All cities of a certain size have bars like the Burgundy. It was always located within walking distance of the bus station, where prison punks fresh out of the joint with their cheap suit and $20 went. The guys come out of the bus station and if they don’t know where the nearest queer bar is, they’ll find out. They go there, they hookup, whatever. I mean it was a given. I was in the Burgundy probably about a dozen times the whole time I was here.91
By the close of the 1960s, the Oklahoma City gay male world was much less prosperous, open, or visible than it had been in the 1950s due to a convergence of factors. First, the increased attention that Americans paid to crime and delinquency in general hit home for many Oklahoma City residents when a series of embarrassing articles made the city look unwholesome. Residents demanded that something be done, and the city responded by reorganizing the police department and increasing the frequency and severity of raids on homosexual institutions. Hostile medical opinions made life miserable for many gay men. By classifying homosexuals as mentally unstable people, they encouraged officials to seek treatment for gay men, which in at least one case included castration. When Oklahomans repealed constitutionally-mandated prohibition in 1959, it effectively ended the long, unsuccessful and all-consuming war that authorities had raged on alcohol. Resources and manpower now shifted to other social ills, such as homosexuality. Patrons never knew if the cute young man sitting next to them in a bar was a vice detective, waiting to arrest them and haul them downtown. Their names would likely be made public if they fought the charges. The increased police presence led downtown hustlers and meat mongers to congregate in smaller areas and in a few seedy downtown bars. Curtis Harris unleashed the most direct assaults on gay men to date in Oklahoma City in 1964 following his election as Oklahoma County Attorney. 91
Ralph Prevette, interview by author, 2/19/2005. 200