Rihanna, Dawn O'Donnell & The Tool Shed

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Rihanna

Just 18 hours to go before the 2011 Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras begins it's journey up Oxford Street to finish at Moore Park where thousands will then flock to Fox Studios and the Horden Pavilion for the after-parade party.

Entertainment at the party will be Alexis Jordan, New York dance queen Wynter Gordon, the internet sensation  Chris "leave Britney alone" Crocker and drag star Courtney Act.

While the tabloids are still plumping their wish list of star acts-George Michael and Rihanna, we can report that whilst negotiations have been under way between the Mardi Gras committee and Rihanna's management, it's unlikely she will grace the event. Money is the problem. She wants lots and the Mardi Gras crowd are basically broke. Rhianna will be appearing at the Acer Arena tonight and fantasies that she will jump in a chopper to the inner city party are just that.

There is one big problem for stars who entertain at the party. Cameras of any description, personal or media are strictly banned. No photograph of the party has ever been published so it isn't even worth the publicity value to front up. George Michael will be there with bells on but only as a guest.

Rhianna visited the adult sex shop, the Tool Shed on Oxford Street yesterday and spent up big. While it was meant to be a big secret and the shop is usually packed out with visitors at this time of the year, the Tool Shed owners closed the doors and within minutes mobile phones were abuzz about the diva's shopping spree.

The Tool Shed is one of the oldest and most successful adult shops in Sydney and was opened by the lesbian former ice skating champion, cum butcher and nightclub owner Dawn O'Donnell.

It sold adult gear, aids and x-rated porn when porn of any description was illegal. There was also a back room with live sex shows where audience members were always welcome to join in.

 Once every six months the local cop shop at Taylors Square about 200 yards up the road would raid the Tool Shed but not before a friendly station  Sergeant would put a call through to Dawn with the full details and time of the raid..

Photographs would duly appear in the newspapers of police trudging out of the store with boxes of supposed porn and it was claimed, the constabulary had done their duty. The boxes were empty of course except for one which was packed with goodies like the latest lesbian porn to be shared around back at Darlinghurst nick and another with a few dozen cans of beer. Dawn was generous like that. While most of Dawn's nightclubs had mysterious fires when business soured, the Tool Shed, a real money spinner, always survived.



Dawn O'Donnell



When Dawn died she left a fortune of 4 million dollars and Mosman house worth another 3. Like all good gay society deaths, there was intrigue over Dawn's will. She left the house to her girlfriend plus a load of art. Much of which turned out to be fake including a Lucien Freud. Rumours say the paintings were switched whilst Dawn lay dying in hospital.

Our mole at the Toolbox tells us Rhianna spent up big on S & M outfits that will no doubt feature in her show tonight. Lots of leather and  skimpy outfits with studs , a whip, handcuffs and a set of nipple rings !. A burly bodyguard carried out 2 bags of gear while Rhianna rushed to a waiting Range Rover. By that stage there must have been a dozen paparazzi waiting and a crowd of excited gays from the nearby pub.

A passing American tourist asked a photographer if the figure in black with the hood over her head was a local politician !

Meanwhile here is Chris Crocker talking about gays. The Shuttle met him at a party on Thursday evening and asked him what the Britney bit was all about. Chris said his mother was doing drugs at the time and going through a rough patch-in his eyes Britney became his de-facto mum !

Rich pickings on the Golden Mile

          Underbelly ,The Golden Mile is almost upon us. The third in the series of hugely successful mini-series about the real life Australian underworld brings us up to the present day. Where the original Underbelly dealt with a 10 year crime spree in Melbourne in the late 1990's when around 30 gangland murders took place, including 2 rival gangsters being blasted to death with shotguns as they sat watching their kids play football. The Golden Mile takes us into the heart of Sydney's Kings Cross.

         But what is this "golden mile'  business?. One newspaper writer has picked up on the theme (conveniently after the Shuttle mentioned it ) as often stated by tSS-the Golden Mile has always referred to Darlinghurst's Oxford Street gay strip replete with pubs, drag bars, sex clubs, heavy leather bars, saunas, male peep shows, adult book stores and everything in between.

          Walk a half a kilometer to the north, via the infamous underage male hustler hangout The Wall and one enters Kings Cross which has had an extraordinary revival in the past 5 years with numerous smart nightclubs popping up all over the place. But this area has never been referred to as the golden mile.

         Adverts are running thick and fast for the new series, shot in a downtown suburban Crows Nest shopping center which was turned, for a few short weeks into a garish neon lit Kings Cross of the 1990's . Bewildered pensioners thought they had stumbled into an alternative reality as they encountered yelling barkers outside The Pink Pussy Cat and the odd baseball bat wielding rival gangs in pitched battles.

         However a phone call to Underbelly's publicist brings a 'no comment' on whether series 3 will actually incorporate the real Golden Mile. The 2 areas have always been intricately linked with no qualms over sexual preferences when a quick buck was to be made or a bent copper to be nobbled.

        Indeed the history of gay Oxford Street has been as bizarre and dangerous of that of the Cross at times with murders, mysterious nightclub fires and stand over merchants threatening rival disco owners.

        And no mention has been sighted in the advertising for Underbelly ,The Golden Mile of whether the legendary Mr Sin, Abe Saffron is featured . Saffron, who died in 2006 was considered one of the most powerful organized crime figures in the country. The tiny 5'2" 'property developer' had a controlling interest in just about every strip joint, bordello and nightclub in Kings Cross. He left an estate of over $20 million dollars although experts estimate plenty more was squirreled away abroad. Saffron even successfully saw off the US Mafia when they tried to muscle in on the action in the 1970's.

