V&I were at Henry Street start­ing the cleanup process the other night, when a man came up to us and asked us if we lived there. We looked at each other like “what does this one want?” but instead he said that he lived in the neigh­bor­hood for 30 years and lived in our apart­ment for a long time. I was intrigued, mostly because Henry Street has a lot of curiosi­ties that have made me won­der. So we chat­ted for a few min­utes and he revealed a boat­load of information.

• He lived next door when Har­vey Milk lived at 18 Henry Street and knew him well. That val­i­dates prob­a­bly the biggest thing about our place. We lived in Har­vey Milk’s apart­ment! OMFG. Can you get gayer cred than that? Total win. V found Harvey’s name and address on a vot­ing record from the 70s when Har­vey was a super­vi­sor and lived in that apart­ment. Granted that’s an offi­cial record, but what­ever. Word of mouth, eye wit­nesses, and all that.
• He con­firmed that the abun­dance of elec­tri­cal out­lets in the kitchen, din­ing room, and liv­ing room was because the first floor had been a porn stu­dio. No idea what movies were made there, what the pro­duc­tion com­pany was called, or any­thing else, but he hinted that it was a gay porn stu­dio. Why not? And you know, one of the biggest down­sides to old Vic­to­rian / Edwar­dian flats is the lack of power out­lets. This place had no lack what­so­ever, and they all worked. It was pretty con­ve­nient, and already I miss them.
• And that funky face mask above the door that leads to the garage? It’s just there to cover the door­bell. Ha. When I first saw it, I freaked out and instantly thought it was satanic or oth­er­wise pos­sessed. I grad­u­ally changed my opin­ion and made it a pro­tec­tive tal­is­man for the apart­ment. It still freaked me out when I woke up in the mid­dle of the night, looked out the bed­room door, and saw it look­ing back at me. And here, it’s only a cre­ative way to cover up the door­bell. Silly.

That’s all I can remem­ber right now. We talked for a good 15 min­utes, and it was nice to hear the sto­ries. I don’t like talk­ing to strangers because most of the time they want to crit­i­cize me for buy­ing a Ger­man car (even though it was man­u­fac­tured in South Car­olina), or to com­plain about how the pigeons on the roof are eaves­drop­ping on them, or some crazy shit. I guess, every once in a while, you meet some­one who has some­thing inter­est­ing to share.

I’m really going to miss Henry Street.