Loop Café

I used to go (to the NiteBeat) in 1967, when I was too young to get in. We'd try to look older, as if we knew how, by slicking our hair back and trying to dress conservatively... Later, we'd go to The Loop, on 5th and Michigan to wait for the 'bar crowd' so we could be with gay people. They had the worst hamburgers in the world, two slabs of bun with the burger carelessly thrown on it. You had to buy something to be there, so that's how I know. They had a notoriously mean, black haired, middle-aged waitress named Marie. You had to stay on her good side if you wanted to be there for bar crowd.

The Loop was on the northwest corner of 5th and Michigan, kitty-corner from the old Royal Hotel. The Loop had two rooms, one with a lunch counter that looped around the room and had stools around it. There was a great juke box in that room. The second room was filled with oblong tables and kitchen chairs. It stayed open 24 hours, 7 days a week. Everyone went there after the bars closed. Because we were underage, we'd stay up all night until bar crowd, when we'd invade The Loop, looking to meet people. To kill time, we'd 'camp' up and down the avenue (Wisconsin), making a lot of noise and being outrageously gay. 'We' being crowds of six or seven teenagers, mostly queen types (Winnie, Delma, Danny Leigh) [There's an ad on your site that features Winnie. I think it's from the Royal Hotel bar. Delma is like a 7-foot tall black queen, who does or did live in SF.], some in make-up, being goofy and loud and acting queer in an 'in your face' manner towards all straight people on the street. I guess we were sort of 'wilding.' We didn't cause any harm or mayhem, and we weren't drinking or doing drugs. It was sort of a weekly, impromptu gay pride parade pre-Stonewall. We'd go out many Friday and Saturday night and do this. We all became hippies and grew up to be the GLBT movement.

The infamous waitress at The Loop was Marie. Marie was short, middle-aged, stocky, had dyed black hair, puffy cheeks, swarthy complexion, and she wore rather a lot of make-up, and a classic waitress uniform with lapels and an apron over it. She almost never smiled. She was very strict and we had to behave or we'd be thrown out. Once barred, we were screwed, as there was nowhere else to meet gay/lesbian people. The food was horrible at The Loop, but for obvious reasons, nobody cared. I remember frozen french fries and dry hamburgers on dry buns, with nothing but ketchup to put on them. Even the cokes were flat and too syrupy. The decor was non-existent. It wasn't even bad decor. Just drab and not done at all, kind of stuck in the 1930s depression era. I used to go to The Loop from 1967 to probably 1969, when I turned 21.

D.H. Cass Magnuski