Category: After Dark

2000

I’m down to converting the last few months of entries from 2000 now, after which this site will be 100% database-y. Despite all the stuff I have to do this weekend, I’m close enough that I’m determined to finish. And if you’ve seen a couple of odd things pop up on the front page today, it’s probably because I’ve been a little sloppy and forgotten to re-date some old entries. Thus, I didn’t really bugger a boy in front of an audience nor have dinner in Oakland last night, and I don’t have strep, either.

It’s funny how I don’t seem to get strep anymore now that I don’t hang out in backrooms and sex clubs and bugger boys in front of audiences.

Let’s Active and Pylon

I saw Gravel Truck (which Mitch Easter describes as his “new Let’s Active cover band” and Pylon (who are occasionally calling themsleves “The Pylon Reenactment Society”) tonight.

I first saw Let’s Active twenty-five years ago last month, about two miles north of where tonight’s show was. I met both Mitch Easter and my future San Francisco roommate at that show. REM was there too, but I didn’t meet them. My first brush with Pylon goes back even farther, to my first college road trip in 1982, when I saw them open for Talking Heads at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta.

I think most of the people I used to know around these parts either don’t live here anymore or don’t go out much. That’s not surprising; this is the first time I’ve gone to a show (or a bar, for that matter) since I moved back three years ago. I did, however, run into my faculty advisor from my undergraduate days at UNCG, which was sort of odd. I’d forgotten that he’d been in grad school in Athens in the early 1980s; he was all excited about seeing Pylon again. And we were both excited (relieved?) that there were people there who were even older than we were.

It was a great show, and when I left, it was cooler outside than it had been in a month, and there was a breeze, and I was walking around downtown Winston-Salem, and it was really nice, and I was thinking I really need to vary my pattern and do something other than the same old things once in a while. Not bars or shows specfically (I just can’t stay up that late and, well, I don’t drink), but just any sort of thing that I don’t ususally do. A change of routine is a good thing, especially for someone like me, who’s in danger of becoming exceedingly boring.

Rock and roll queer bars

The South of Market area was a pleasant enough place to drink (or debauch) for much of the 1990s, particularly if you were a Sodomite looking for a scene that was a little less antiseptic and generic than the Castro. Following ten years of AIDS paranoia in the 1980s, the final decade of the twentieth century brought a return to openness about sex and a renewed vigor to South of Market nightlife.

The really great thing about the 1990s, though, was that the universal soundtrack did not consist solely of the same stale old disco divas and other “high NRG” dance tracks that had defined (defamed?) the term “queer bar” seemingly since the dawn of time.

Starting with the Lone Star Saloon — which was, incidentally and accidentally, the first queer bar your humble host ever visited in San Francisco — there was actually music featuring guitars being played in South of Market nightspots.

There had been other rock and roll or “alternative” theme nights, of course, including Junk (one of my favorites) and Jesus at The Stud, and one whose name I can’t recall at some club in Upper Haight. And Michael Pandolfi had done some semi-regular sets at Detour in the Castro. But the Lone Star was the first queer bar in San Francisco to look at the genre as a regular everyday format.

And on 15 April 1994, the Lone Star’s stepchild opened its doors at Eighth and Harrison as the appropriately-named Hole in the Wall Saloon. This tiny bar, which had formerly been a nondescript joint called The Borderline, was soon to redefine nightlife south of the slot with live DJs spinning rock and roll, and an attitude to match. It started slow, and early on, it was possible to find yourself surrounded ny maybe no more than a dozen other patrons on a Friday night. But by 1996, there were lines out the door every weekend. Too many of those waiting in line, alas, were slumming yuppies of the “see and be seen” variety who just didn’t get the concept. All the same, I had a lot of very interesting and very intoxicated nights there. Of course, it helped that my roommate was a bartender.

Eventually, the owners of Hole in the Wall also took over the SF Eagle, finally ridding the famed leather bar of its dreary lineup of bad, muffled dance covers (did the world really need a disco remake of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”?). In the new space, they even hosted live bands on occasion, while both bars had live DJs most nights. My Place, which was more notorious for sex than rock and roll, also got into the act on certain nights when the right bartenders were working.

My Place is gone now, but as far as I know, the other three bars are still plugging along, although things never seemed quite the same after the gentrification of the late 1990s. The Lone Star moved more toward the whole generic bear bar thing, and was playing a disturbing amount of country music when I stopped caring about 2001. And I read of some controversy over a potential relocation of the Hole in the Wall Saloon last year, but I’m not sure if anything came of it or if the relocation ever happened. To be honest, I’m 3000 miles, and many years, away from all that now, and I don’t really care too much anymore. Heck, I don’t even drink anymore.

Ten Years in San Francisco

I’d spent the preceding night in Winnemucca, Nevada; it was the final overnight stop in my first cross-country automobile journey. I caught up on sleep, had dinner at Subway, and watched TV stations from Idaho and Reno.

