“A great artist, a great rocker, a great purveyor of schlock, a great heartthrob, a great bore, a great symbol of potency, a great ham, a great nice person, and, yes, a great American”

Coming out is a beginning. Marching to Sheep Meadow is a beginning. Dancing our way to liberation is a beginning. But only a part of it.

He had quit high school at sixteen, worked as a sheet metal worker in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, joined the navy at seventeen, read and studied to make up the missing years of high school.

“Toward the end, he thought perhaps that he had the perfect heavyweight at last in young Michael Tyson: "I have no doubt he'll be a champion. But more than that, he might be a great fighter”

The day was full of TV cam­eras, spontaneous singing, speeches, clapping, and the echo of Martin Luther King’s phrase: “I have a dream … ”

“They thought Gonzo was crazy,” says Steadman. “He was accused of trying to rape one of the maids and of shooting pigeons with a Magnum .44”

“They swept up Sixth Avenue, from Sheridan Square to Central Park, astonishing everything in their way... My God, are those really homosexuals? Marching? Up Sixth Avenue?”

“For almost 20 years, Sylvester has been an icon of San Francisco nightlife: outrageous, bold, proud. Today, he is a symbol of a totally different San Fran­cisco — a gay man struggling to stay alive”

“Given that black folks make art and mar­ket it within white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, none of us can ignore the reality that any black person who wants to create a product with mass crossover appeal must do some serious soul-searching”

“I am sure of this: the resistance blacks and nonwhite Latinos have experienced to their upward mobility is called racism and thus far Afrocentrism and multiculturalism seem an inadequate response to it.”