Who made this?

Tom Beauchamp-Arnold (member of the club)

Where was it made or acquired?


Boston Ramrod 1254 Boylston Street, Boston MA

Story

This picture is of the 1st Anniversary celebration held at the Boston Ramrod. This picture is of some of the members of the club. From left to right: David Lusignan, Jim Mills, Joe Loydd, Scott Erickson, Paul Beauchamp – Arnold, Rob Claffie. Other club that were in attendance that night: Fit Like a Glove, Kindred of Maine, The Imperial Court of Massachusetts, Boston Bears, and MOB. This is part of a larger collection of picture from the club in digital format. The Bay State was founded on March 1st 2003 in Quincy. The first meeting had 6 members in attendance. The club is currently 17 years old and has 42 full members and 10 associate members.

 

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Where was it made or acquired?

The Crown & Anchor Provincetown, Massachusetts

Story

In March of 2019 the Bay State Marauders celebrated their 16th Anniversary in Provincetown, Massachusetts. This was a 3 day event with 80 people in attendance. We had 18 clubs in attendance. Those would include: Bucks MC, C.O.M.M.A.N.D MC, Castaway MC, Centaur MC, DC Bear Club, Empire City MC, Excelsior MC, Fits Like A Glove (FLAG), Harbor Masters of Maine, Harness Albany, Iron Guard BC, Knight Hawks of Virginia, Long Island Ravens, Pennsmen, Philadelphians M.C., The ShipMates Club of Baltimore, Three Rivers Leather Club, Wicked PAH. This picture is of the full membership of the Marauders, plus the associates. This is part of a larger volume of pictures of the club in digital format.

 

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I'll admit, nightlife in the 80s for a T girl was F-A-N-T-A-S-T-I-C. Gone was the strict binary sexuality of the disco era yet leftover was their repurposed venues. In Boston these became inhabited by Nietzche reading surrealists, new wavers, punks, glam rockers, nihilists, sissy boys, androgenists, gender benders, and above all transs3xuals. We Ts were the furthest extent forward of challenging the status quo and we punched-out angrily at the establishment! Manhattan was always haute with the Pyramid Club and the utterly, utterly decadent Limelight. But in my teens and 20s, the hard avant-gardne nighttime cutting edge of Boston, with its 300k students, had a luscious & magnificent texture. The concoction was a Salvador Dali aesthetic with evolved mods fasion and punk overtones. Clubs like Axis, Man-Ray (Cambridge), Bat Cave, and the Haymarket allowed us early Ts to move out of drag bars and into the mainstream. Precursors to rave warehouse parties provided all night fantasy wonderlands. And we were courted by the club owners!!! I NEVER, EVER paid a cover and we'd immediately be ushered to the front of the line. Bouncers would, unsolicited, hand us admission free lifetime cards. My fondest, youthful T memories are of this nightlife time with my friends!! ♥♥

BEING TRANS IN THE 1980S - NIGHTLIFE, PART 2
The best, best nightclub I went to as preop T was the Haymarket in Boston's Combat Zone. It was the old ballroom of the derelict Hotel Avery (pictured), back when Boston's fabled entertainment district was something other than racy sleaze. The Haymarket was in no way a drag/trannie bar, although a ~quarter of the clientele were T. It was a delightful concoction of equal parts gay, bi, T, chasers, hetero, lesbian, black, white, Asian, and Latino. It was mirrored all around from its previous incarnation as a disco. The music was funk and hip hop and the people were beautiful (a doorman culled the crowd). There was a kindred sense of LGBT community, especially when it closed at 2am and throngs of patrons would dump into the parking lot and just hangout w/each other until the police moved us on.

For a 22yo T girl the Haymarket was a perfect place to practice passing away from the dramatic gesticulating of drag queens and awkward frumpiness of xdressers. Nowadays lots of young Ts live 24/7 as female w/o completely passing. Back then a T needed to be unclockable to hold a job or even walk around. LGBT nightclubs/bars were the place to try different looks and acquire feminine experience. In the 80s one could start at drag bars, then progress to LGBT nightclubs, and then hetero new wave/punk clubs. All of which were accepting, assuming one looked the part.

The Haymarket was my bridge between LGBT and heterosexual clubs. The Ts were gorgeous and mostly passable. I started passing at the Haymarket, to the point where men were asking me what I was doing there. It was safe, for the Combat Zone, and had a free late night parking lot close by. The cover was pricey, which kept away most T hookers, but I got in mostly for free. All my friends partied there and it was sooo much fun! Years passed and the dodgy neighborhood morphed way upscale. The Haymarket is now a Ritz Carlton hotel but has a bar named the Avery Bar where the beloved Haymarket once stood.]]>

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We met when I was 21yo in the type of seedy San Francisco trannie bar which would have mortally shocked our parents. We were both from New England, same ~age, played high school tennis, and went to prestigious private schools yet found ourselves in a recklessly dangerous, hooker infested trannie bar in SF's infamous Tenderloin. We became instant friends, oblivious to, or liking, the desperate insanity raging around us. We both lived in dodgy SF residence hotels, sleazy places where meth needles were tucked into every crevice, and lived day-to-day. She hooked and I worked at an electronics store for min wage. We hung out at each other's apartments talking fashion & makeup, when she didn't have a "client", and played competitive tennis matches against each other at a local park, which she always won.

