Stavros
08-16-2012, 11:33 AM
The obituary of Sister Boom-Boom, aka Jack Fertig reminds us that politics can be funny as well as having a point. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence may have had their down sides, but I was in San Francisco the year after the election and bought an offbeat/underground/anarchist paper where I first read of Sister Boom-Boom. I am still amazed that in the election she managed to get 24, 124 votes. Brilliant!! Dare I say, rest in peace?
Jack Fertig
Jack Fertig, who has died of cancer aged 57, was an astrologer who became better known as Sister Boom Boom, the most outrageous member of a group calling themselves the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence that burst on to San Francisco’s gay scene in the 1980s.
http://1.2.3.10/bmi/i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02311/Jack_Fertig_2311047b.jpg Sister Boom Boom (with other Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence) conducts an 'exorcism' in 1984 Photo: CORBIS
6:17PM BST 15 Aug 2012
The group, founded in 1979 (other members included Sister Reyna Terror and Sister Dawnna Creation) were an “order” of transvestite “nuns” in miniskirt-habits, wimples and fishnet tights. In the early 1980s they specialised in giving impromptu performances lampooning religious leaders from the Pope to the televangelist Jerry Falwell.
It was 1980 when Fertig first put on a nun’s habit, gigantic foam rubber breasts, false eyelashes and stiletto heels, and introduced himself to the crowds of San Francisco’s Castro district as “Sister Rose of the Bloody Stains of the Sacred Robes of Jesus but-you-can-call-me-Boom-Boom”.
He became the best-known member of the group after he stood as a candidate for San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, in 1982. Running as Sister Boom Boom and listing his occupation as “nun of the above”, he won 23,124 votes, finishing in eighth place. When he tried to run for mayor against Dianne Feinstein, the authorities introduced a new rule, known as the Sister Boom Boom Law, that candidates must use their legal names on the ballot.
During the 1984 Democratic convention Sister Boom Boom and his colleagues performed an “exorcism” in Union Square during which they ripped a rubber snake from the bosom of someone dressed to represent the conservative campaigner Phyllis Schlafly and debagged “Jerry Falwell” to reveal fishnet stockings and a black corset. The ceremony ended in a shouting match between Sister Boom Boom and a follower of the fundamentalist preacher.
The following year Sister Boom Boom announced his engagement to Mystie Gray, a 32-year-old sex therapist from Pittsburgh, but soon broke it off: “She ran off with my boyfriend,’’ he complained, “and I really miss him.’’
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence continue to perform and nowadays do good works and raise funds for good causes. But Fertig, who admitted that most of his escapades had been fuelled by alcohol and marijuana, left the “order” in 1985. The onset of the Aids epidemic had something to do with it. “In the early 1980s, it was all sex, drugs and rock 'n roll,” he explained in 1989. “Dealing with Aids forced us to face our limits.”
Jack Fertig was born in Chicago, Illinois, on February 21 1955 to a Jewish father and a Christian mother. His parents divorced when he was young and he subsequently lost touch with his father, who could not accept his son’s homosexuality. After dropping out of the University of California at Berkeley, Fertig earned a living writing astrological columns for newspapers and magazines and doing astrological charts, often for gay men.
Before he joined the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, he had had several bouts of hepatitis and suffered occasional alcoholic blackouts, but he ignored his doctor’s advice to stop drinking, merely adding marijuana to his bad habits. But by 1984 he was beginning to feel that the outrage had gone too far: “I was tired of being the whipping boy for San Francisco being a weird town,” he recalled. “The party got stale.”
After leaving the Sisterhood and sobering up, Fertig continued to work as an astrologer, volunteered as a tutor of immigrant children and helped to minister to people with Aids. In 1993 he was confirmed as a Roman Catholic, but by the time of his death had embraced Islam. None the less, he remained laid-back on matters of personal morality. Interviewed during the Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal, he said that he did not care “if Clinton is doing a three-way with Janet Reno and a monkey. I think it’s disgusting that the serious matter of managing the republic is being undermined by all this prurient pandering to puritans.”
