From the Dennis McBride Photograph Collection (PH-00263) -- LGBTQ+ events and organizations in Las Vegas, Nevada -- Digital images file. Notes from the donor, Dennis McBride: This series of photographs of the Gipsy nightclub arson fire was downloaded from the Internet on August 20, 2018 and includes Guava Soleil's captions. Efforts to reach Soleil were unsuccessful. Soleil's caption for image no. 4644 reads, "The night they burned old Gipsy down...I took this pix. I was there that eve competing in the Miss Gay Las Vegas Pageant (hosted by Kenny Kerr). I was poised to take the crown.....somebody gas bombed the place and it burned to the ground!! One word: CARRIE !!!! — " For more on the Gipsy fire see Out of the Neon Closet: Queer Community in the Silver State, by Dennis McBride [North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016], pp. 36-37. Also see the Las Vegas Review-Journal, August 9, 1988, 11E; the Bohemian Bugle extra, August 9, 1988; and the Las Vegas Bugle, December 1993, pp. 20-22.

I've known Christie Young for many years and was grateful she agreed to be interviewed for the Las Vegas Gay Archives Oral History Project. Not only is she frank in what she says, but her background as a researcher in sexual issues and as a straight woman involved in the gay community give her a unique perspective. Ancillary to her donation of this interview transcript to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Christie has generously donated her personal journals which detail more than a decade of her life including the years she worked with Las Vegas's gay community . Christie shares the project's concern that documentation of the gay community is ephemeral and vanishes rapidly; her determination that her contribution to that community be preserved greatly enriches our knowledge and will benefit future scholars.

From the Dennis McBride Photograph Collection (PH-00263) -- LGBTQ+ events and organizations in Las Vegas, Nevada -- Digital images file.