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We continue to supply drag queens with size 17 heels, breast forms, Marilyn wigs, and large-size sweater sets and taffeta gowns.

Salem spotted a trend after customers at his Madison Avenue hosiery would come in and ask for things that their wives would get but in the wrong sizes. They had no place to go and had to be very discreet. That is when Salem went after the business and had things made for men in large sizes.

See Michael Salem's Video Montage of Various Talk Shows

Wall Street Fallout Takes a Kinky Turn: To an attempt to aid Wharton College alumni who've lost their jobs on Wall Street, the college has been asking its employed grads to 'think about hiring Wharton talent.' One of these employed Wharton grads is New York entrepreneur Michael Salem, who has been successfully selling dresses, lingerie, wigs and high heels to crossdressers for almost 40 years. 

'Perhaps there's a lesson to be learned here by my fellow alumni who decided to take the CEO route rather than strike out on their own,' Salem muses. 'Forget about stocks; buy stockings! Don't invest, transvest! Who needs bonds when you can buy bondage?' One thing is certain: The crossdressing market has been good to Salem, who sells his wares worldwide via http://www.michaelsalem.com/. 'One of the reasons men crossdress is to simply escape the stresses of everyday life, and God knows there is enough stress on Wall Street these days,' he explains. 'That's why I expect to see more sales to financiers in the months ahead, and yes; I will offer unemployed Wharton-graduated CEOs a discount!

Salem Hosiery Store Front

Michael Salem's father stands in front of his store in Times Square, NY -September 1948.

HBO's 'The Deuce' makes emergency call. See NY Daily News Article here.
Michael Salem Boutique sends Caitlyn a free pair of great heels.
Caitlyn Jenner gifted with two fake vagina's from Michael Salem Boutique  (see our vagina's here)
See Caitlyn's thank you letter below:

The bra is a 48C and so are the special Silicone Breasts. The shoes are strap on sandals that are size 16. These items are most difficult to get in these sizes but they were bought for Mr. Barkley from www.michaelsalem.com (crossdressing to the world) at the spur of the moment. He needed them immediately for his Weight Watchers commercial.

See the article on Cindy Adams NY Post Page Six: http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/cindy_adams/palin_comparison_5WOQXlsOOz2ILhlsbAkLzL

Or visit the cnn.com blog: http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/30/charles-barkley-dons-dress-for-weight-watchers/

Hidden depths of Long Island native Harvey Milk
BY CAROL POLSKY | carol.polsky@newsday.com
January 11, 2009

Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to major public office, often said that he believed the path to acceptance for gay men and lesbians lay in each one coming out of the closet and living openly.

His story inspired the movie "Milk," which earned Sean Penn a chance at a Golden Globe Award tonight for his work in the title role. And yet Milk spent his childhood on Long Island in the 1930s and '40s as a secret gay in a straight world. He became a gay rights hero with his 1977 election to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and his successful fight there for an ordinance that protected gays from being fired, then a martyr to many when assassinated less than a year later. But in Woodmere and Bay Shore, apparently no one suspected that the lanky boy with the dark eyes and quick wit was anything other than a "regular guy."

A biography written a few years after his murder recounts stories of his first adolescent sexual experiences (at Metropolitan Opera matinees where he watched from a standee section with a reputation for randiness) and an account of how he was picked up by police, but not arrested, in a roundup of gays in Central Park the summer after his 1947 graduation from Bay Shore High School.

But his high school friends say they knew nothing of his love for opera, much less his sexual orientation. To them, he was an ardent if second-string athlete, a fun-loving joker and a likable pal who danced with girls around the jukebox.

"He was funny as heck," said Patrick Vesey, 80, a retired accountant who still lives in Bay Shore.

A football player in the class of 1948, Vesey was one of a half-dozen schoolmates who hung out with Milk. "We never dreamt he was gay. ... We'd go out frequently in a car with a can of beer, driving around, going to parties and he was right with us, a regular guy."

Perhaps the innocence of that era, when nobody talked about being gay or casually slept around in high school, protected Milk's privacy, said Peggy Meyers Stafford, one of the girls in the group of Bay Shore friends.

