Lot 63

Fred McDarrah, Sip-In. 1966; printed 2018.

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Fred McDarrah, Sip-In. 1966; printed 2018.

Estimate: $700 - $1,000

Starting Bid: $500

(0 Bids)

by Swann Auction Galleries
August 13, 2026 10:30 AM EDT
Live Auction
104 East 25th Street
New York, NY, US 10010

Fred McDarrah
1926-2007
Sip-In. April 21, 1966; printed 2018.
Silver print
With Randy Wicker and Dick Leistch's signatures in ink on recto, and McDarrah's Estate stamp with the title, negative date, and inventory notation in ink on verso.

  • Dimensions: The image 6 3/8 x 9 1/2 in. (16.2 x 24.1 cm.), the sheet 8 x 18 in. (20.3 x 45.7 cm.)
  • Literature:
    Fred McDarrah, Gay Pride: Photographs from Stonewall to Today (A Cappella Books, 1994), p. XXI
  • Medium: Silver print
  • Notes:
    Randy Wicker and Dick Leistch were two of the Sip-In participants. This Estate print was produced as an edition of 40 in collaboration with The NYC LGBTQ Historic Sites Project.

    The Mattachine Society was one of the first gay rights groups in the country. On April 21, 1966, the society decided to take inspiration from the civil rights sit-ins that integrated so many lunch counters in restaurants and stage a "sip-in" by singling out a bar, declaring that they were gay when ordering a drink, waiting to be served or turned away, and then suing.

    Dick Leistch told NPR's Scott Simon in 2008: "Well, first of all, we were going to go to this bar on 8th Street. They had a sign in their window saying, if you're gay, go away. And we thought that would be very dramatic and we'd go there and ask for service and see what happened. We notified the press and being gay, we got there late. And the New York Times had already gotten there and said, what about this gay demonstration? And the manager said, what? So he closed the place for the day.

    When we got there, there's a sign on the door saying, closed today. And so then we decided we had to go to Julius' because Julius' had been raided like 10 days before. The bar would have a sign in the window saying, this is a raided premises, and very often they'd put a uniformed cop on the stool inside the door, and he sat there until the trial came up.

    So we knew that Julius' would not serve us because they have this thing pending. And so when we walked in, the bartender put glasses in front of us, and we told him that we were gay and we intended to remain orderly, we just wanted service. And he said, hey, you're gay, I can't serve you, and he put his hands over the top of the glass, which made wonderful photographs. The whole thing ended up in court, and the court decided well, yes, the Constitution says that people have the right to peacefully assemble and the state can't take that right away from you. And so the Liquor Authority can't prevent gay people from congregating in bars.

    And the importance of this, I think, was that until this time gay people had never really fought back. We just sort of took in everything passively, didn't do anything about it. And this time we did it, and we won."
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