Upon waking up on Monday morning, I set out for my new home. After stops in Reno and Vallejo where I attempted to contact the friends with whom I’d be staying, I found myself crossing the Bay Bridge at rush hour. I drove immediately to the Safeway on Market Street where I knew I’d find a parking space and a phone. Within half an hour, I was moving my stuff into a very small apartment a block from City Hall and I had a new home.

My God, has it really been ten years? Have I really spent more than a quarter of my life in this insulated little burgh where reality and common sense rarely intrude? I was so excited to have arrived in a place full of sex and food and interesting streets I’d never walked down and stores selling bizarre merchandise you couldn’t find in North Carolina.

A decade later, I’ve walked down most of those streets and many of the things which initially attracted me to San Francisco now repel me and make me want to leave. I’m no longer a long-haired idealistic twenty-something and I realize that San Francisco is no better or worse than most other big cities, although a part of me will always think of it as home.

Strangely enough, it was in 1996, when I started a website about the city, that I started to analyze it and realize that it wasn’t everything it claimed to be. The more I wrote about it, the more I realized it wasn’t nevessarily Mecca, and that it might not even be the place I wanted to spend the rest of my life.

The city has changed, although not as much as I might like to believe. Some things I miss:

  • My old, uncrowded, dumpy Safeway at 16th and Potrero, since replaced with a shopping center containing a Gap, an Old Navy, and a new mega-Safeway.
  • Mike’s Night Gallery, the only sex club I ever really loved.
  • The amazing Alhambra Theatre on Polk Street.
  • My old car, which someone torched in 1996.
  • The Emporium, the last of the big old school department stores which didn’t require a credit check or proper attire for browsing.
  • Live 105 when it didn’t suck.
  • Channel 20, when it was still a quirky independent station with the barking dogs and the Christmas fireplace log and “Streets of San Francisco” reruns.
  • The Chinese restaurant down the street, which is, predictably, a “live/work” loft now.
  • The old main library (believe it or not).
  • My excitement about the city.

Some things I’ll always remember about my ten years in San Francisco:

  • Drinking until 2AM, followed by four hours of alternating coffee and beer before going back out when the bars opened at 6AM.
  • The first time I had sex with twenty people watching.
  • My first semi-public birthday gathering at Tad’s.
  • The first time someone came up to me in a bar and asked me if I was “that Planet SOMA guy”.
  • Picking up a boy at the bus stop and being a half-hour late to work after dragging him back to my place and buggering him.
  • Experiencing my first earthquake while talking to my mom on the phone (while she was staying at a motel across town on her first visit).
  • Long walks.
  • Touching Jane Weidlin.
  • “That used to be a Safeway”.
  • Conjugal visits with Mark before he moved here.
  • The amazing sight of fog coming across Twin Peaks after the standard three days of heat.
  • Sanity breaks in Oakland and Fresno and Sacramento.

I’ve changed a lot too. I’m no longer scared of computers and I got to watch the “Internet Revolution” firsthand, where it happened. I’ve become a weather wimp who complains when the temperatures goes above 70 or below 40.

Politically and morally, I’ve become less of a leftist reactionary after realizing that unchecked (and unquestioned) dogma is just as damaging when it’s spouted by the left as by the right. I’ve become more of an independent thinker, and I’m less likely to scream “discrimination” where none really exists. And I never use the term “homophobia” unless I’m making fun of it.

I don’t drink until 3AM (or later) anymore, and I don’t roam sex clubs until the wee hours. My other activities are no longer dictated by my nightlife needs; I’m more functional and productive (and at more normal hours) and I actually get the dishes washed on a semi-regular basis. I spend more of my disposable income on books and DVDs than on clothes and booze.

I’m in love and living with the boy of my dreams, which is something I couldn’t have envisioned ten (or even two or three) years ago. And he seems to understand my need to flee the city every weekend.

Living in San Francisco for ten years has been a good thing for me, no matter how much my arguments seem to suggest otherwise. I don’t regret coming here; it’s provided a lot of entertainment and memories and it’s sharpened my critical thinking skills. And I’ve made some friends I intend to keep around forever.

My life would be much different if I’d stayed in North Carolina. I might never have seen Winnemucca.

Mid-April Memories

Mid-April through the years:

  • 17 April 2001: Solidly in the midst of the vacation from hell. This reminds me that it’s been a year since I saw my dad and since I met Becky.
  • 17 April 2000: Banking drama, a laundry excursion to Fresno, and semi-public sex with a cute long-haired boy in a porkpie hat. Hmmm. I’ll probably be doing laundry in Fresno this coming weekend too, and spending quality time with an even cuter boy, albeit sans porkpie hat. Or audience.
  • 17 April 1999: Air conditioner envy.
  • 18 April 1998: On being a hermit.
  • 12 April 1997: Returning from my first trip to Vegas.
  • 15 April 1992: My first journal entry written on a computer.