"I remember a couple of gay guys in the high school but he wasn't one of them," said Jack Percival, a Bay Shore student in the class behind Milk's, who said he wasn't a close friend. "If they were known, they were ostracized. They used to call them fairies; today they call them gay guys."

Indeed, when Milk was named by a committee to the school's alumni Hall of Fame a few years ago, Percival said, "A majority were in favor, but there were complaints from others from the class: Why are we electing Harvey Milk, the guy who turned out to be a gay?"

His yearbook listed his activities as football, basketball, junior variety show and junior prom committee, his nickname as Glimpy. Under his photo read: "And they say WOMEN are never at a loss for words!"

Woodmere to Bay Shore
Born in 1930, Milk moved with parents William and Minerva to Bay Shore, where the family opened a dress shop on Main Street, from Woodmere, where his grandfather Morris owned Milk's Department Store. Morris Milk also was a founder of Temple Sons of Israel, where the young Harvey attended Hebrew school and was bar mitzvahed.

A family photo shows him as a 4-year-old playing cowboys and Indians with older brother Robert. At 12, a home movie shows him at a party in Queens in honor of his infant cousin, Michael Salem (who'd he later advise on how to successfully launch a catalog business, now online, outfitting transvestites.)

After graduation in 1951 from the New York State College for Teachers in Albany, and a four-year stint as an officer in the Navy, he taught math at the George W. Hewlett High School during the 1956-57 school year. His homeroom student, Andrew Marks of Manhattan, recalled Milk as a "warm, lovable guy ... a funny, fun-loving, bouncy-type guy."

"I was just crazy for him. ... He had such a kindness to him," said Shelly Kamer Roth of Phoenix. "He made you feel special."

'Stand-up guy'
Former state Legis. John Cochrane Sr., president of Milk's 1947 high school class, recalled traits in the young Milk he later showed as a theatrical, publicity-savvy gay activist and politician on the West Coast.

"Harvey was a very extroverted kind of guy," he said. "I can still remember him coming up after a meeting, and saying, 'Hey John, why don't we get a picture on top of the school roof?' He was innovative."

To close friends such as Vesey, Leonardo Piscopo and Artie Schiller, who went on to own a popular bar in town, he was part of a group who went to Feistadts pharmacy after school for sodas and the beach in summer.

A "stand-up guy," unafraid of conflict, Vesey said, Milk and Schiller took his car into the city, where they took off the rear fender of a taxi in an accident. "I'll take care of this," Milk said, jumping out to confront the enraged cabbie, who retreated with his fender and drove away.

Another time, Vesey recalled, the group got lost on the way to a party, and, after coming across a large home with a party in progress, Milk jumped out to investigate. Eventually, he appeared at a window and tipped a drink toward his friends in the car. "He just went by the window and acted like he belonged there."

Hidden depths
Which may be how he lived his life then - acting as if he belonged - regardless of his hidden life as a gay man.
Nevertheless, friend Peggy Meyers Stafford saw depths in Milk that suggested something more.

"It was my intuition about him," said Stafford, now 77 and living in Florida. "I think that Harvey was deeper than we were, more mature in his head in a way ... the other guys were always horsing around, everything was fun and games. There was just something about Harvey that led me to believe there was more to him than what he led on, but wasn't about to share with us."

Harvey Milk
BORN: May 22, 1930, raised in Woodmere and Bay Shore.
EDUCATION: Bay Shore High School class of 1947, New York State College for Teachers 1951. Served in the U.S. Navy four years.
WORK: Math teacher at George W. Hewlett High School 1956-57. Worked for financial and insurance companies, then theatrical production, in New York. Opened camera shop in San Francisco in 1972.
POLITICS: Won national attention after 1977 election to city Board of Supervisors after three failed tries at office. Helped win city gay rights ordinance, defeat anti-gay state proposition.
DIED: Nov. 27, 1978. He and Mayor George Moscone shot to death by recently resigned Supervisor Dan White in City Hall.
LEGACY: Government buildings and plazas named for Milk in San Francisco, as is a high school for at-risk gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender teens in New York City. Included in Time magazine's 100 Heroes and Icons of 20th Century.

The Navy is set to name a ship after the gay rights icon and San Francisco politician Harvey Milk. Harvey worked with Michael Salem in the sixties to help transgender people. USNS Harvey Milk Article

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