Sharon Davenport and Joan Antonuccio at The Brick Hut Cafe (3). Photo: Ace Morgan

Part 1: The Story... (Part 2: The Food)
For nearly 22 years, from 1975 to 1997, The Brick Hut Café was a popular destination for the LGBT community in the East Bay and beyond. It was for most of its life a lesbian-feminist owned and operated community café. I was one of the founding members.

BRICK HUT 1
In February of 1975, the Brick Hut Café Collective was a worker-owned, feminist collective located at 3017 Adeline Street in Berkeley, CA across the street from the Berkeley Flea Market. The original members of the collective were Cheryl Jones, Claudia Hartley, Helen McKinley, Karen Ripley, Marshall Berzon (left in 1977 to open the Homemade Café), Randi Hepner, Sharon Davenport, and Wendy Welsh. By 1976, the collective included Joan Antonuccio, Cynthia La Mana, and Teresa Chandler.

The first Brick Hut was small: three booths and nine counter seats. We welcomed everyone who was an ally in our common cause of social justice and inclusion. The weekend crowds spilled out into the street even after we built a backyard patio where we served a limited menu of blueberry muffins, coffee, and tea.

We were a haven for lesbians and gay men, an information center for LGBT activists, an anchor for a diverse community that included working girls, bad-boys, suburban queens, transmen and transwomen. We were the Dyke Diner: the Lesbian Luncheonette: the Chick Hut: the Brick Hug. When AIDS hit a group of customers affectionately named the Shattuck Street Fairies (SSF) we became a refuge and an information outlet for AIDS awareness. Sometimes we were the last stop: as when Ron, one of the SSF housemates, was lovingly carried in on the arms of his friends for his last Brick Hut meal.

The Brick Hut Cafe contingent at the 1984 San Francisco Pride parade. Enjoy Life...Eat Out More Often!

We always closed on what was then called Gay Day and we closed to attend political demonstrations and rallies. We left a sign on the door, JOIN US AT the parade, rally, or demonstration. We supported through contributions of food and energy to anti-nuclear demonstrations, anti-war rallies, and the feminist causes of Inez Garcia, Norma Jean Croy, Joan Little, and Yvonne Wanrow. We closed and attended the vigil for the assassinations of Harvey Milk and George Moscone. We closed to protest the Dan White verdict.

We worked to maintain the Brick Hut as a viable business in spite of threats and intimidations. We invited all our customers to cross the demoralizing barriers of class, race, and gender differences, and join us at the community table. We had our share of broken windows, vandalism, and public harassment. In one instance, we placed a poster in our window announcing we were boycotting Florida orange juice because of the Anita Bryant Campaign to repeal the anti-gay discrimination law in Dade County and our windows were broken.

These were politically active times for lesbians. “We are the women that men have warned us about” (Robin Morgan, 1970, Goodbye to All That (pdf)).

There were other women-owned and operated collectives and businesses:
• The Olivia Records collective located around the corner from the Hut. The Brick Hut song with words by Pat Parker and music by Mary Watkins was part of Mary Watkins first album with Olivia, Something Moving, which featured the enormous talents of Vicki Randle and Linda Tillery. We fed some of these musicians and cultural activists and were sometimes repaid with a song. Customers still remember the day Linda T. spontaneously sang a cappella for the masses. The women of BeBe K'Roche, an all woman electric rock band worked at the Brick Hut from time to time.
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• Seven Sisters Construction, a feminist collective, would help us with carpentry projects -- sometimes in exchange for breakfast.
• A Woman’s Place Bookstore and the Women's Press Collective were sources for books, publishing, and networking with artists and writers like Judy Grahn, Wendy Cadden, Willyce Kim, and Pat Parker to name only a few of our customers and allies.
• There were the bars: Ollie's Bar, the Bacchanal, and the Jubilee and across the street from Mama Bear's Bookstore, Thursday nights at the White Horse.

There was a brief appearance of the Night Hut, with Chef Amy Shaw making her culinary debut cooking and serving dinner.

Between 1976 and 1983, Brick Hut collective members Karen, Helen, Randi, Cheryl, Teresa, and Wendy left to pursue other careers and interests as cultural activists, healers, and educators. Marie Della Camera joined the collective around 1983.

BRICK HUT 2
In 1983, with the financial help of the Cheese Board Collective, and the efforts of customers and friends, the Brick Hut moved to a new location at 3222 Adeline Street. Seven Sisters Construction, a feminist collective helped remodel the new space. The Brick Hut became a community gathering spot for local merchants, Berkeley City Council members, writers, musicians, and artists. We also continued to support feminist and queer causes and activities like the Lyon-Martin Clinic, Queer Nation, and East Bay Act Up. KPFA Radio broadcasted their International Women’s Day program directly from the Brick Hut. With our larger wall space, we featured community artists' work. Amana Johnson, Grace Harwood, Barbara Sandidge, Kyos Featherdancing, Cathy Cade, and Wendy Cadden were some of the artists who filled our walls. Once a year, we featured the work of the children of Berkwood-Hedge School to benefit their program.

