In January 1996, Metro Weekly was banned from the D.C. Eagle — all because of a joke. In that year’s Year in Review issue, we ran a playful photo suggesting the bar’s drinks would give patrons “a small electric shock if touched.”
I vividly remember getting a call from a furious Bill Cappello, the bar’s general manager, screaming that their drinks did not shock people. When I pointed out that it was a harmless joke, Bill only got angrier.
The call ended with a volley of “fuck you’s,” Bill screaming that Metro Weekly was no longer welcome at the Eagle, slamming the phone down.
I was in my mid-30s and just as hot-headed as Bill, so instead of trying to repair the situation, I took the D.C. Eagle off our list. We didn’t distribute the magazine there for more than a year.
A year later, in 1997, I had an idea. For our pre–MAL Weekend coverage, we would interview Dick McHugh, the bar’s legendary owner, along with Bill. Surprisingly, they agreed. The conversation took place on the third floor of the Eagle’s fabled New York Avenue location, distinguished by the Harley-Davidson suspended above the room-length first-floor bar, framed by massive gears.
McHugh, as I recall, was a lovely man — soft-spoken but firm in his replies. Bill had relaxed his stance about our joke from a few years earlier, and we both laughed it off. Shortly after the issue hit the streets, with Mr. D.C. Eagle Jeff Gillies on the cover, Metro Weekly was welcomed back into the Eagle. The bar began advertising regularly in support of our journalism, and Bill and I enjoyed a years-long friendship.
McHugh passed away in 2001 at the age of 63. Bill, who sold the now-shuttered bar in 2010, died in 2018. I will never forget our interview, which appears here for the first time since its original publication date of January 23, 1997. —Randy Shulman, Editor
“The Eagle is designed with calculated indifference in mind,” laughs Dick McHugh, as he shows a reporter around the three-story bar’s nooks and crannies. “Guys who come here don’t want carpeting or crystal and all of that stuff. They’d rather have four by four beams, brick walls, wood floors, pewter mugs, things like that.”
As the owner of the Eagle for nearly a decade — and as the longtime companion of the bar’s original owner, the late Don Bruce, for over 15 years — McHugh knows plenty about one of Washington’s oldest bars. Since opening in 1971, The Eagle, which serves as home base to the leather community, has had no less than three different perches. (At one point, it even included a restaurant frequented by Mayor Marion Barry.)
McHugh, a soft-spoken, gently tempered man, and his co-owner Bill Cappello, are celebrities in the local leather community. Who better, then, to sit down with in honor of the Centaur Motorcycle Club’s annual Mid-Atlantic Leather Weekend to peer into the workings of an institution that, like its great avian namesake, has survived and thrived for a quarter century?
METRO WEEKLY: The D.C. Eagle recently celebrated its 25th Anniversary last Thanksgiving [November, 1996]. Let’s begin by talking about the very first Eagle.
DICK McHUGH: My lover Don Bruce, who was president of the Spartan’s Motorcycle Club at the time, opened the Eagle in 1971 at 904 Ninth Street, in what was later called the south bar of the Eagle. Three years later, in 1974, he opened up the middle bar, called the Eagle’s Claw, and the next year, the North bar. Then, in 1976, they opened the Eagle In Exile, a leather western disco on the nearby corner of Ninth and New York.
BILL CAPPELLO: The first Eagle also had the men’s room bar for men only — very dark, with a pool table.
MW: Did women even come to the Eagle back in the ’70s?
MCHUGH: Oh, most assuredly. Because of anti-discrimination policies, the city did not allow us to have a men’s only bar — you had to be totally all-inclusive. But we circumvented it: the only way to get to the men’s bar was to walk through the men’s bathroom.
CAPPELLO: Back then, women mainly came to the restaurant. The first Eagle had two separate dining rooms, and a huge state-of-the-art kitchen.
MCHUGH: There was even a young lady who was our health inspector — and her name was Effie. Of course, she ended up being Mrs. Effie Barry after she married the mayor. And she and the mayor would often come to dinner on Ninth Street as well as to our next location on Seventh Street.
MW: Throughout the ’70s and mid-’80s, it seemed that most of the gay bars had restaurants. You don’t see that much anymore.
