Vice versa gay

The owners of Hell’s Kitchen Italian restaurant ViceVersa are ready for a alter after 25 years in business. The restaurant closed its doors in mid-February — now Franco Lazzari and Stefano Derzi, partners and co-owners, are reopening tonight (Friday) as VV Bar, an ancient Rome-themed queer bar.

The couple got the concept in late 2023 and have been hard at operate making preparations ever since. The cosmos, on W51st Lane between 8/9th Road, has been redesigned, down to the leather on the seatbacks. A life-size statue of a naked Julius Caesar with a disco ball now greets patrons.

The block will feature a pared-down version of the restaurant’s menu, including arancini rice balls and shadowy truffle and parmesan cheese fries. Stefano, who is also the chef, will transform his duck ragu into taco form, and his house-made focaccia bread will become pizza. The plan is to open from Tuesday through Sunday, roughly 4pm to 2am, with a daily happy hour from 4 to 8pm.

“What we are not going to give up is the quality of the food,” Stefano said. “We always did differentiate ourselves when we opened 25 years ago, by proposing dishes that were not the usual stereotype of Ita

Vice Versa: America’s Gayest Magazine

Hollywood has a thing for inception stories at the moment, and one origin story in particular begins in Los Angeles, in an unassuming building on Gower Lane, just off Melrose Avenue. This is not the inception story of a Marvel Comics personality, or even of a Hollywood bigwig getting their retain biopic. Now part of the broader Paramount Pictures studio lot, in 1947 this nondescript building in magnolia housed the Publicity Department at RKO Studios. Today it’s recognizable as the Lasky Building, after Jesse Lasky, pioneer of the motion picture and key founder of what would become Paramount Pictures. This is not Lasky’s story either. Instead, this is the story of a secretary who went by the name Lisa Ben. Or, at least this is what she went by in certain, knowing, circles – but more on that later. Having been told by her boss that it was vital she look busy at all times, Lisa Ben got hectic, alright; busy using the office’s Elderly Royal manual typewriter, white bond, and carbon paper to make what would become the first lesbian publication in the United States, Vice Versa.

Behind the pen name Lisa Ben, writing away at her

In June of 1947, while working as a secretarial assistant at RKO Studios in Los Angeles, a 25-year old wrote and published Vice Versa, the first lesbian magazine in North America. Under the pseudonym "Lisa Ben" (which was an anagram for lesbian), nine issues were released in which she was only able to produce ten copies of each edition because of limited resources.[2] [3] Ben's access to office supplies availed her use of the company typewriter to write her publications, and reproduce them on carbon paper.[4] Though short-lived, Vice Versa established itself as a forerunner for same-sex attracted American publications, providing a more wide-ranging audience with upbeat short stories, editorials, book reviews, and a letter column to entertain and inspire readers to perpetuate the existence of gay editorials and preserve the pleasure of their lifestyle.

"Lisa Ben" was born and raised in northern California, where her overbearing parents were ranchers and insistent that she go to business school to hone secretarial skills and get ready for matrimony. Unbeknownst to them, she fell in love at the age of fourteen – with a woman –

The Class Act (1988-2000)

For more than 30 years, the space at 335 High St. has been a gay bar, and has served West Virginia’s LGBTQ+ collective and provided them with a space to meet each other, perform, and express themselves.

The establishment is currently known as Vice Versa, but even in the beginning of its history as an LGBTQ+ space when it was first called The Class Act, patrons had to navigate a world that was frozen and violent to them before entering the safe haven of the bar.

“[The entrance] was in an alleyway, and there was no lighting in the alleyway. You snuck into the same-sex attracted bar and you snuck out of the gay bar,” Vice Versa co-owner Montaz Morgan recalled from his time at The Class Act. “You didn’t wear ‘gay clothes.’ You brought queer clothes, and you changed into them, and then you’d lay your clothes on when you left.”

The same rule applied to the entertainers, because the police were not on their side, even if they were attacked on their way home.

“The kingly queens didn’t come here already ready, they all came here to get ready, and didn’t leave until they changed out of their clothes [and makeup],” said Vice Versa co-owner James Yost.