{"id":876,"date":"2015-09-04T23:28:33","date_gmt":"2015-09-04T23:28:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/?p=876"},"modified":"2015-09-04T23:28:33","modified_gmt":"2015-09-04T23:28:33","slug":"always-overbooked-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/?p=876","title":{"rendered":"Always Overbooked…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Always Overbooked<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Terri Schlichenmeyer<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Your favorite hangout isn\u2019t all that fancy.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s comfortable, though: you\u2019ve got places to sit, flat surfaces for your stuff, and your friends are always around. Best of all, nobody says you can\u2019t be there; everybody\u2019s welcome all the time. It wasn\u2019t always that way, though, as you\u2019ll see in \u201cStonewall: Breaking Out in the Fight for Gay Rights\u201d by Ann Bausum<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

There was a full moon that night, and it was hot.<\/p>\n

Not hot like you\u2019d describe a person but \u201cbeastly hot,\u201d weather-wise – and it was hotter inside New York\u2019s Stonewall Inn.<\/p>\n

For years, it\u2019d been illegal in many cities to dance with someone of the same sex. With a few rare exceptions, being gay could get you fired from work, rejected by family, and generally ostracized; if you were a man wearing women\u2019s clothing, you could be arrested immediately. But the Stonewall allowed dancing, drinking, cross-dressing, and the police looked the other way because, says Bausum, the Mafia had ties to the Stonewall and bribes kept things running.<\/p>\n

By June 1969, this covert freedom started causing problems: \u201ccloseted homosexuals\u201d involved in an international bond scandal were spotted at the Stonewall by \u201corganized crime operatives\u201d with blackmail on their minds. The New York police department was ordered to close down the Stonewall. In the hot early morning hours of June 28, they raided the packed bar. It didn\u2019t go well.<\/p>\n

As partiers and staff were arrested, a crowd began to form to taunt police \u2013 and it grew as people ran to pay phones to call friends. Some of those arrested were freed; others were roughly handled. Bausum says that one of the latter, a lesbian, asked the crowd if they were going to do anything about it \u2013 and they did.<\/p>\n

At first, pocket change rained down on the police, then pebbles, stones, bottles, and burning containers. Some of the officers took refuge inside the bar, awaiting back up that didn\u2019t arrive for nearly an hour as two thousand people raged on the streets. Riot crews eventually showed up, and were mocked.<\/p>\n

The unrest, says Bausum, lasted several nights – but what lasted longer was that lesbians and gay men suddenly knew that they weren\u2019t alone.<\/p>\n

Although it can become somewhat florid for the sake of drama, \u201cStonewall\u201d is a nicely surprising book filled with history that few younger people may know.<\/p>\n

The surprise comes in what author Ann Bausum shares, which seems tame by today\u2019s news, perhaps even quaint: nobody was seriously hurt, and the single death was accidental and barely related. That almost made me afraid readers might forget that the riot marked the coalescence of activism for gay rights, but Bausum anecdotally reminds us repeatedly of Stonewall\u2019s importance. She then goes on to look at activism at other times in LGBT history.<\/p>\n

This book is meant for teen readers ages 12 and up, but it might be a challenge for those on the younger end and it certainly can be enjoyed by adults unfamiliar with this event. If that\u2019s you, then \u201cStonewall\u201d is rock-solid.<\/p>\n

\u201cStonewall: Breaking Out in the Fight for Gay Rights\u201d by Ann Bausum<\/p>\n

c.2015, Viking\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 $16.99 \/ $19.99 Canada\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 120 pages<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Always Overbooked By Terri Schlichenmeyer   Your favorite hangout isn\u2019t all that fancy. It\u2019s comfortable, though: you\u2019ve got places to sit, flat surfaces for your stuff, and your friends are always around. Best of all, nobody says you can\u2019t be there; everybody\u2019s welcome all the time. It wasn\u2019t always that way, though, as you\u2019ll see in \u201cStonewall: Breaking Out in the Fight for Gay Rights\u201d by Ann Bausum. There was a full moon that night, and it was hot. Not hot like you\u2019d describe a person but \u201cbeastly hot,\u201d weather-wise – and it was hotter inside New York\u2019s Stonewall Inn. For years, it\u2019d been illegal in many cities to dance with someone of the same sex. With a few rare exceptions, being gay could get you fired from work, rejected by family, and generally ostracized; if you were a man wearing women\u2019s clothing, you could be arrested immediately. But the Stonewall allowed dancing, drinking, cross-dressing, and the police looked the other way because, says Bausum, the Mafia had ties to the Stonewall and bribes kept things running. By June 1969, this covert freedom started causing problems: \u201ccloseted homosexuals\u201d involved in an international bond scandal were spotted at the Stonewall by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":878,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[355],"tags":[368,730,734,732,731,729,733,367],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=876"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":879,"href":"https:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876\/revisions\/879"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thestandardps.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}