In subsequent years, Cynthia, Claudia, and Marie left the collective to pursue other careers. At the second location, the Brick Hut was robbed and vandalized over 17 times in eleven years. With the ownership of the Hut left to Joan and Sharon and the neighborhood falling to the ravages of crack, we initiated plans to move the Hut to a safer location.

BRICK HUT 3
In 1995, the Brick Hut moved to a new, expanded location at 2512 San Pablo Avenue. The new space was constructed primarily by O’Malley and Latimer Construction (formerly members of Seven Sisters) and included a performance, meeting, and gallery space. We also opened for dinner. Our first salon featured writer Dorothy Allison and singer/songwriter Alix Dobkin hosted a regular open mike night. Women artists once again filled our walls: Franna Lusson, Mariella de la Paz, and Grace Harwood to name a few. We wanted the new, larger Brick Hut to be an attractive and active space for our community. Other women-owned businesses opened on the same block: Good Vibrations, West Berkeley Women's Books, and It's Her Business. Collectively we were known as Girl Town.

In 1996, the Brick Hut fell into serious financial difficulties; we filed for Chapter 11 status. In 1997, we filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and closed our doors for the last time at 2pm on March 24, 1997. We had a big, crowded, raucous party.

At the Brick Hut, I believe we celebrated difference. We were visibly different, we forefronted difference, we encouraged difference, we hosted difference. We did not try to assimilate, disappear into conformity, or become mainstream. We did not build The Brick Hut Cafe so we could have jobs, although that was good. We did not build it to have careers, or support career-moves, although that was a possibility. We did not build it only to make money for ourselves, although we wanted to maintain a viable business that supported our friends, our fellow workers, our causes, and ourselves. We built it to create the possibility of a workplace and a community where no one's politics or cultural affiliations were left at the front door. We built the Hut to celebrate difference, to celebrate YOU. It was a home for a while and we still mourn its passing. Thanks to everyone who contributed to and supported the Brick Hut (1975-1997).

Join the Remembering The Brick Hut Cafe group on Facebook. Share your memories, thoughts and photos.

Joan Antonuccio and Sharon Davenport remembering The Brick Hut Cafe. Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

Dining for Pride? Maybe it's just my frame of reference, but when I put gay together with food, you know what comes up? Lesbian potluck. Veggie dogs on the grill, hummus and baby carrots, gluten-free quinoa salad on the kitchen table, somebody's foil-covered tray of brownies and a couple pitchers of ginger-peach iced tea.

But there's a whole other world out there, beyond the mismatched Melmac of Oakland and Bernal bohemia. On Friday night, as happy gender revolutionaries were gathering in Dolores Park for the now-annual Trans March (much to the bemused entertainment of those dining at the sidewalk tables of nearby Pizzeria Delfina), a different sort of crowd was sipping rose champagne poured by a buffed and shirtless man with "Free Cocktails" scribbled in body paint across his back, nibbling smoked salmon piled on fat little blinis and chatting about the art that would be auctioned later by wine-country chef and cookbook author Joanne Weir to benefit both AMFAR and the James Beard Foundation in New York. This was the San Francisco Pride Soiree, held at new gallery/event space 12 Gallagher Lane.

The place was hard to find, located down a tiny alley off similarly under-the-radar Clementina Street, between Folsom and Howard Streets south of Market, but once there, hard to miss, thanks to the squadrons of valet parkers, black-suited greeters and the swath of royal-purple carpet pointing to the door. Inside, the show by Hunt Slonem large paintings of cheetahs (or perhaps leopards? Very large house cats with a fetish for fun fur?), butterflies, flowers, parrots, and bunnies--lots and lots of bunnies, a whole wall of frolicking rabbits obviously not yet informed that chef Traci des Jardins (Jardiniere, Mijita, Public House) would be serving fava-bean crostini topped with rabbit en escabeche right below their painted noses.

As you might imagine, being a high profile chef in the Bay Area means being asked nearly constantly to support this or that worthy cause. But, as des Jardins said early in the evening, "There are some things you can't turn down. The Beard Foundation has done a lot for us." Agreed Craig Stoll (Delfina, Pizzeria Delfina), "It's great, it's our opportunity to give back," since the Beard Foundation has long been a champion of up-and-coming chefs in the Bay Area, and AmFAR's decades-long dedication to funding AIDS research has made an immeasurable difference in so many lives.

Stoll says that he now sticks to things that benefit humans, meaning no whales, no rescue dogs. Even with that limit, his crew, like Traci's, is working some kind of benefit or charity event at least every few weeks.

Craig Stoll

Soon, the lucky philanthropists who've crossed the purple carpet are snapping up succulent, crispy-salty chunks of artichoke hot from the fryer. These are the famous carciofi alla giudia of Rome, paired with bite-sized saltimbocca, also a Roman dish, here made with nuggets of fried sweetbreads topped with sage and proscuitto. It's all preparation for Stoll's new Roman restaurant, coming to Valencia Street later this year in the old Ramblas space. There will be a full bar and a slightly more dressed-up air, with fewer t-shirts and tattoos, at least on the staff. The restaurant will share a wall with Bar Tartine, and Stoll hopes that Charles Phan will come back to the neighborhood and reignite his old Slanted Door space across the street.