       Kings Cross had a bohemian atmosphere from the 1920's on but it was in the 60's and the Vietnam War era when it blossomed into a full time chaotic nightclub and disco center. The influx of R&R (rest and recreation) US army personnel in their thousands saw the suburb bloom overnight into a land of nightclubs, strip joints, live sex shows (inviting audience participation) brothels and lots of illicit drugs. Amsterdam by comparison looked quite tame. And the local cop shop overlooking the area seemed oblivious to then illegal activities happening right at it's front door. 2 Royal Commissions later found dozens of corrupted policemen had become very rich by turning a blind eye.
      Along with the Yanks came some mysterious characters like Bernie Houghton of no fixed background who opened the Bourbon and Beefsteak that still operates for 22 hours of the day. Hougton was thought to be an ex-CIA agent involved with the infamous Air America. Bernie arrived with a suitcase stuffed with cash.
       Abe Saffron's Les Girls transvestite cabaret show was another runaway success as busloads of suburban mums and an occasional husband came night after night to watch the extravagant drag shows.

          And then there was the crossover to Oxford Street. Saffron become the backing partner for the lesbian entrepreneur Dawn O'Donnell who died in 2007.  O'Donnell's first career was as an ice-skating star. She settled down to run a butcher's shop before discovering there was more money to be made under the table by operating a gay drinking spot, the Trolley Bar.
     Followed by a lesbian sauna, Dawn was soon in her stride with a string of nightspots and sex bookshops on Oxford Street. always with Saffron in the background.
Jools, Patches, Flo's Palace, The Exchange Hotel, Ruby Reds, Capricos were all owned by Dawn and packed to the rafters night after night and when business got slow, there was always a mysterious fire and an insurance policy to collect. Or as Saffron  would put it, "time for a fire-sale !"
      Both Saffron and O'Donnell were at times in partnership with  Roger Claude Teyssedre who amassed a fortune in property from the proceeds of a number of gay saunas before he expired under strange circumstances from the effects of an Aid's related illness while being cared for by his newest lover Ludwig Gertsch who had kept friends from visiting the dying Frenchman in his last days. Low and behold, a new will appeared ,written 17 days before his death leaving all of his multi-million dollar fortune to Gertsch, cutting out previous beneficiaries.
         The cream of Kings Cross and Darlinghurst nightlife figures including Saffron and O'Donnell , a few dozen favored weeping Greek lads and dozens of drag queens made up Teyssedre's funeral cortege.
      In the family pew at the crematorium sat Gertsch with four of Teyssedre's ex-lovers. As for Gertsch, whatever the circumstances surrounding the will, Roger's fortune did him little good.
           An increasingly paranoid Gertsch said he was receiving death threats and fortressed the Paddington mansion left to him by Teyssedre.
           Less than 2 years later his trussed up body was found in bush land in the Blue Mountains. Gertsch had been strangled. Stories abound of spurned Teyssedre lovers hiring Italian hit men to do away with Ludwig. When police broke into his wall safe a week after his body was found, the million dollars in cash that had supposedly lain there since Teyssedre's death was missing. In it's place was a $5 note wrapped in a black cloth.

       If Underbelly 3 doesn't include some of these events it's really missing the plot. So far we know from advertisements that the likeable 'Teflon' John Ibrahim  (left with Paris Hilton ) features heavily. Ibrahim started out as the gangster George Freeman's bodyguard before becoming a nightclub entrepreneur who seems to have a share in most of the Kings Cross nightclubs and a few in Oxford street to boot.

             Police say he's an "organized crime figure". Word around town is that Ibrahim is shopping around for a publicity firm to help him cash in on the certain fame that will spread country-wide with the screening of the series but hasn't found a taker yet. Unlike Melbourne's Mick Gatto who featured in the first Underbelly series who has just published his life story. Gatto was charged with murdering the hit man Andrew "Benji" Benjamin , admitted shooting Benji dead but successfully claimed self defense. Publicist Max Markson looks after Gatto but apparently he declined Ibrahim's approach.

           And what of the department store heiress Juanita Neilson who went missing when she was running an activist newspaper and agitating to prevent rows of beautiful Victorian terraced mansions in Kings Cross from being razed to the ground by property developers ?. She disappeared after visiting a Saffron nightspot supposedly lured there by an advertising order. Everyone who lives in the Cross (including tSS) can point out a a different tall building where Neilson's body is supposed to lie, buried in concrete.

        tSS lives a few stories above the Cross in one of the lovely art deco buildings just a few meters from the El Alemain fountain that signals the beginning of this new 'golden mile'. Far enough away from the hullabaloo but close enough to hear the odd scream, bullet shot and police siren,. We'll be a fierce critic of this new series.

Current state of play :

Underbelly 1 :. Crime family matriarch Judy Moran  (right) whose family featured in the series (shooting others dead or being murdered themselves) has just been charged with being an accessory to murder after the fact, in connection with her brother-in-law's death.

 Mick Gatto is now an "employment and building consultant" and operates a crane hire business and is constantly perplexed why people think he's a criminal.

Drug lord Carl Williams serving 25 years to life for murder. (he was murdered in jail in 2010).

Underbelly 2 A Tale of 2 Cities : Abe Saffron-dead, gangster George Freeman-dead, drug baron Robert Trimbole-dead.

Underbelly 3 The Golden Mile: no-one has been charged over Ludwig Gertsch's murder. Dawn O'Donnell leaves $3M out of $16M to her widow Aneik Baten while a Lucien Freud painting listed in the estate is found to be a fake.

Underbelly3 The Golden Mile will begin screening in April on the Nine network.