The chorus came home to a surprise.
A street full of people
On Sunday, June 21, 1981, the Chronicle and Examiner reported, thousands gathered on Castro Street to meet the singers’ chartered buses from the airport. The Castro Theatre marquee read “Welcome Home Gay Men’s Chorus.” The Gay Freedom Day Marching Band played “California, Here I Come” as a motorcycle escort led the buses in. The Lesbian and Gay Men’s Community Chorus and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence joined the welcome, and the crowd sang “San Francisco.” The Bay Area Reporter counted nearly 3,000 people.
The Board of Supervisors presented certificates of honor to the chorus and to the Bay Area Women’s Brass Quartet. The singers had come straight from Seattle, where a bomb threat against the Opera House was found to be false and the chorus voted to perform anyway. Conductor Dick Kramer called the tour a great step forward in gay unity.
“I’m overwhelmed, really overwhelmed.”
— tour co-director Steve Prokasky, as quoted by the Chronicle
The Key to the City
At the Gay Musical Celebration at Davies Symphony Hall that Friday, Mayor Dianne Feinstein gave the chorus the Key to the City. The BAR reported that it was the first time she had given the key to a group from within the city. Golden Gate Performing Arts president Phil Pearce joked that the archbishop wouldn’t give them the keys to St. Ignatius, but the mayor had given them the key to the city.
The bill
The tour cost far more than planned. The Examiner put it at $960,000 with $150,000 still owed. In December 1981, a Christmas dinner at the St. Francis Hotel was held to help defray the deficit, and members spent years paying off the debt.
From the archives: this post retells reporting by the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner and the Bay Area Reporter. The original articles survive only in newspaper archives, so we have told the story here in our own words. Details attributed to those outlets are their reporting; see the sources below.
Sources
- San Francisco Chronicle, “Gay Chorus Returns On a Happy Note” by Erica Goode, June 22, 1981. sfchronicle.com
- San Francisco Examiner, “Gay chorus returns from triumphant tour” by Mireya Navarro, June 22, 1981. sfexaminer.com
- Bay Area Reporter, “Welcome the Chorus Home”, June 18, 1981. ebar.com
- Bay Area Reporter, “We Bask In Their Glory” by Allen White, July 2, 1981. ebar.com
- San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle, “Christmas celebration honoring the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus (advertisement)”, December 6, 1981. sfchronicle.com
