Of course there were people there of every race and every color but it was predominantly white, yes. There was a bar off of Christopher street which was where more women of color went. I can’t remember the name…

GS: Was it Pandora’s Box? 

KS: That could have been it. I honestly cannot remember. But when Crazy Nanny’s opened up that started to change. Things were starting to change for the better. We did have a problem… by the time I left there, there was a door policy which technically if someone had brought Crazy Nanny’s to court Crazy Nanny’s would have lost. The policy was for men. If there was a guy who wanted to come in he had to be escorted by two females. Which, as you well know, is totally illegal. It wasn’t instituted in the beginning but then all of the sudden because it was such an awesome space, guys started coming in and they started taking it over. I think the policy was seen as a last-ditch effort to save it. After I left I think it slowly stopped being an issue. Now when I read about it, it was considered an LGBTQ space. They did fundraisers for AIDS and HIV so they didn’t care anymore and that’s a good thing in my opinion but I do remember that policy and I left shortly thereafter. 

GS: Was it mostly gay men trying to get in? Or straight men too?

KS: It was both!  

GS: How did women react to the policy? 

KS: Some of the ones who were really militant thought it was awesome other women thought it was absolutely ridiculous. It ran the gamut. Personally I thought it was idiotic. Unless a guy started acting like an asshole then we’d kick him out. You can’t do that at the door. That was my problem. 

GS: I’ve heard from other people that there would be racial discriminatory door policies at other bars, were you aware of that?

KS: I never noticed it. I know in the beginning there might have been a problem. There truly might have been a problem. Not with the door person at the time, I just know that there were a few people who said they didn’t feel welcome there. I don’t know exactly what they meant by that but that concern was stated to me. Personally though I never saw anything going on like that myself. I never saw that happen. It could have happened but personally I never saw anyone treated differently because of the color of their skin. I’m sure women of color who went there have a whole different perspective than I do though. You did ask me if there were ever any times at Cubby Hole working the door or whatever that we had any big problems and I said no but there was one instance where one week – I don’t remember what year it was – a pipe bomb went off in one of the bathrooms at Boy Bar. Nobody was hurt but my girlfriend at the time worked as a paramedic in Newark, New Jersey, which was horrible but I had to wear her bulletproof vest for two weekend after that because they never caught who put the pipe bomb in there so it was like every gay bar in the West Village was on high alert for about two weekends.  

GS: That’s super scary!

KS: It was very scary! Back then that was semi-tolerated, you know? Homophobia was somewhat tolerated back then. Thank god nobody got hurt there but they also never caught who did it. 

GS: Did you ever experience homophobia directed towards you?

KS: No! And it was interesting because when I wasn’t working I would go out with the gay boys and I was very androgynous – I’m still very androgynous looking – so I would go with them to Spike, the Anvil, all the leather daddy bars where really screwed up stuff goes on cause I could get in, these were bars that women were not allowed in, period. Ever. End of story. But I could pass enough where I could get in. That was the most fun and the biggest learning experience probably of my life as far as social norms and not norms are. It was very entertaining. 

GS: How did these bars enforce a gender policy at the door where they wouldn’t let women in?

KS: I mean, if you looked anything like a woman you just couldn’t come in. The other bars that were like S&M leather bars it was like that but at bars like Boy Bar they didn’t care. Limelight, World, Mars… they could care less. 

GS: That seems like such a double standard though, you know? For Crazy Nanny’s to get shit for having the one man with two women policy, but for no women-looking people to be allowed at all into these places?

KS: It is! Well, it is and it isn’t. If you think about the pay gap between gay men and gay women especially back then, it was huge! Absolutely huge. So, men had the money to pay for as many drinks as they wanted and they tipped really well and the lesbians would have a couple drinks and I can tell you for damn sure that they did not tip well. It all has to do with the pay discrepancy and the types of jobs gay women had versus the types of jobs gay men had. That’s how men almost took over Crazy Nanny’s because they paid! They would buy round, upon round, upon round of drinks and tipped us very well! So, of course the waitresses wanted them to come back! Lesbians for the most part just didn’t have the means! They couldn’t afford round after round of drinks or to tip well. 

GS: That makes so much sense! In some sad ways I think it’s still the case.         

