Dame Rollerena today and in 1973. The LGBT Center celebrates her birthday
and the 31st anniversary of Studio 54 with a dance Saturday, April 26. 2008 photo: Vito Fun.
Meet Rita Fisher, the 84-year-old Brooklyn native who raised nearly half a million bucks during the AIDS Walk.
A new program called LGBT @ NYPL enhances and digitizes the New York Public Library’s vast LGBT collection—and what a surprising collection it is!
Mark your calendars now for HOP’s Pride events the last week of June. Here’s the rundown.
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By Dustin Fitzharris
Friday, April 11, 2008
In a dimly lit café in Chelsea I waited for my guest to arrive. Not just any guest, but a true New York City icon. I kept looking at my watch, as it wasn’t her style to be late.
Then she walked in, found me sitting in the back and lectured me for giving her the wrong directions. Once the embarrassment melted from my face, she said, “I’m going to give you the interview I wouldn’t give Barbara Walters!”
In fact, this is rare. Not since 1989 has Rollerena sat down to give a full-length interview and she’s prepared to tell her story the way it’s never been told.
She is, after all, Dame Rollerena now, having been knighted last month at the 22nd annual Night of a 1,000 Gowns. And as she is about to turn 60 on April 20, one thing is for sure, Rollerena isn’t wallowing in self-pity.
“I feel 40, and I don’t even use Viagra!”
She should feel up. She has had a profound impact on the LGBT community. Roller-skating around the city for decades in a white gown with a circus wand in hand to bless the mortals, Rollerena became known as the gay community’s fairy godmother.
“One of the reasons Rollerena is regarded as this iconic figure is because she was challenging gender roles before it was easy or acceptable,” Richard Burns, director of The LGBT Center in New York said. “She made it safer for people to be out there today.”
Part promoter Joe Fiore, manager of Dance:208 at The Center, agrees.
“Rollerena imparts the magic and wonderment of a gender-free queer joy. She’s one of the few gay icons still around who's been through all phases of modern gay history from the early 1970s to the present—through liberation, disco, AIDS, queer, 9/11, gay marriage and assimilation,” Fiore said.
Birth of an Icon
On Saturday, April 26, The Center is having a birthday dance for Rollerena and to commemorate the 31st anniversary of Studio 54. It’s apropos that the two go together; Rollerena is known as “The Queen of Studio 54.”
“The Center is the perfect place to have the dance because it attracts a lot of ‘old timers,’” Rollerena said. “We want people to come and experience the spirit of what Studio 54 was all about.”
No one knows that spirit better. Rollerena first danced at the club on Halloween 1977.
“You had to be there. There were 3,000 people in costumes, and they were playing the best music at the time. There was a breakable-like stage prop that resembled a huge popper, and when it reached the center of the floor, it sprayed fairy dust everywhere.”
She’s like a giddy schoolgirl when recalling the club’s infamous balcony. “If you wanted to exploit your sex drive, you’d disappear into the balcony and let nature take its course.”
Being the lady (and survivor) she is, Rollerena never used drugs and says the balcony wasn’t where and how she earned her reputation.
But make no mistake, Rollerena isn’t holding onto the ’70s. She knows a club like Studio 54 couldn’t exist today.
“When Giuliani became mayor, he cleaned up everything. Just look at Times Square. Trying to find a hooker in Times Square is like trying to find a bathhouse in Baghdad.”
Today, she lives a quiet life in her Upper East Side penthouse and volunteers with a political action committee to help pro-tenant candidates get elected into office. For serenity, she dines at the Bourbon St. Southern Gourmet Pantry on Hudson Street to nibble on dishes that take her back to her childhood in Kentucky.
“I was the Bluegrass Belle of three counties and a mistress on a stud-farm manhandlin’ beef. When I dropped to my knees, I didn’t do it to make the sign of the cross. I was on a mission, and my contribution to mankind goes deep.”
The boy who would grow up to become Rollerena moved to New York in the late-’60s.
“In 1967 Uncle Sam was hot on my case. I packed up lock, stock and grits and fled the South. I arrived in Manhattan in mid 1968, hung my overalls at a West Side YMCA, and then got drafted in the Army and served in Vietnam.”
After serving two years, missing the Stonewall Riots in June 1969, the Vietnam Vet returned to New York and landed a career on Wall Street. On Tuesday, May 12, 1970, not wanting to bear another horrific subway commute, he laced up his legs and roller-skated to work.
But it wasn’t until Saturday, Sept. 16, 1972, in an antique store on Christopher Street that he slipped into a bathrobe-like gown, a 1950s hat and a straw basket. Roller Arena—as she was first called—was born and put a spell on New Yorkers.
Throughout the day, Rollerena—whose name is still unknown by most—continued to wear shirts and ties to maintain a corporate image for work, she could transform within the blink of the eye. And after all these years, Rollerena—who has never worn makeup or wigs— still shuns the label drag queen
“I never considered what I was doing as dressing up. Nothing I wore matched, yet I had the knack to make it work.”
The Icon Today
Though The Center’s Richard Burns still remembers Rollerena from every Gay Pride March, he says it is her constant, strong and brave presence in the community that separates her from the others.
“When I think of Rollerena, I don’t just think of her just as this party girl. I think of her as an activist who participated in demonstrations and pushed the envelope.”
She’s still pushing it and isn’t shy about offering her opinion on the city today.
“Every nook and cranny is being cleared for a structure that looks like a shower stall with a bank on the floor. What was available for gays has diminished and scattered. You used to be able to bar hop. Now you have to go place to place by a cab.”
Changing the subject, she wants to open up about her emotions.
She says that hearing a radio rebroadcast in the mid ’80s of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s voting-rights speech at a church in Selma, Ala. was the most memorable moment in her life. She admits to crying while watching the Kentucky Derby and hearing the song “My Old Kentucky Home” and she’s irate when Southerners are put down.
“I resent when some people make fun of my southern accent. There are people who speak non-southern who are uneducated and bigoted. Just look at what happened to that beautiful boy in Oxnard, Calif.”
Rollerena says she cried when she recently read about a 15-year-old boy slain in front of his classmates in Oxnard for being openly gay.
“The world is a melting pot,” she says. “There’s plenty of room for all of us.”
Although Rollerena remains an active part of gay nightlife, she hung up her skates in 1994. Today she opts for a more demure look, wearing hats that would the late Jackie O would envy and blouses with overalls underneath.
“I wear the overalls because I never know when I’ll have to milk a cow.”
But all kidding aside, has Rollerena ever found love?
“Yes, because love starts with yourself,” she answers. “You have to go through a tornado of grief before you can land on your feet, and I feel a lot of love in this city.”
We do love you. Happy birthday.
Rollerena’s birthday and Studio 54 dance begins at 9 p.m., Saturday, April 26, The LGBT Center, 208 W. 13 St., $6 before 10 p.m., $10 after. Will Clark’s Porn Bingo will also hold a birthday party for Rollerena 9–11 p.m., Wed., April 23, at the 9th Ave Bistro, 693 9th Ave. at W. 48th Street, free.
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