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SUNDAY

Country-and-western watering holes, drag-queen gathering places, and the adjoining graves of J. Edgar Hoover and his “special friend,” Clyde Tolson—this is the stuff of the Rainbow History Project’s Capitol Hill walking tour, which tracks the evolution of queer D.C. along the 8th Street SE corridor and its environs. Heavy on “groundbreaking” restaurants, bars, and nightclubs—who knew that Remington’s, where my “cowboy” buddies and I sling gin and dance the two-step, qualified as a historical site?—the excursion nonetheless wends its way past buildings that once housed various pioneering publishers and social or religious organizations, along with the sites of the original Lammas bookstore and the much-mythologized Furies lesbian-separatist collective. (Recent articles in the Washington Blade, however, reveal that the surviving Furies apparently can’t reach consensus about where they lived. Go figure.) If you’re willing to make the hike, the tour also includes the Congressional Cemetery gravesites of Hoover, Tolson, and Sgt. Leonard Matlovich, a Vietnam vet and early challenger of the military’s anti-gay ban. There’s some real history here—but ask your guide why saloons are so central to queer identity when the tour begins at 11 a.m. at 601 Pennsylvania Ave. SE. Free. For reservations call (202) 907-9007. (Trey Graham)