New York Times, Wonder Bar & Me 1990’s
Click on “back room” for my claim to fame.
New York Times article: June 2019
Who says there isn’t still some bohemia left in the East Village?
Club Cumming, a cabaret bar operated by Alan Cumming, the actor, occupies a space on East Sixth Street that has been a gay dive bar, under different names, for about three decades. In its incarnation as Wonderbar during the 1990s, a flimsy wall separated the main floor from the X-rated back room.
So it was a historically apt site for SAG-Aftra, the labor union for screen actors and others, to host an intimate dinner on Monday night, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising. Even if, as far as dining rooms go, it’s not a place you’d necessarily want to inspect with a black light.
Mr. Cumming hosted the dinner with Patricia Clarkson, Debbie Harry, Deborra-Lee Furness, Julianna Margulies, Zachary Quinto and Michael Stipe. Also dining on chicken roulade, vegetarian salads and rainbow-striped petits fours (the caterers prepared the food off site) were Justin Theroux, Donna Karan, Griffin Dunne, Katie Couric, Cynthia Rowley, Eva Noblezada and Dita Von Teese.
“When I invite people here, it’s a place where all ages, all genders, all sexualities can have fun, and know that everyone is going to be kind and welcome you,” Mr. Cumming said. “And also be sexy and frolic-y and all that.”
After dinner, Jake Shears of the Scissor Sisters performed “Sad Song Backwards”; Mr. Cumming sang “Tomorrow”’ and Reeve Carney, the “Hadestown” actor, warbled “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”
Jay Toole, 71, a Stonewall veteran and activist, spoke movingly about being a homeless “super butch” living in Washington Square Park in 1969 and participating in the first night of the rebellion.
Then she paused to check an incoming text. “It might be a date,” she said. “If you think that older people don’t have sex, you’re so wrong.”