MCHUGH: The reason you had restaurants in all the bars was because back then it was illegal to have a bar without a restaurant. If you served alcohol on the premises, you had to guarantee a percentage of total sales came from food. Of course, a lot of bar owners got away with it by claiming every piece of fruit that went into a cocktail was food. But the Eagle always had a full service restaurant, serving everything from lobsters to chicken to eggs. When the city revisited the ABC laws years later, they created a tavern license, which meant you could sell alcohol and just serve snacks.
MW: There was a lot of nightlife in this area during the ’70s. Then civic renovation began and you were displaced.
MCHUGH: We moved to Seventh Street, into two buildings — the old Livingston Uniform Company and District Furnishing Building. The two bars were side by side. One was the main Eagle and the other one was called The Exit because you had to go in through the Eagle. The Exit’s doors only let you out.
MW: That’s very clever. So now TechWorld comes in, knocks you off Seventh Street and the Eagle lands in its present location on New York Avenue.
MCHUGH: At the time, Don said to me, “Dick, I’m not going through it again. I’m not going through moving, relicensing, and all that. So if you want to keep the Eagle going, now’s your chance. You do it.” So we opened in this location first as Dick’s Bar, waiting for the Seventh Street location to close. We waited for two years, but eventually this spot became The Eagle.
MW: It seems that no matter what city I go to, you can always find an Eagle. And it’s pretty much always leather/Levi, as though it were some kind of chain.
MCHUGH: Well, there’s a story to that. When Don was up in New York working on what eventually became the D.C. Eagle, he said to the owners of the New York Eagle that he was gonna have a contest to figure out a name for the new bar. And the New York Eagle owners said, “Why don’t you call it the D.C. Eagle and work with us?” And he said, “You don’t mind?” And they said, “No, we’d be proud to have it.” So Don came back and opened up as the D.C. Eagle.
Years later, around 1977, Joe Kirby said he’d like to open an Eagle in Boston. We said he could use the name so long as he maintained the image of a leather/Levi bar. Then, Bob Damron of Damron’s Guide, wanted to open an Eagle in San Francisco and we said it was fine to use the name. Then L.A. opened an Eagle — but their Eagle was more feather than leather. After that, Eagles started opening all over the country — in Detroit, Chicago, everywhere.
For the most part, the Eagle bar in all the cities maintains a leather/Levi image — and that’s basically gay men with a male, rugged image rather than the stereotype of being on the fluff side. That was originally the whole idea behind the leather community: to put forth an image that “Yes, you can be gay but you can also be a man while being gay.”
MW: What’s the story with the drag community? Reportedly, you don’t allow drag queens into the Eagle.
MCHUGH: Initially we said no, but the law said we can’t do that: We must be for all people at all times. But most of the drags know that the Eagle prefers them to come dressed in jeans. So they’ll often change out of their dresses before they come on over.
CAPPELLO: [Laughs.] Yeah, but sometimes they still have their makeup on!
MW: I’ve heard the drag community say that leather is a form of drag. Do you agree with that?
MCHUGH: No. Leather is more of an image. Men who dress in leather throw a definite masculine image. It isn’t drag.
MW: How does S&M incorporate into the mix?
MCHUGH: Well, that same leather image includes whips and jingles, if you will. And it’s these whips, studded paddles, cockrings, and ball-straps that are the toys of the leather man. It’s basically seeking a masculine and stimulating way to have sex.
As a young man comes into the leather scene, he becomes more and more acclimated to these different toys and finds out just how stimulating they can be — whether it’s tit-clamps or just a good hard crack on the ass with a steel lined paddle so that it burns so much you beg someone just to put their hand on it, to soothe it with touch.
CAPPELLO: The common myth has always been that the S&M situation is the most unsafe way to be. In reality, the scene is probably the safest sex situation in existence, because there’s no exchange of bodily fluids.
MCHUGH: Years ago, before AIDS, we had gay doctors who would lecture the leather community on safe sex practices, because there are some very extreme leather practices — fisting, cutting. These can be very exciting, but they’ve got to be practiced with a great deal of care and sanitation. You’ve got to be very careful if you’re going to cut your lover’s chest on a hot summer’s night.
