“Larry made me a DJ because he needed someone to open for him who he could trust who was not hungry for his job. So I made it my business to be good and make the people happy until he came. “I never wanted to be a DJ,” DePino says casually. After getting a gig at the Lutheran church-turned-gay discotheque The Sanctuary, he eventually found his way to the game-changing, now-defunct dance club Paradise Garage, working closely with the incalculably influential Larry Levan. That day was Jjust hours later, the Stonewall Riots began, kicking off what many perceive as the modern movement for LGBTQ rights.Īhead of Billboard Pride Summit, Activist Jim Fouratt Looks Back On Stonewall: 'It Changed My Life'įrom there, his upward trajectory into queer history continued - despite any particular ambitions on his end. For example: As a closeted teenage son of Italian-American parents, DePino found himself traipsing around Greenwich Village with a friend looking for a pair of glasses similar to what Granny wore on The Beverly Hillbillies (“if you’re not a certain age, you don’t know what those are,” he explains).
The idea of a ‘gay Gump’ might sound like a painfully glib Hollywood movie pitch, but for DePino, it’s not inaccurate. “It sorta feels like the Tom Hanks movie Gump, where they put him in all the situations,” DePino opines in his unmistakable Noo Yawk accent. That claim might sound boastful taken on its own, but speaking to DePino at length, it’s clear the LGBTQ dance scene pioneer maintains, if anything, a humble astonishment about the indelible impact of his life. “They weren’t places that held thousands of people on a weekday. “Prior to that, little clubs were open during the week, but they were basically bars with tiny little dancefloors,” DePino recalls. And that’s exactly what an illuminating exhibit at the New York Historical Society, Stonewall at 50, is celebrating this year (with parts of the exhibit running through Dec.
In the face of outright hostility or, at best, indifference from the wider populace, DePino helped solidify a place for New York City’s LGBTQ population to not just belong but find ecstatic release: the dancefloor.