I loved the 1970s. I was in
my twenties, I was healthy, strong, and not fat. I loved the gay bars of the
1970s and I loved living in Chicago before it became so pretentious. One of the
gay bar owners back then was Rudy Cistaro. I met Rudy in 1975. He kind of
bounced from business to business. When I met him he had a nice little
restaurant at Clark and Oakdale Streets. Then he sold that and opened another
one downtown, across from the leather bar. He named his new restaurant
"Poofy's". Rudy said that was British for faggot's. He had bars
before the restaurants and when he got tired of Poofy's, he went back into the
bar business and opened "Digger's" bar. Kind of a play on words
because Rudy's main occupation was as an undertaker. It turned out that the bar
business really helped the undertaker business. Anyway, yesterday I went out to
the suburbs to visit with Rudy. He's now ninety two years old and still kicking.
Seriously, I couldn't keep up with him. Just like the old days. Back in the
1970s and 1980s, I would hang out with Rudy till all hours of the night. He
owned another bar besides Diggers. It was called Dandy's, and when Rudy got
tired of hanging around his own bars we would all pile into his giant, black
undertakers car, and zoom downtown to the gay bars there. (They're all gone now.) We would power drink our way through the
bars and then at two in the morning, when most of them closed, we would go back
to Diggers, which had a late license. Ah, drinking till five in the morning,
watching the drunks pass out, witnessing fist fights and stabbings. Good times back then.
Awesome!
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