Hey Bitches, I'm Back!

Hello San Francisco, good to see you, it's been too long.

I've been back in The City for about a week now, and walking around, not much seems to have changed in the two years I've been gone. Checking out club posters in the Castro yesterday I saw many of the same names, and same concepts, that were on those posters when I left, and my traditional watering holes had many of the same faces on both sides of the bar. But if not much has changed in the material world of gay SF during my exile years (putting aside the frankly confusing demise of The Eagle), I've been making the effort over the past few days to adjust my perceptual apparatus, to calibrate it back to that state when I first came to San Francisco in 1999, and perhaps see the same things differently. When I first came to San Francisco, fresh out of grad school and as desperately glad to be out of Atlanta as I am to be out of Baltimore now, there was a glamor that radiated from everyone and everything, and cast a spell of enchantment over me. For a while I was able to give up on being the skeptical, cynical East Coast intellectual and simply be enthralled by the spirit of the City, to find it all quite marvelous and fascinating. Over time, of course, those perceptions changed, and it was difficult, particularly by the time I left, to not find the rot at the center of the bloom.

Whether or not I can find a way to throw wide the doors of perception again, returning to a place should not also automatically entail a return to the same modes of being, falling back into the same comfortable attitudes and ideas. There are some mistakes I think I made during my last residence in SF, and some things I've had ample opportunity to ruminate upon during cold, dark nights in the Baltimore winter. I came back to San Francisco not necessarily to pick up where I left off, but to try and strike out in a way that's substantially new. I haven't really decided what to do with this blog yet, whether the way it focuses my attention, and upon what, is something that that will ultimately help or hinder my efforts in trying to find this new direction, but, for a little while at least, it continues to give me a good excuse for going out and seeing what there is to see.

Hey Bitches, I'm Back!

Okay, well, I'm not back *in* San Francisco just yet, but yeah, this summer, look for the return of the Jaded Gay DJ and SFScene. After a year and a half in Baltimore, and lots of personal upheaval (for example, the Boyfriend is now the Ex), I've decided to make the "bold" (as one of my colleagues put, it though "foolish" might be the better adjective) move of resigning a tenure-track job to come back to Sodom by the Bay for - well, I'm not sure yet, but I'm looking forward to the chance to find out.

Why, you might ask, would I do such a thing? Because on New Year's Day in San Francisco, in the middle of the dancefloor at Cafe Cocomo for the Stompy/Sunset party, dancing for the first time in months, hanging out with my friends, I realized that San Francisco is home, and no job, no matter how long one has worked to obtain it, is worth it if it takes you to place where all you feel when you're not working is boredom and loneliness. There are people who really dig Baltimore, and some who I expect thrive here, but it's not for me - weighed against the sensibility of staying in a stable job where, in three years, I'll have tenure, there is the fact that this is the first place I've ever lived where I considered going on anti-depressants. I can see the path before me in Baltimore pretty well, and I've seen where it's lead some of my colleagues, which is into a secure, stable, isolated, bitter existence. It's also clear to me that if I ever want a real opportunity to fall in love again, rather than just hoping that some accident of fate will bring it my way by means of Manhunt, I need to be in a place where I can meet and get to know the kinds of guys I want to have a relationship with.

There is plan, which brings me to San Francisco in July, and a place to stay for a couple months while I get on my feet, and for income there are some ideas but nothing dependable yet. SFScene will definitely be back, and I'm hoping it will appear under a sponsorship that will not ony increase the readership, but maybe pay for some nights out as well. I'm also hoping to channel a little more Michael Musto and a bit less Lester Bangs in my reportage. Meanwhile, keep watching this space for reports on the Baltimore scene (such as it is), and continuing episodes in The Return of the Jaded Gay DJ.

A Brief Update

It's been over a month since my last post, a period that's been, honestly, a bit depressing. Since being laid off I've spent a lot of time job hunting, creating the syllabi for my classes I'll be teaching in the Fall, and trying to work out the logistics of a cross-country move (cats, I should tell you, make everything more complicated). Although I have free time in abundance (a bit too much, honestly), I have not been taking too much advantage of my ability to stay up late and sleep in later, at least not in regard to going out. Since it's looking increasingly likely that I'll have to stretch the few funds I've accumulated and my unemployment checks until we leave in August, frugality has been my watchword, and it's hard to justify spending money on tickets, cover charges, and overpriced cocktails.

