In Praise of Boots & Saddle
by William V. Madison

The venerable Greenwich Village bar Boots and Saddle is, like the performers captured here by Sandy Kaufman’s camera, much more than it appears on the surface. In its initial location on Christopher Street, Boots has been a pocket-sized dive that never quite grasped that it was no longer a cowboy bar. Nowadays Boots is less like the O.K. Corral and more like Neverland, populated by fairies and pirates, mermaids and Lost Boys and even a few crocodiles at play. But we’re still O.K.

Above all, Boots is a community, stronger and more diverse than any other I’ve found. Locals and tourists, staff and artists alike, we are every age, every ethnicity, every class, and every sexuality. And once we’re at Boots, we’re not alone. From the stage, Victoria Chase announces, “Welcome home,” and she means it.

These are a few of our most glamorous faces. They entertain and uplift us — with music and mockery, with dance and song. They lead us — sometimes in a toast, sometimes in a charitable event or a protest march. And they challenge us — to defy expectations, to look beyond the obvious, to take part in the community around us. Each one of these performers is, as Frostie Flakes says, “full of light, love, and color.”

In their embrace, we have united. And in their portraits, we see can glimpses of ourselves. When we came to Boots, we were together and alive. We could not be overlooked, and we could not be shoved aside or shouted down. We were the stars of our own movies, the angels of our own fancy. We were ourselves, and we were here.

Billevesées | William V. Madison Blog

Portraits of the Boots and Saddle Community