Interviewing Scott Noxon
- alexanderrpreston7
- Oct 25, 2024
- 5 min read
By Al Preston
Getting interviews with people can sometimes be difficult. Life is happening and two hours is a long time to talk about the past. Silas did most of the work getting us this interview. He had spoken to Scott Noxon before and managed to get ahold of him this time. Although it was a bit difficult. Life was happening, notifications can pile up.
Then, at seven pm on a Monday, my class at Duquesne has just gone to break and Silas calls me. I scurry out and take the call in the hallway. Silas is trying to be quick as he explains to me that Scott has finally responded to him. He wants to know when I’m free to do an interview the following week.
I don’t really think about it. I tell Silas to do whenever Scott wants. I will work with it. This would be our first interview as The Holiday Pride and Scott was hard to contact. This is our first step towards the work we both want to do. I can work around it.
We hang up and I’m buzzing even though Silas just warned me that Scott may be a bit racist. I’m too excited to care. This professor for the class on break is the one who has helped me the most. My hands shake as I tell her what I’ve just learned. She reassures me that I’ll be just fine. I know what I’m doing.
As class starts back up, I fidget at my desk, wondering if that’s true.
This would be the first time either Silas or I would have met Scott. As our first interview, we’re the most interested in gathering Scott’s history and understanding the reason the bars in Pittsburgh were all closing.
The bar we will be meeting in is one he’s renovating to reopen, despite the fact that he is the one Silas first heard the phrase, ‘we don’t need gay bars anymore.’ It’s a fascinating dynamic. Why bother making a new bar then? I don’t know what to expect, what insights we may gain. What we got, was less about bars, and more about people.
We may be a little lost. Our GPS say we’re right on top of Scott Noxon’s newest gay bar, but we have no clue where it actually is. There’s a boarded-up store front with a big realtor sign on it, a shady little hallway leading to a glass door, and downtown Pittsburgh’s Planned Parenthood.
Silas is scouring the map for a hint, and I have one eye on the bible thumpers crowded in front of the Planned Parenthood glowering at us. I can tell they’re just dying for us (a masculine passing person, Silas, and a gender ambiguous person, me) to go closer to them so they can incorrectly quote the bible and their own prophet.
Then Silas reaches for the sketchy glass door and tells me “This is it!”
I hold my breath and follow after him, much to the bible thumper’s disappointment and perhaps confusion. I’m also a bit confused, and then we step into the bar.
It is certainly a bar. Tall, wobbly, tables line the right-side wall, a pride flag hanging above them. Holes and old plumbing poke into and out of the wall. On the left, covered in tools and other pieces that Scott is working on, is the actual bar. Beyond that is a small dance floor. Our shoes echo as we walk inside, the boards are uneven and dip under our weight.
I feel a bit over dressed in the suit jacket I chose, but I was always taught to dress well when doing an interview, although I’m sure they meant job interviews. Regardless, I’m still excited to be there. It doesn’t quite smell like cigarettes, but certainly smoke. Maybe more like cigars and ash.
Scott is sitting on one of the bar stools, sorting through mail. We greet each other and I’m only able to say a little about what we’re there for when Scott just starts telling us about his history and the history of gay bars in Pittsburgh. I hurriedly pull out my recorder and panic a little before hitting the record button, so we don’t miss anything.
As he talks, we move to one of the tables and I hope the clicking fan above us and the creaky bar stools we’re sitting on aren’t picked up by the recorder (they definitely were).
Scott is actually very nice, and far less racist than I feared. He barely was at all. My anxiety had certainly built up that in my head. In fact, if anything, he is just opinionated. He likes confusing and confounding the bible thumpers outside, but he also thinks that the queer youth of Pittsburgh are directionless disconnected. It’s all apart of who he is.
While he still seems to think the youth don’t need the bars anymore, the older generations do. It’s the place there they historically gathered, and he feels like they are out of place in the newer ways queer folks are meeting. He spent much of his early years helping run many of the bars that were in the city. He can tell us some amazing things about those bars and how they were run, and the greats amount of work they put into keeping them open.
He insists that none of those bars had a criminal element like bars all across the United States. Other bars like in New York and San Francisco were run by the mob since being queer was illegal and there was a lot of profit in exploiting people who had no where else to go.
However, Scott insisted that Pittsburgh’s bars had no such connection, something that astounds me. He’s also very well connected. As we sit in this interview, he calls some of his friends and tells them he’s giving us their information. They happily agree.
It’s too early to tell, two hours later, where Scott’s interview will fall with our future interviews. The bible thumpers are gone when we finally leave, shocked by everything we’d just learned and buzzing with excitement. We’re bouncing around with the things we’ve learned as we drive home.
This was the first step of many towards the competition of our first project. The first of, I hope, many. Our first oral history was secured, and all of the things we were talking about doing suddenly came into focus. This is real. We’re doing it.
I’m doing the work I’ve always wanted to do. Preserving history, sharing it, educating. I’m building up something that I hope will help the community. Silas is doing work he never thought he’d actually get a chance to do. He’s so excited to have done this. As I drop him off at home, I realize I’ve already helped one person.
Maybe I know what I’m doing after all.
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