A couple of years after I moved back to Boston, age 23ish, Page called me and wanted to move to Boston too. I set her up with a residence and showed her the city. First stop was the local T bar Jacques on Piedmont Street. I remember we were at a drag show and the spotlight randomly landed on Page. Every T and drag queen in the packed nightclub jaws dropped - they had never seen such a stunningly beautiful, exotic trans woman! For the next few years Page and I carved a trail of fashion mayhem throughout Boston with our friends Robert, Xavier, Lenny, Greg, and an African dictator's drag queen son. Sparing NO ONE from a visual onslaught of hard-edge New Wave fashion!

Eventually, after much prodding by Boston's gay men that she was TOO fabulous for Boston and MUST move to Manhattan, she migrated to NYC. I was extremely wary. I could already see a budding drug habit and I worried Page would get hooked on H in Gotham. She did, albeit after being queen of the Manhattan nightlife, a cage dancer at the Limelight, and a feature model in an Absolute Vodka campaign. In a few years, after I fully transitioned, I also moved to NYC and looked Page up. But the friendship was NOT the same.

In my very early 20s I was not passable but Page was mostly passable and utterly fabulous. In a way, I was her admiring little sister (Jan Brady to Marsha Brady as she used to kid me). Then when I moved to NYC I was say 99.9% unclockable but she was still only say 95% unclockable. Silly, but we were a bit competitive w/each other and she could not be deep stealth like myself. Seeing how I leapfrogged her caused tension. When Page heard I got my SRS she freaked and soon after booked her surgery.

Yet the surgery was tragically wrong for Page. She later told me the "only" reason she got her surgery was because I got mine! Which was obviously unfair to suggest my SRS had such a causal relationship on her SRS. But I understood Page was in the throes of H addiction and her promising life had evaporated. Reality was NEITHER of us were to blame. It was the intolerance & ignorance of the times which prevented Page from getting the care she DESERVED for both her gender dysphoria and her consequential substance abuse! Page overdosed at age 41 in 2002, death by misadventure. Even famous Village Voice columnist Michael Musto wrote about Page as a "true lady" after her passing.

I write this in memory of Page, RIP dear friend.]]>
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Digital content made available by The History Project on DOCUMENTED is intended for personal research and educational purposes. Commercial use or distribution of this content is not permitted without prior permission of the copyright holder. The History Project holds copyright to select content made available in DOCUMENTED. Copyright to other content may be held by authors, artists, or their heirs, or may be in the public domain. Requests to reproduce, distribute, or publish content in The History Project should be sent to info@historyproject.org.]]>

Digital content made available by The History Project on DOCUMENTED is intended for personal research and educational purposes. Commercial use or distribution of this content is not permitted without prior permission of the copyright holder. The History Project holds copyright to select content made available in DOCUMENTED. Copyright to other content may be held by authors, artists, or their heirs, or may be in the public domain. Requests to reproduce, distribute, or publish content in The History Project should be sent to info@historyproject.org.]]>

Digital content made available by The History Project on DOCUMENTED is intended for personal research and educational purposes. Commercial use or distribution of this content is not permitted without prior permission of the copyright holder. The History Project holds copyright to select content made available in DOCUMENTED. Copyright to other content may be held by authors, artists, or their heirs, or may be in the public domain. Requests to reproduce, distribute, or publish content in The History Project should be sent to info@historyproject.org.]]>

Digital content made available by The History Project on DOCUMENTED is intended for personal research and educational purposes. Commercial use or distribution of this content is not permitted without prior permission of the copyright holder. The History Project holds copyright to select content made available in DOCUMENTED. Copyright to other content may be held by authors, artists, or their heirs, or may be in the public domain. Requests to reproduce, distribute, or publish content in The History Project should be sent to info@historyproject.org.]]>

Digital content made available by The History Project on DOCUMENTED is intended for personal research and educational purposes. Commercial use or distribution of this content is not permitted without prior permission of the copyright holder. The History Project holds copyright to select content made available in DOCUMENTED. Copyright to other content may be held by authors, artists, or their heirs, or may be in the public domain. Requests to reproduce, distribute, or publish content in The History Project should be sent to info@historyproject.org.]]>
]]> Contact info@historyproject.org for more information.]]> ]]> ]]> Contact info@historyproject.org for more information.]]> ]]> ]]> Photo by Laura Wulf.
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