Despite the post-Reagan revisionist history, the 60’s were, in fact,  a time of enormous changed. In San Francisco, especially, the Hippies and/or Freaks or what-have-you lived collectively, had a thriving barter economy and were, in their own drug-addled naive way, trying to be in the world in a different, revolutionary and transformative way. Almost no group from that era exemplifies this passionate, playful, imaginative revolutionary spirit more than The Cockettes. If you haven’t seen David Weissman and Bill Weber’s amazing documentary, you should. And if you’d like to see the surviving Cockettes live and in the flesh, you need go no further than the LGBT Center on Thursday, June 5.

A Cockette Symposium

Thursday, June 5.  7:30 – 9 p.m.

LGBT Center, 208 West 13th Street, Kaplan Assembly, First Floor

Admission:  FREE, no reservations required.

Join the largest New York gathering of Cockettes since their  theatrical catastrophe at the Anderson Theater in 1971.  In 1968 this  psychedelic-fueled gender bending troupe of  men, women, children,

gay, straight and in-between became legendary for their performances at San Francisco’s Palace Theater.  At the cultural forefront of gay liberation, these bearded hippie drag queens showed generations to come the creative potential within us all.  Moderated by Steven Watson, chronicler of the American avant-garde and author of Factory Made, The Beat Generation and The Harlem Renaissance, and hosted by John Waters’ superstar Mink Stole and HRH Lee Mentley of the Hula Palace, the evening promises to be historic.  Cockettes scheduled to appear include Scrumbly, Sweet Pam, Rumi, Fayette, Harlow, Jet, Tahara, Sebastian, Toots Taraval, Jim Campbell and Dolores DeLuce.