Me and Crowds

There are many things I was ambivalent about as a youth which I’ve learned to appreciate with age: collard greens, 1950s pop standards, etc…

There is one thing I’ve grown to hate more than anything else as I’ve gotten older: large crowds. Crowding has never been one of my favorite phenomena, but I used to put up with them occasionally if the event in question was worth the effort. No more…

It’s not that I have a phobia; I don’t get panic attacks or anything like that. I just get REALLY annoyed in crowds. I want to start shoving and elbowing when the flow of (pedestrian) traffic won’t move at a reasonable pace. And I start finding something to hate about everyone who gets in my way, or even looks like he MIGHT get in my way…

Crowds in bars are the worst, of course. Drunk idiots are statistically more likely to stumble into one’s path than sober idiots. And the M.O., at least in queer bars, seems to be “find the place where you can do the most damage to traffic flow and stand there with 12 of your closest friends for an hour or two”…

Of course, it’s no trick to get me annoyed anyway. I’m perpetually irritable and I’m quite comfortable with this fact, thanks. And my problem with crowds probably stems from the fact that I’m just not a “people person”. In other words, I tend to expect the worst out of most people I encounter, rather than the best. This tactic results in much less disappointment and even the occasional pleasant surprise…

Oddly enough, there was a time (say, 1985) when I was comparatively outgoing and even tolerated crowds pretty well. Then I spent ten years in customer service jobs and it was all over for me. I learned to see the worst in people simply because they all seemed so damned willing to show it. I haven’t waited on a customer in a retail store in over four years and I still haven’t recovered…

I may never go to a bar on a Saturday night, a sporting event, a parade, or a street fair again, and I really don’t think I’ll be missing all that much. Large crowds have a tendency to gather primarily to do things I’m not much interested in doing anyway…

Coming soon: why I hate crowds of Sodomites even more than I hate regular, all-purpose crowds…

Weekend Superlatives

Best way to kill off the better part of a Saturday: Thrift stores in Sacramento with Jamie, accompanied by copious amounts of Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne on the radio.Most entertaining disco song from my past heard in a queer bar I shouldn’t have been in: “High Energy” by Evelyn Thomas.

Most disturbing realization of the evening: I know the title and artist associated with the aforementioned song.

Second most disturbing revelation of the evening: I purchased the 12-inch in 1984.

Third most disturbing revelation of the evening: I still speak French passably well after a couple of beers.

Biggest disappointment of the night: Putting a boy I rather like into a cab at 8:00 because he started drinking way too early.

The Weekend

Hmmm. Let’s take stock of the weekend:

  • Created many ad banners for sex sites. It’s amazing how non-stimulating dirty pictures can be while you’re tweaking them and making them into phone sex ads.
  • Realized how odd it is that Jonno and I are both discussing phone sex ads today.
  • Kept trying to (a) minimize my sore throat and (b) figure out why I have one.
  • Pissed off a few people (perhaps justifiably) with what I believed was an innocuous comment about literacy levels and education in the south.
  • Watched a few “Streets of San Francisco” episodes while nodding in and out on the couch from the allergy medicine.
  • Vacuumed up all the remaining construction dust in my apartment.
  • Had dinner at the most miserable, useless Pizza Hut in the world with Dan and Jamie.

It seems like I accomplished much more than I really did…

On my mind moving into Monday:

  • Damned throat.
  • I’m glad I didn’t go out, pick up a boy, and stay up doing nasty things tonight like I did last Sunday.
  • I have heat again.
  • There’s really very little good daytime TV on the weekends.

San Diego to Thousand Oaks

We covered an awful lot of ground today, pretty much all of San Diego County (which is about the size of some New England states).

 

We started by eating breakfast (and watching cute butts in wetsuits) in Ocean Beach. The beach cities around San Diego look much more like beaches are supposed to than the ones in Northern California. And the boywatching is superb.

 

We drove north on old Highway 101 (which his been officially decomissioned south of LA) through La Jolla and Encintas and Carlsbad, and into Oceanside.

Loved Oceanside. I want to live there and eat only in diners from the 1950s, while having sex with skate rats every night. This probably isn’t going to happen. But I did get to stop at the tiki store…

 

We kept going, to Escondido and Ramona and Julian, and then back into San Diego via El Cajon and La Mesa. I got another tour down El Cajon Boulevard (always a wonderful thing) and probably my last cheap gas of the trip.

And then I departed for points north. I’d orginally planned to spend the night in either Long Beach or Van Nuys, but after annoying rain, annoyoung exits on the 405 which lacked cheap motels, and general crankiness, I ended up sleeping just south of Ventura in Thousand Oaks.

And damn, did I sleep…