“If every time you take one step forward you take two steps backwards, don’t be discouraged: You just learned how to country line dance.”
Nightclubs can be a little intimidating for some: the pressure to dance, shouting over the music to be heard, dreading rejection if you dare ask a stranger to join you on the floor and the fear of looking like Eileen on “Seinfeld” if you do get a yes. Fortunately, there is a night out that’s fun, free and footloose — a night where people of different ages and backgrounds have been gathering to get their boot-scooting boogie on for more than 20 years: the Friday night hoedown at Woody’s.
Country Line Dancing and Two-Steppin’ night at Woody’s starts at 7 p.m. and kicks its heels until 10 p.m. There’s never a cover and if you’re a little rusty or unfamiliar with the pretzel or the dip (hint: they aren’t food terms), from 7-8 p.m. you can get free dance instructions from one of the in-house instructors.
We spoke to one of the talented teachers, Michael Flynn, to find out how the city boy turned into a country king.
PGN: Tell me a little about yourself.
MF: I was born and raised here in Philadelphia. I’m the second child out of six from a nice Irish-German Catholic family.
PGN: With a name like Flynn, any St. Patrick’s Day traditions?
MF: [Laughs] As a matter of fact, I don’t! I used to celebrate it with my family but now this Irishman stays home. I let the amateur drinkers have their day.
PGN: What did the parents do?
MF: My mom, like many women back in the day, was a homemaker, taking care of the six kids. My dad worked in a ball-bearing factory. We lived in a nice little rowhouse and we all went to Catholic school.
PGN: When people think nice Irish-Catholic boy from Philadelphia, they don’t generally think country music and line dancing. How did you get started?
MF: It’s the strangest thing. I was working for Dignity, which is an LGBT Catholic organization I’ve been working with for years. I was at a Dignity event in Los Angeles in the late ’80s and country and line dancing was really big out there. Like most people from my generation — I recently turned 65 — I’d been big on disco. For years, I’d hit the club to go dancing to Donna Summers and Gloria Gaynor, etc. But this was the first time I’d seen touch dancing between two men, the first time I saw gay guys doing lead, follow, two-step. I really enjoyed it and not long after, about 1990, it came to Philly. I loved it and started teaching. Originally we were at Raffles, which is where Tavern on Camac is now, and we’ve been at Woody’s now for over 20 years.
PGN: That sounds like fun.
MF: It is, we have a great crowd. It’s been amazing to watch it grow over the years into a wonderfully diversified group of people. We have black, white, old, young, straight, gay. It’s a nice alternative to the normal, usually very-loud, usually very-young club scene.
PGN: I understand you just got back from the Poconos.
MF: Just this morning. There’s an LGBT camping ground just north of Allentown called The Woods and it’s a great place. It’s a private campground and they have themed weekends: Leather Week, Bear Weekend, Latin Island Weekend, Frat Weekend and three times a year they have Country Weekend, so that’s what we were doing up there.
PGN: What does it mean when you say you’re an instructor? Are you the one who calls, “Now swing your partner ’round and ’round?”
MF: OK, that is square dancing. A lot of people get that mixed up but it’s a whole different kind of dancing. No, every Friday from 7-8 p.m. if you show up at Woody’s we have what are called line dances. You don’t need a partner for it, and we also have two-stepping where all you need is a lead and a follow. It’s totally different from square dancing, where you have to have four couples (eight people) dancing in sync. I’ve tried it and it was fun but I prefer two-stepping and line dancing, I find there’s a lot more freedom and less structure.
PGN: So for someone not familiar with it, it seems like line dancing is the country equivalent of something like the Electric Slide.
MF: Absolutely, positively. At every wedding, you’ve seen some kind of line dancing, whether it’s the Cha Cha Slide or the Cupid Shuffle.
PGN: And two-stepping is somewhere in between?
MF: Two-stepping is regular couples-style dancing, a little of a quick, slow, slow shuffle. We do some waltzes as well. There’s a lead and a follow with old-fashioned touch dancing.
PGN: What are some of the dances you teach?
MF: There’s the Texas Cha-Cha. There’s a new dance called the Chill Factor that’s really good. There’s a popular dance from the song “Boys in the Summer” by Jessie James.
PGN: I seem to recall that some of the dances had fun names. Which one makes you giggle every time you say it?
MF: There’s the Honky Tonk Stomp and the Caribbean Cadence but I’d probably say the Tush Push; it’s a classic!
PGN: Going back, as a good Catholic boy was there a lot of inner conflict about being gay?
MF: Absolutely. But I’m sure it was the same conflict felt by a lot of Baby Boomers. We didn’t have the Internet to learn about being gay and that we weren’t alone. About the best we could do was to look up homosexuality in the dictionary, which would give you a very dry, clinical definition. One of the things that I did when I first came out was to volunteer for the Gay & Lesbian Switchboard. We called it a switchboard but I think we had one telephone! It was at the Penguin Place, which was the forerunner of the William Way Center.
PGN: How did you get to Woody’s?