MW: It sounds like a great deal of care goes into being a master.
MCHUGH: A master has to be totally responsible for his slave. And only your really good masters were really good slaves at one time — they graduated into being masters. Because you have to understand the experience and the pain your partner is feeling and be aware of when you’re going too far so that you can back off and give them a breather.
MW: What’s an example of a bad master?
MCHUGH: A bad master doesn’t care about his slave. He takes a kid who isn’t heavily into the scene, handcuffs him to the radiator, and goes off to work for a week. A bad master is someone who’s going to portray his image as a big rough guy without really knowing the dangers involved. Some leather techniques, such as hanging, are very, very delicate — you’ve got to be very careful. If you get one little kink in that rope, you can break a man’s neck in a second. So the knowledgeable master must be quite aware of all these things. And be very careful about it all.
MW: Is there any forum now for people into S&M? Are there, you’ll pardon the expression, master classes?
MCHUGH: SIGMA has classes on safe S&M practices. F.F.A. — and that does not stand for Future Farmers of America — has safe sex practices classes. All of these outfits have doctors who will lecture them not only in safe sex practices regarding AIDS and clinical diseases, but also in the safe use of hot wax or things like wine enemas.
MW: Wine enemas? I’ve never heard of that. But I guess as long as it’s a really nice Chardonnay…
MCHUGH: Well, when you take your partner and give him a wine enema and turn him loose, he is legless, totally inebriated. He can’t drive, he can’t walk, he can’t eat. When you think about it, it’s entering into the lowest part of his digestive system, so it’s immediately absorbed in the bloodstream. You’ve got to be very careful of the person — I would say young man, but today most of mine are older. [Laughs.]
MW: Dick, are you a master or slave in your relationships?
MCHUGH: I have been a master most of my life. But I’ve also been a slave. Don Bruce was my lover for years, and I’m not gonna tell you that he was never my master. When you have a relationship that long, there’s nothing that either one of you haven’t tried with the other, you know? A couple of bottles of wine, a good steak dinner, and we were ready for anything.
MW: What about you, Bill?
CAPPELLO: Most of the time I’m a top. I stay away from the master/slave reference because to me, slave depicts somebody who’s bound, collared, and chained up.
MW: Recall for us one of the most unusual things you’ve ever done, Dick.
MCHUGH: I once took a guy home who wanted to be bound up and gagged. After I tied him up, I took a branding iron and put it in the fireplace and said, “Tonight you’re mine, and I’m gonna brand you to show you’re mine.” Then I put the hood on him and handcuffed him.
MW: You didn’t really brand him, did you?
MCHUGH: [Laughs.] No! I simply went out to the refrigerator, got a couple pieces of ice from the freezer, and planked them on his ass. The sensation is identical — that extreme change. When we were done, he was lookin’ all over for this goddam brand which didn’t exist. So you see, a lot of it is illusion, too. It’s a hell of a trip. But you don’t want to damage or hurt anyone, but you want to give them one hell of a trip.
MW: What’s the difference between today’s Eagle man and the Eagle man of 25 years ago?
MCHUGH: Today’s Eagle man travels freely through his own community with a lot less trepidation. The Eagle man in the ’60s and ’70s was much more defensive of his image. Today, he’s quite comfortable being a businessman. In fact, our Mr. Eagle can join the drag show if he wants — that’s his own life. In the ’70s, if you did the drag show, you didn’t get into leather — and you certainly never won a leather contest. Today, fine. You’re doing your own thing, you’re accepted by society, and the whole thing has melded together in a much healthier atmosphere.
CAPPELLO: I think in general the whole population is more accepting of the leather scene. I live in a very middle-class neighborhood, very mixed. I moved there in ’84, and the first two years, I could feel apprehension from the neighbors. Not anymore. I’ve noticed a lot more acceptance. I can go out in my leather and not worry about what I’m gonna hear from the neighbors.
This interview is part of The Metro Weekly Archive Project, which brings interviews, stories, and photographs from the magazine’s past back into circulation, preserving LGBTQ journalism and cultural history that still resonates today. Each piece is presented in its original form, without edits, with minimal context added for today’s readers.
Source: Metro Weekly – www.metroweekly.com
