{B/qKC}

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Montalvo: A test shot and some audio.

Can you say like something?

Carrington: Like…I mean

Be like, “Hi, my name is Gary.”

Hi, my name is Gary.

And where are you from?

Kansas City, Missouri. Born and raised.

Born and raised? Never left? Never went anywhere––

Um well, I lived outside of Kansas City for about three years when I was in St. Louis for school.

You know people talk about living, I’ve even talked about living

and moving somewhere else, but I’m I mean this is my city.

I love Kansas City.

I don’t think I would be happy living any place else.

I can go visit but, no.

This is home.

I’m boisterous.

It’s very rare that I don’t speak my mind.

I’m boldly, I’ve gotten

learned. how to be honest and transparent with people.

That was something I had to learn.

I did learn that.

But I’m very, I’m supportive.

Like I said, I’m honest, you know, I’m someone you

can if I say I’m gonna do something, then you can

best believe that it’s gonna get done.

I always stand by my word

Our gay community here in Kansas City, when

I came out, it was surrounded by a whole lot of

con artists.

And what I mean by that, it was a whole lot of, oh, I can help

you, oh, I can teach you, I can show you, but it was all based around sexual things.

So you had to be real leery

and real conscious about who you spent your time with and who you were getting to know

During that time, that’s when my

gay family really showed up for me.

That’s when they turned into my gay family.

Hey, don’t worry about it.

We got you.

And that’s when I started

realizing and seeing the the workings

of people who were outcast by their own family, but that

found each other and came together and built a family.

And we’ve been those people stayed my

friends to this day, so yeah, that’d be my family.

Who are the specific people?

Well one, my gay mom, they called her Mother Gooch.

She passed away.

She passed away in 2013.

Then there was uh my gay dad, which was Carver,

and he I think he passed away in

2018, 2019.

But they they were just together.

I mean, they didn’t live together.

They were just best friends.

And together as a group on a daily basis

they just showed me, well not just me, the group of people they

took in, like their kids, because Gooch was the type of person that

I was the only person there.

When I got to Gooch’s house, there were four other, you know,

males that she had took in, having the same

situation and she just raised us as a family, like

she was like he was really our mother, you know, hey, rules and

regulations, you know have to pay bills, you have to keep the house cleaned, stuff like that.

This, I’m assuming, is the House of Carrington?

or is it just a—

No.

At the time that this was forming, right as I was going off to school is

when the, I won’t say the Ball[room] scene, but when the family thing

was real popular and going around.

But when I got to the St.

Louis, we had never actually formed a family here.

So when I got to St. Louis and started hanging around those people

and that group of my St. Louis family, that’s when,

you know, one of my friends Sable, he was a female impersonator.

He was Sable Carrington, just said, “you’re going to be my son.”

And he said, as of right now your last name is Carrington.

And when I came back to Kansas City,

by then it already got around, “oh, Gary, Carrington, Gary Carrington, Gary Carrington.”

And that’s when I started the Carrington house here in Kansas City, that

I was the very first one here in Kansas City, and that’s when I started everybody else.

Okay, yeah,

You’re the Godfather.

I love that.

What was what was the scene like at that time, like were

you having fun, like going to the clubs and stuff, uh, were you having a good time?

I guess I was having a good time because, like I

said, they were teaching me a lot. and then in the gay family group, and

that they’re one of the things that were always teach us, it’s not

where you go, it’s the people you’re with.

So, of course, all the clubs back in those days were designed.

They were not designed for us.

You know, they didn’t play any of our music.

You know, of course they let us in, take our money, but it wasn’t designed for us.

So, as long as we stayed together with the people we

were with, of course, we had a good time because of the people I was with, not where was

not where I was at, it was the people I was with.

But back in the day, the clubs were very much adamant, you can tell, they were not designed for us.

That’s still how it is today. [laughs]

To this day! In 2025. To this day.

Because when Soakie’s–

Soakie’s became such a hot item. Soakie’s became that

little small space became such a major

foot in the gay community, but it was a foot in a Black gay community

Back then pre-partying was, you know, the big thing.

So let’s go here, have a couple of drinks, and then by the

time we get we having a couple of drinks here, everything will be ready to go. where we where we used to party at.

So we would go down to Soakie’s and stay down there for about maybe a couple

of hours or so, and then it started catching on.

The more and more people started coming.

And then Tish, Jerry started talking to

“Soakie” [Salvatore A. Rinaldo] about doing things down there.

And that’s when he found out he was like––

They said in order for them to get a 3 o’clock license,

They had their food revenue had to go up. because

I don’t know what it was, but they said, you know, they had them sell so much food

in order to get approved for three o’clock license.

So that was our goal.

So we did that.

We would tell people go down there for lunch. At night, we would go down there and buy sandwiches.

and we finally got the license.