Under the bunnies, des Jardins is finishing up plating her appetizers, nestling plump seared scallops into velvety pillows of truffled mashed potato, a two-bite dish perfect as a tiny pashmina snuggie. She's got a crew, of course, with one extra-special helper: her 10-year-old son Eli, properly dressed in a boy's-size chef's coat and taking his assistant duties quite seriously.

But the cell-phone cameras popping across the room aren't snapping pix of the food, heavenly as Gary Danko's hint-of-orange filet mignon slices over herbed gnocchi, porcini mushrooms, and cippolini onions is.

Gary Danko's Filet Mignon

No, the real beef is up on a pair of platforms at the center of the room. Three male models, shirtless in jeans, stand above the crowd radiating varying degrees of boredom, mild amusement, and awkwardness, their bare chests and backs daubed with squiggles and slogans in bright body paint while the ladies in the crowd clamber up in their heels to be snapped between them.

Me, I'll take my beef on a fork, thanks, especially when it's been fussed over by Gary Danko (Restaurant Gary Danko) himself. Spinach, tarragon, chervil and basil make the delicate spatzle sprightly and herbal, and the small, braised cippoline onions are marvels of slippery sweetness.

Gary Danko

Upstairs, under paintings of parrots, were the nice folks from downtown dim sum palace Yank Sing, handing out plates of dumplings from a tall stack of steamers. The dumplings were warm rather than hot, but still quite tasty, from Shanghai soup dumplings topped with shredded ginger and red vinegar to the requisite har gow and shu mai, plus a green-wrapped spinach crescent and a plump pale dumpling filled with minced snow-pea greens.

For those who could stand the pumping house music pumping from the DJ setup atop a grand piano in the corner (manned by, of course, another painted, shirtless man), an array of desserts from pastry chefs Emily Luchetti (Farallon) and Yigit Pura (Taste Catering) was forthcoming.

And not any old chocolate truffles or lemon tarts; no, these were mascarpone panna cottas thickened with carageenan rather than gelatin, topped with candied fennel and cucumber-lemongrass gelee; lavender meringue pavlovas with macerated loganberries and candied rose petals; Meyer-lemon parfait pops; and housemade s'more stacks with tonka-bean ganache.

Mmm, s'mores and popsicles? Even my lesbian buddies' potlucks could be down with those.

Happy Pride! The Gay High Holy Days—or week, or month, depending on your stamina and affinity for dance music, tank tops, rainbow balloons, sign-waving, marches, guys in banana thongs, and standing in line, endlessly, for tickets, beer, and/or bathrooms—are coming to their sunny, sweaty close today. Time to get off the Blue Angel-martini-and-popcorn diet and put those silver latex shorts back in the closet, at least til the Folsom Street Fair.

Or that's how it might be in other cities, where Pride comes around but once a year. Here in our lovely fog-bound burg, though, we can be prideful every day, even if we still-still!-can't get married in City Hall.

But there is something particularly fabulous in seeing the typical straight-to-gay ratio of just about everything upended this month. I still remember walking into 2223 Market one night near the end of June last year, and feeling like everyone there was gay. Gay couples, gay friends, gay parents--it was just like being in the straight world, except this time it was all ours.

Naming all the LGBT chefs and business owners who have made the SF food scene what it is would turn this column into a faygelah version of Adam Sandler's Hannukah Song, but still, let's raise a glass to Traci des Jardins, for running a fancypants place in Hayes Valley and a taqueria with a conscience, and never turning down the chance to help out a good cause; to bad boy Jeremiah Tower, for making Stars sparkle; to Elizabeth Faulkner and her partner Sabrina Riddle, for giving the dyke food mafia an official clubhouse, first at Citizen Cake, now at Orson; and to food photographer Frankie Frankeny, because she shoots what we want to eat, and finds a way to sneak her daschunds into every shoot.

And let's not forget a toast to vinologist Pamela Busch, of the late Hayes and Vine and the current Cav Wine Bar, and to Absinthe's Jamie Lauren and her Top Chef Team Rainbow, for making "hot chef" replace "folk singer" as the default lesbian occupation. Also heating up the room is Gialina pizza diva Sharon Ardiana, turning Glen Park into Naples, and Celia Sack of Omnivore Books, for bringing us cookbook-browsing perfection with nary a 30-Minute-Meal or celebrity diet in sight, just up the street from the ever-charming Lovejoy's Teahouse, run by Muna Nash and Gillian Briley. Were we getting married, we might just drag pastry chef Yigit Pura of Taste Catering out to Iowa with us, just so we could show that corn-fed state just how divine his chocolate-hazelnut daquoise with passion fruit filling wedding cakes can be.

And thank you Rainbow Grocery, for letting us shop for veggie dogs on the 4th of July but closing for Pride Sunday, so your collective members can be out and proud rather than stuck restocking the spirulina. Even Food Not Bombs gets into the spirit now, serving up free eats (in tuxedo shirts and fake mustaches) at their mobile Chez Gay Cafe in Dolores Park before the Tranny March. We're here, we're queer, let's eat!