Jack Fertig, born February 21 1955, died August 5 2012
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/9478289/Jack-Fertig.html
Jack Fertig
Jack Fertig, who has died of cancer aged 57, was an astrologer who became better known as Sister Boom Boom, the most outrageous member of a group calling themselves the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence that burst on to San Francisco’s gay scene in the 1980s.
http://1.2.3.10/bmi/i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02311/Jack_Fertig_2311047b.jpg Sister Boom Boom (with other Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence) conducts an 'exorcism' in 1984 Photo: CORBIS
6:17PM BST 15 Aug 2012
The group, founded in 1979 (other members included Sister Reyna Terror and Sister Dawnna Creation) were an “order” of transvestite “nuns” in miniskirt-habits, wimples and fishnet tights. In the early 1980s they specialised in giving impromptu performances lampooning religious leaders from the Pope to the televangelist Jerry Falwell.
It was 1980 when Fertig first put on a nun’s habit, gigantic foam rubber breasts, false eyelashes and stiletto heels, and introduced himself to the crowds of San Francisco’s Castro district as “Sister Rose of the Bloody Stains of the Sacred Robes of Jesus but-you-can-call-me-Boom-Boom”.
He became the best-known member of the group after he stood as a candidate for San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, in 1982. Running as Sister Boom Boom and listing his occupation as “nun of the above”, he won 23,124 votes, finishing in eighth place. When he tried to run for mayor against Dianne Feinstein, the authorities introduced a new rule, known as the Sister Boom Boom Law, that candidates must use their legal names on the ballot.
During the 1984 Democratic convention Sister Boom Boom and his colleagues performed an “exorcism” in Union Square during which they ripped a rubber snake from the bosom of someone dressed to represent the conservative campaigner Phyllis Schlafly and debagged “Jerry Falwell” to reveal fishnet stockings and a black corset. The ceremony ended in a shouting match between Sister Boom Boom and a follower of the fundamentalist preacher.
The following year Sister Boom Boom announced his engagement to Mystie Gray, a 32-year-old sex therapist from Pittsburgh, but soon broke it off: “She ran off with my boyfriend,’’ he complained, “and I really miss him.’’
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence continue to perform and nowadays do good works and raise funds for good causes. But Fertig, who admitted that most of his escapades had been fuelled by alcohol and marijuana, left the “order” in 1985. The onset of the Aids epidemic had something to do with it. “In the early 1980s, it was all sex, drugs and rock 'n roll,” he explained in 1989. “Dealing with Aids forced us to face our limits.”
Jack Fertig was born in Chicago, Illinois, on February 21 1955 to a Jewish father and a Christian mother. His parents divorced when he was young and he subsequently lost touch with his father, who could not accept his son’s homosexuality. After dropping out of the University of California at Berkeley, Fertig earned a living writing astrological columns for newspapers and magazines and doing astrological charts, often for gay men.
Before he joined the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, he had had several bouts of hepatitis and suffered occasional alcoholic blackouts, but he ignored his doctor’s advice to stop drinking, merely adding marijuana to his bad habits. But by 1984 he was beginning to feel that the outrage had gone too far: “I was tired of being the whipping boy for San Francisco being a weird town,” he recalled. “The party got stale.”
After leaving the Sisterhood and sobering up, Fertig continued to work as an astrologer, volunteered as a tutor of immigrant children and helped to minister to people with Aids. In 1993 he was confirmed as a Roman Catholic, but by the time of his death had embraced Islam. None the less, he remained laid-back on matters of personal morality. Interviewed during the Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal, he said that he did not care “if Clinton is doing a three-way with Janet Reno and a monkey. I think it’s disgusting that the serious matter of managing the republic is being undermined by all this prurient pandering to puritans.”
Jack Fertig, born February 21 1955, died August 5 2012
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/9478289/Jack-Fertig.html