MF: I came out and moved into Center City in 1976 with a friend of mine. It was the beginning of the disco era and people were just starting to talk openly about gay stuff. You had Studio 54 and the Village People and it was a very exciting time. I mean, I grew up on a nice street with a loving family but once I moved downtown and got the courage to walk into a gay bar, Rosco’s, I never looked back. I met a lot of people right away. One of the things I did was to take up sign language, ASL, and started doing interpreting. I don’t know if you remember Rita Addessa — she was the chair of the Philadelphian Gay & Lesbian Task Force — and I’d interpret for her. It was great because it gave me a chance to meet all the movers and shakers in the community. I wasn’t one of them but I got to witness LGBT history up close as a result. The very first AIDS march didn’t have an interpreter so they asked me. I went to the ERA March in Washington back when half the people didn’t even know what the ERA [Equal Rights Amendment] was! I was right in the thick of everything and got to see a lot of our most influential people just as they were starting to take leadership roles. It was pretty incredible. I’m so grateful for those memories. I hope people remember some of those like Rita who paved the way for the rest of us. We can’t and shouldn’t forget them. We just can’t.
PGN: You’re right. Wow, I haven’t heard Rita’s name in a while.
MF: I know Dignity gave her a couple of awards. Back then, there were a handful of guys and one woman who did interpreting. Rita had my personal phone number and if she called me I always said yes. [Laughs] You’re bringing up memories!
PGN: Good! And you’re giving me ideas; I should do a pioneers series [Rita, if you’re reading this, call me!]. But back to you, what was the most memorable or silliest moment doing sign language?
MF: Well, the silliest was when I’d just started doing sign language. We were doing an event at City Hall and there was a guy, Irish, I forget his name, on City Council and he was very homophobic. Thank God, we had Jim Kenney and others to balance him because he was just ridiculous. We had an LGBT rally outside City Hall. There was a very strong deaf community and they’d asked for an LGBT interpreter but they ended up using a woman who was very good but not part of the community. She had the correct sign for lesbian but when she tried to sign gay, which normally is just simply spelled out G-A-Y, she inadvertently kept using a sign that was the derogatory term — the equivalent of “faggot” or “queer,” before we took the word back. We were like, “Oh my God!” and she kept doing it! Most deaf LGBT people were afraid to go correct her because it’s such a close-knit world; they were afraid she might know their parents. We corrected her right after because she really didn’t know and meant no harm, but oh my.
PGN: You’ve mentioned Dignity a few times. Is your faith important to you?
MF: Yes, it’s very important to me. I’m very happy that Pope Francis is all about change, but sad that our archbishop in Philadelphia has been showing himself as the face of homophobia. But I’m still a part of Dignity and still go to Mass; it’s just a part of me.
PGN: What other things are you involved with?
MF: That’s pretty much it. I’ve been working as a bookkeeper for a law firm for a few years and hope to retire next year. I’m really blessed to have met a lot of good people through Dignity and through country dancing. Oh, and I love to travel. I’m a cruise-aholic! My next trip is a cruise to Alaska. Geography is my first and most fervent love. My dad bought me the National Geographic when I was 10 and since then I’ve been to 35 states and I’ve been to Europe nine times.
PGN: Why is travel so important?
MF: I think it’s vital to your own growth to see and meet other people and learn about other cultures and places. Grow where you’re planted but get out there and see the world! Please! Get out of your comfort zone and experience different ways of living.
PGN: It should be mandatory. What’s the farthest you’ve traveled?
MF: St. Petersburg in Russia about 10 years ago, it was very beautiful. Of course Russia is so homophobic these days I don’t see myself going back. Though the farthest might be Iceland. If you want to go somewhere that’s not like anyplace else you’ve been, go to Iceland.
PGN: Some random questions: GI Joes or Barbie dolls?
MF: Neither, but I loved doll-house furniture.
PGN: Something that you would really like to learn how to do?
MF: I speak English and ASL. I’d love to learn how to speak French so I can be called a polyglot.
PGN: What sites would we find on your favorites bar?
MF: iTunes, National Geographic and the History Channel. I’m a history fanatic.
PGN: What era would you go back to?
MF: World War II era. As I said, I’m a history buff and I’d love to see how people lived in the ’40s and how the war affected them.
PGN: You just celebrated a birthday. What did you wish for when you blew out the candles?
MF: The same thing I wish for every time: a happy and healthy year ahead. So far it’s worked! I got to ride the bus for free for the first time so that was exciting!
PGN: A funny or memorable country-dancing moment?
MF: One of the last times I manned the switchboard back in the day, a woman called up. She was just coming out and wanted to know what to do. I rattled off a number of places to go like Giovanni’s Room and I happened to mention country-dancing night. She perked up at that, so I gave her a little spiel about it. That Friday I was out dancing — one of the nice things about country night is that everybody dances with each other — so I was dancing with this woman and explaining that I was the instructor and I asked her how she found out about it. And of course it was the same woman! We weren’t supposed to reveal ourselves to callers, but I couldn’t help telling her that I was the one who recommended it. It was really cute. One of the nicest parts are the things that I’ve heard from people who are sometimes marginalized in the community, maybe someone who wasn’t the best looking or the best dancer, maybe a woman in a men’s club or a person of color and they all say that country night is a night where they felt totally accepted. It was true 20 years ago and I still hear it now. I’m not putting down disco dancing — I do that too and love it — but this night is something special that we built, something different from the drugs, the loud music or the social status of the normal club scene. Something that we started when everyone else said, “Oh no, no one is going to want to hear country music! People want to dance to Donna Summer and Diana Ross.” Like so many of the things in the community, we got together and created it, and it’s still going strong. I’m very proud of that.
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