Sebring...

Jay Sebring’s salon was recreated for Quentin Tarantino’s movie "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" at the ORIGINAL LOCATION on Fairfax Ave.!!! The sign was covered when I was there but check out @alisonmartino’s photo of the uncovered ‘Sebring...’ sign. Sebring is best remembered for being Sharon Tate's best friend/ex-boyfriend who was murdered along with Tate and their friends by the Manson Family, but Sebring was a celebrity hairstylist before there were celebrity hairstylists!

The Bates Letters

The Bates Letters: On the 6th month anniversary of his daughter’s death, Joseph Bates received a letter in the mail. His daughter, Cheri Jo Bates of Riverside, CA, had been murdered the day before Halloween in 1966. An autopsy on Bates' body revealed that she put up a good fight as she struggled with her killer. A janitor at Riverside City College Library found her body the following morning. Bates had been stabbed numerous times in the lungs, arms, throat, and face. Two more letters had also been mailed out - one to the Riverside P.D. and the other to the Riverside Press. The crime remains unsolved, but San Francisco Chronicle reporter Paul Avery uncovered clues linking Cheri Jo Bates murder to the Zodiac serial killer - including these three letters and a poem carved into a desktop at Riverside City College. 

Gays of Our Lives

In the news today... Natalie Wood’s sister, Lana, reveals on the podcast, “Fatal Voyage: The Mysterious Death of Natalie Wood,” that her sister ended her marriage to Robert Wagner after catching him cheating on her with a man!!! “My marriage collapsed that weekend. It's too painful for me to recall in print the incidents that led to the final breakup," Natalie Wood wrote in her never-before-seen memoir obtained by the makers of the podcast. Wood would go on to remarry Wagner 10 years later.

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Sal Mineo: The First Gay Teenager

Sal Mineo's character in the 1955 teensploitation flick, "Rebel Without a Cause," is considered by many to be the first gay teenager in a motion picture. In a 1972 interview, Sal Mineo is one of the first actors to discuss his sexuality publicly, coming out as bisexual. In 1976, with Sal's career starting to turn around - thanks in part to the role of a bisexual burglar in the play "P.S. Your Cat is Dead" - he is murdered returning home from play rehearsals. Instead of finding Sal's killer, the police focus instead on Mineo's sex life. For all these reasons and more, I am working on "Sal Mineo: The First Gay Teenager" zine. It will focus on the largely forgotten contributions Sal Mineo made to the LGBTQ cause and I will cover the homophobia surrounding his death. I will be releasing this issue at the San Fernando Valley zine fest on September 29. 

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