After Hibiscus quit the Cockettes, the group began taking paying offers to perform, which set the stage for their disastrous New York City debut on November 7, 1971. The show’s producers put the cast up in dumpy hotel rooms, and they were forced to stage Pearls over Shanghai in an even dumpier theater. The Anderson seated over three thousand people, and like many similar theaters in the neighborhood, it had been left to decay since the glory days of vaudeville. “The theater was a mess,” Play-House of the Ridiculous member Michael Arian said, “and it was too big, and it just needed to be torn down. It was like going into a haunted house, tile floors with dead leaves and that kind of thing.” When Ann Harris discovered that the producers were using her son’s image in the publicity posters, even though he had left the group, the firebrand matriarch marched down to the Anderson and ripped all of them down. “We only had quick run-throughs,” Lendon Sadler recalled. “We were improvising a show by the time the premiere happened.” The pre-show buzz spread quickly, and opening night became a full-on gala event, with klieg lights and paparazzi; street traffic was so jammed, the attendees had to get out of their limousines and taxis in order to walk a few blocks to the Anderson. With such high expectations, there was only one way to go: down. “That show would have been okay in San Francisco,” Sadler said, “but we had limousines pulling up in front of the theater. Andy Warhol and John Lennon were there, everybody was there. The reviews the next day were so bad that they were good.”

From Chapter 26 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore