About 1220

I would like to start off by introducing myself to those of you who I have not had the opportunity to meet. My name is Jon Crovo. My brother Steven and I are the owners of Club 1220. We have had the pleasure of owning the club now for 33 years. We opened the bar for the soul purpose of having a place to go and be with our own kind and NOT have to drive all the way over to San Francisco. One problem was that if you were lucky enough to meet someone that lived at the other end of the bay it would be difficult seeing him or her since you’d probably have a long drive each time you were to meet up. What has taken place in the past 33 years is far from what I think either of us ever expected to happen to take place in our lives because of owning this club. The bar became a home to all of us that needed a safe place to run to when the outside work force or family life just got too heavy to bear. Many times the phone would ring off the hook with young men asking questions they could not ask anyone else in the world, and we also gave a space for people who would lose there jobs if found out - a quiet small bar in this small town of Walnut Creek. The bar was not welcomed by many, as you could imagine back in 1975 when we went to our parents with this idea to open a gay bar. We went through many years of people doing all they could to make sure that "our kind" did not filter across that bridge and start moving next door to them. Little did they know how many of us were already here working and living right next door to them. 1220 Pine St., Walnut Creek, CA

Right from the start, there have always been some differences of opinion in our community over the years and without one example can I think of that the bar was not in some way brought into the fray. In 1975 you did not have a mix of gay and lesbian bars clubs or friends for that matter that hung out under the same roof. I could never understand it myself, and for years still do not, but that is another story. The first manager I ever hired at the "Hub" happened to be a woman and she had worked for me for
about five years at the time. You would have thought that I had taken and beaten a puppy on the dance floor for the hate mail I received from many of the male patrons of the bar. I cannot go into detail how graphic they were in telling me what would happen to the Hub when word got out that a woman was running OUR bar. True to form, I stuck to my guns, heard them out and still had Shirley become the manager. To make a long story short, she was the manager for about 8 years and ran it ten times better than the previous one. OPPS, THAT WAS ME. :-( But true. She went on to be my partner in my next club that I would purchase in Fresno. <Another story> My point is that the next issue that would come up in having just one bar way out there in the BURBS is the lesbians wanted a night that would be for woman only. I would not bend and never gave in, as it would again be discrimination to not let someone in because of his or her gender. So we had all the lesbians on one side of the bar and we would have all the men on the other and all got along just fine. When Harvey Milk was out in Walnut Creek to debate Senator Briggs I invited him to stop by the bar, which he did on his way out of town. He stood up on a bar stool and gave a very nice speech about seeing men and woman in the same place at the same time and that the city had a lot to learn from us. It was a very proud moment I must say as he was killed a few months later. Our next issue that was to hit us was the AIDS epidemic and the lasting effect it had on our community. That has many more stories to it but the one I would like to bring up now is the fact that it was the lesbian community that came to our <the men's> aid. They started support groups, food banks, went to hospitals to make sure that one of there BROTHERS were being taken care of by that hospital, because at that


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I would like to start off by introducing myself to those of you who I have not had the opportunity to meet. My name is Jon Crovo. My brother Steven and I are the owners of Club 1220. We have had the pleasure of owning the club now for 33 years. We opened the bar for the soul purpose of having a place to go and be with our own kind and NOT have to drive all the way over to San Francisco. One problem was that if you were lucky enough to meet someone that lived at the other end of the bay it would be difficult seeing him or her since you’d probably have a long drive each time you were to meet up. What has taken place in the past 33 years is far from what I think either of us ever expected to happen to take place in our lives because of owning this club. The bar became a home to all of us that needed a safe place to run to when the outside work force or family life just got too heavy to bear. Many times the phone would ring off the hook with young men asking questions they could not ask anyone else in the world, and we also gave a space for people who would lose there jobs if found out - a quiet small bar in this small town of Walnut Creek. The bar was not welcomed by many, as you could imagine back in 1975 when we went to our parents with this idea to open a gay bar. We went through many years of people doing all they could to make sure that "our kind" did not filter across that bridge and start moving next door to them. Little did they know how many of us were already here working and living right next door to them. 1220 Pine St., Walnut Creek, CA Right from the start, there have always been some differences of opinion in our community over the years and without one example can I think of that the bar was not in some way brought into the fray. In 1975 you did not have a mix of gay and lesbian bars clubs or friends for that matter that hung out under the same roof. I could never understand it myself, and for years still do not, but that is another story. The first manager I ever hired at the "Hub" happened to be a woman and she had worked for me for about five years at the time. You would have thought that I had taken and beaten a puppy on the dance floor for the hate mail I received from many of the male patrons of the bar. I cannot go into detail how graphic they were in telling me what would happen to the Hub when word got out that a woman was running OUR bar. True to form, I stuck to my guns, heard them out and still had Shirley become the manager. To make a long story short, she was the manager for about 8 years and ran it ten times better than the previous one. OPPS, THAT WAS ME. :-( But true. She went on to be my partner in my next club that I would purchase in Fresno. <Another story> My point is that the next issue that would come up in having just one bar way out there in the BURBS is the lesbians wanted a night that would be for woman only. I would not bend and never gave in, as it would again be discrimination to not let someone in because of his or her gender. So we had all the lesbians on one side of the bar and we would have all the men on the other and all got along just fine. When Harvey Milk was out in Walnut Creek to debate Senator Briggs I invited him to stop by the bar, which he did on his way out of town. He stood up on a bar stool and gave a very nice speech about seeing men and woman in the same place at the same time and that the city had a lot to learn from us. It was a very proud moment I must say as he was killed a few months later. Our next issue that was to hit us was the AIDS epidemic and the lasting effect it had on our community. That has many more stories to it but the one I would like to bring up now is the fact that it was the lesbian community that came to our <the men's> aid. They started support groups, food banks, went to hospitals to make sure that one of there BROTHERS were being taken care of by that hospital, because at that