KS: It is! Female queer bars are just shutting their doors right and left everywhere! They’re going to go extinct and I hope this is part of the reason why you’re doing this project! I wish there was something we could do to stop that. It’s crazy. In Boston there are no female queer bars. None. 

GS: Yeah it’s scary for sure! What caused you to leave New York?

KS: The main thing was that when I graduated from school I couldn’t find a job in film. Here I am out and queer in 1991 with a film degree from NYU which is supposed to be golden and I wanted to work in television and programming because that’s what I focused on. I think I wasn’t offered jobs because I was gay, strike one, female, strike two, and I wasn’t Jewish, strike three. I know that sounds horrible but there is such a thing as the Jewish mafia in the entertainment industry. There just is. So, I couldn’t find a job and two of my friends had moved to San Francisco and they were like, “Come out! You can stay with us! As long as you look for a job we have room for you!” So, I left. Unfortunately by 1993 I was diagnosed with anorexia. 

GS: Oh wow I’m so sorry to hear that. Is that what influenced your work now? 

KS: Absolutely. Because I was an androgynous queer female they didn’t know what to do with me. None of the treatment centers in California would take me. I didn’t have the money to pay out of pocket and they just didn’t know how to treat somebody who didn’t fit neatly into gender categories so what happened was they just kept shifting me from psych ward to psych ward to psych ward until I finally ended up in a nursing home. The doctor came in one day and said, “Well, you’re going to die so pack up your things and move back to Kentucky so you can die with your family.” So, I moved back to Kentucky. They had no care there either and I eventually did flatline and die and then come back. 

GS: My god Krista. 

KS: When I did come back I swore that I would dedicate the rest of my life to making sure no one else had to live through what I did and that’s why I’m an advocate and help anybody who identifies as LGBTQ and needs help finding proper treatment for their eating disorders. 

GS: Do you feel like resources have changed since you were going through that?

KS: Well, let’s see. Before Obama Care kicked in there were about twenty-five to thirty inpatient facilities and now there are about one hundred and ten. I ran a non-profit for about a year –  I couldn’t sustain it but I still do the work and I have a matrix that I use for people from the queer community who come to me when they find out I do what I do and I’ll give them like three suggestions of places to go to. I call the treatment facilities first, I don’t tell them the person’s name, and I ask five major questions. If they answer any of the questions wrong I know they won’t treat someone from the community correctly. 

GS: Can I ask what the questions are?

KS: The people who usually have the hardest time getting proper treatment are trans folks. For example, first when you enter in they have to ask you your legal name for insurance purposes but I ask if they have a section where a patient can enter what name they would like to be called. Another question I would ask would be for instance at an all-female treatment center. At one place I called and asked: I have this friend, she is twenty-four years old, she is trans female and has been on hormones for four years now, would you take her in your facility? I was put on hold while they asked their supervisor and then when they came back they say “Well, we’re opening up a male wing in a month and we can put her there.” Another example that was even worse than that… I tell them the same story and they go ask their supervisor, come back and say, “Well, we can only take females that are all female.” 

GS: Jesus. That’s horrible.

KS: I know! I’m like: Well, I’ve had a hysterectomy. Does that mean that I’m not all female anymore? So, that’s the type of stuff I do to make sure people don’t get stuck in places that are discriminatory. 

GS: That’s really important work. It sounds like you went through so much yourself and the community is so lucky to have you doing this! It’s really amazing.

KS: Thank you. The biggest honor I got was in 2017 or 2018 in the Boston pride guide they put a picture of me in the guide and I became the first ever eating disorder activist to be in the pride guide! It was seen all over the world: on all seven continents, in one-hundred-and-thirty-seven countries, and over a hundred-thousand people. 

GS: That’s so awesome. I’d love to put you in touch with Identity House, they’re an LGBTQ mental health advocacy organization. I’m sure they could use you as a reference when they see walk-in center clients. 

KS: Oh absolutely. I’m always up to pair with whoever I can to help whoever I can.

GS: Well Krista this has just been amazing! I don’t know if there’s anything else you’d like to add about the bars but I appreciate this so much! 

KS: All I have to say about both places is that I learned a lot and when I left I was extremely sad because those people there were like my family. When my family couldn’t accept me they were my family. I miss all of them. We were all together all the time and I miss them. I really do. I miss every one of them so much. 

GS: That’s so sweet! Thank you Krista!