And then that’s when that took off and we started like remodeling and taking, making, changes.

because the man was making money.

He didn’t have no problem.

He was an Italian, he was making money.

Sounds like he was pretty accepting to you all.

That he was.

Whatever we went and asked for him, whatever we went to him and said we

wanted to do or thought about doing, if it wasn’t a problem, he didn’t have any issue.

Like I said, we went in. He was this old Italian man.

These are Black gay people coming into your establishment.

I mean, you serve lunch, you know, to people who are––

you know, working in The Mob or whatever, you because that place was packed during lunch.

In Downtown, that was a place.

Businessmen down in your their their suits and making deals.

They’re sitting here eating hoagie sandwiches and drinking beer.

And now at night we want you to flip the script

and turn it into…he was very open

Hell, he remodeled the four times for us. He was very accepting.

Why do you think he was so willing

to change the the shop at night?

I believe it was Tisha [Taylor] and Jerry [Colston]

I believe whatever conversation they had––

And Eric [Robinson]?

Yeah, yeah. I believe whatever conversation they had, they convinced him to trust them.

And they within him trusting them, you

know, they brought us on. “Hey Gary, I need you, you know, to be a, you

know, to work the door for me” as those things started forming.

My little brother Danny, before he passed, “hey, Danny, I need you to be a bartender.”

And I think

they showed him what they could do and he trusted

them and then he realized, hey, I can trust these people.

Then it got to the point that [Soakie] wouldn’t even come in.

You know, he would, Soakie was usually there seven days a week.

It got to the point that he would show up on Fridays.

Fridays to write the checks and pay the bills for the liquor, and

pay everybody payroll and he leave everything to Jerry and Tisha.

What was it like, like, when Soakie’s

shut down, how did that impact you and the community and stuff?

When I got the call,

When Tisha called and said “hey, you need to come down and clear

out all yourself out of the dressing room because, you know, they’re not renewing our license, they’re shutting this down.”

This is right before they started out remodeling the Power & Light [District]

H&R Block, but we knew it was coming.

They were getting ready put us out of there because they were redoing Downtown.

it was a a blow, because we had been there, we put, and I

do mean blood sweat and tears, we had painted walls, we had made floors.

We had took out furniture.

We had you know, hung doors.

Our dressing room was an old storage room and we had to go in and hang

light and clean out and gut and redo just

so we have a place for the dressing room. so it was it was kind of bittersweet.

When we went down and we cleaned out the dressing room and took mementos.

I still have a bar stool from Soakie’s in my house right now.

[chuckles] I stole one of the bar stools.

So and we took mementos, and so like I thought it was bittersweet and

then it took us it took the community a minute to realize, okay, Soakie’s not here anymore.

It’s done.

What are we gonna do?

If we can get one person to say, hey, I want to open a business here

in Kansas City and I want to be a Black gay bar, that bar is going to make money because it’s a need.

It

it’s a need.

Because we’ can go into any bar in the city any and

they’re all, you know, catering to the our other counterparts, we

can have a drink with whatever, but it’s not gonna be for us.

It’s not designed for us.

You know, it’s not made for us.

You’ll take us in, but

I believe that’s what we need.

I just need one person to say, hey, I’m gonna open this bar.

And why is that so important?

Like, why was Soakie’s so important?

Like, why are bars for us so important, or important to you?

Well, important to me because it was basically our seat at the table.

It was our voice.

You know, at that time back in that era, everybody, you know,

first of all, gay wasn’t as out it is now,

wasn’t looked up on as it is now, so accepted.

Back then, so it was our place.

It was our place we could go and be us.

We didn’t have to put on any airs we didn’t have to, you know, conduct

us, we didn’t have to we could go and just be us, be open and free.

See, at the other bars, we have to, you know,

you know, the way we talk and joke and play with each other,

you know, they think we’re fighting, or they think there’s a problem or

issue, or you know, I can tell that

the drink I just ordered is not the same drink that you––

You understand what I’m saying? The service [was different]. And I sense that. And I just got tired of faking it.

And I think that’s what Soakie’s was. Soakie’s was our place.

Because a lot of people came to Soakie’s, and they never even went inside the bar.

They would come down park in the parking lot, pop their trunk, put

out their lawn chairs and their cooler and sit right there in the park because they were around their people.

They felt home that they they felt at home, so that’s where it was.

and that’s the need here in this community that

we, as a Black gay community, we need a place where we can say, hey, this is ours.

This is us.

A place where we can walk into a bar and see, you know, pictures of

entertainers that went to win national titles, that does such-and-such, and we don’t we don’t have that here.

We don’t have any place that honors or

respects or mentions, you know, anybody in our Black gay community

because we have no voice.

We have no place.