Quiet Conversations The Upstairs Lounge Arson Attack
My name is Arthur Severio, and welcome to Quiet Conversations: The Upstairs Lounge Fire.
I left home with a suitcase filled with dreams, a pack of brand-new Fruit of the Loom underwear, two pairs of 501s, and some shirts that weren’t exactly made for a fat kid like me. My mama had stuffed a twenty-dollar bill in my pocket just in case I wanted a snack and a Diet Coke from the vending machine for my ride into the Crescent City.
My brother met me at the downtown Greyhound bus terminal to take a United Cab back to his French Quarter apartment. It was 1983, and I was only 17. I was so happy because I had finally reached the place that I had dreamed about to get me through those endless days of doing little more than surviving. Soon I met Marcy Marcelle who was scheduled to perform that night at the Upstairs Lounge.
In these Quiet Conversations, I talk to people whose lives were touched either in their personal experience or using their artistic talents to describe that night.
Quiet Conversations The Upstairs Lounge Arson Attack
The Stonewall Riots and using shock therapy to cure homosexuality
In this episode of Quiet Conversations…The Upstairs Lounge Arson Attack, a podcast cenered around a fire in New Orleans that killed 32 members of the LGBTI community and injured 14, I speak with Tree Sequoia about that night that the Stonewall riots started. Was Marsha P. Johnson the heroine everyone said she was? Who initiated the crowd in a riot?
I also go into what was happening in the world of treatments for the cure of homosexuality in New Orleans. Tulane Dr. Robert G. Heath thought so. His magic cure to turn one man from being gay into a “normal” heterosexual man was modes that were hooked into the brain creating an electrical shock effect and even hired New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison to hire a prostitute as part of the experiment.
