The Stonewall Inn was a dump. This is according to Jay Toole, a veteran of the now mythical uprising. "It was dark, smelly. You never drank any mixed drinks there ever because they hardly had any running water, so glasses were always washed in dirty water." Toole was living nearby in Washington Square Park after her parents threw her out of the house at the age of 13.
She and the others who were sleeping there heard what was going and rushed over, beginning "one of the best nights I've ever had," she says. "It felt so empowering to be able to yell at a cop and not get beat up...Just to yell at them and scream at them and throw things at them and see them scared.