The boyfriend and I did catch Tipper at 1015 a few weeks ago (Tipper was great, the dubstep DJs who proceeded him not so much), and have plans for Gui Boratto at Paradise Lounge, Junior Boys at Bimbo's, and then back to Paradise Lounge for Superpitcher. Overall, though, it seems like there's not that much going on that makes me feel compelled to drop the bucks associated with a night out. Some of this can certainly be attributed to my need to detach myself a bit from the scene, but conversations here and there have made me think that I'm not the only person who finds the scene just a bit deflated right now.

When I went through 54 weeks of unemployment starting in the Summer of 2003 the situation was a bit easier to deal with, as I was spending a lot of time insinuating myself into the life of The City; if I didn't have work, I still had plenty to explore, people to meet, opportunities for hanging out. Now, though, as I'm in the process of disengaging, being unemployed is a pretty big bummer. Along with the usual depressive effects of being laid off and unable to find work, the drop-off in social engagement has begun to make me feel as if I've already left San Francisco, that I'm daily fading away as a presence in my social milieu.

I know that the street faire season kicks off soon, and I'm sure that clever Friscans will soon start coming up with recession-appropriate activities, all of which should provide me with an opportunity to beat my unemployment blues but, for the first time since moving here, I've begun to feel beaten down by The City.

Big News from the Jaded Gay DJ

It's been pretty quiet here at the scene since I got laid off - that happened on a Wednesday, I spent a couple days "in my cups," as they say, and then, the next Monday, just as I was getting ready for a Tahoe trip, I got the metaphorical life-saving phone call from the Governor - I was offered, and accepted, a tenure-track position as an Assistant Professor of English and New Media Studies with a university in Baltimore, Maryland. I left for a couple days, got a horrible cold, came back, and have been trying to regain my mental balance ever since. Hence, the silence that has descended over the blog; it's taken until today for me to figure out what to write about, since so much has been going on.

If the teaching job seems completely random, it's actually something I've been pursuing since October. Most folks who know me personally also know that I have a PhD, in comparative literature, and that I've taught at a big-name public university (as a Visiting Assistant Professor) and have published a few academic articles as well (mostly on Thomas Pynchon, and, in the theory realm, on systems theory and online communities). Since a friend of mine from grad school was on the search committee, and I had a good on-campus interview visit, I felt pretty confident of getting the job, it was just a matter of waiting for the committee to make the offer.

Given the layoff on Wednesday, Monday's news was good, though it raised a big question: what to do for the next five months before the boyfriend and I move? I had been banking (literally) on coasting through my old job until it was time to hit the road. Now my only option for making money was through contract or temporary work, and given the current state of the economy, and the paucity of jobs being posted on Dice and Monster, the situation was looking dire enough to require one of those dreaded phone calls to Mom. However, yesterday I got a call from a staffing agency about a three-month contract job, and now things are definitely looking better. If I had sat down to write this post yesterday, as I briefly considered doing, it would have been distinctly bleaker in tone.

And what about the blog? I plan on keeping it going until I leave, though it's probably going to get less of my attention between now and then. I'll continue to post about upcoming stuff that I think is interesting, and to write reviews, but mostly I'll be using it as a channel to reflect upon my San Francisco experience - I've now lived here longer than anywhere else in my adult life, and I think it's fair to say that San Francisco has shaped who I am to a large degree. I should be quick to add, however, that one of the reasons I sought out this job in Baltimore is that I, and the boyfriend, have been ready for a change in our lives for a while, and if I have learned anything living here, it's how hard this city can be despite the happy face it shows the world.

Layoff Blues, Part II

Well, it's happened again, and this time within 10 months of the last time - I got laid off. I hope to have some mitigating news in a week or so, but, in the meantime, if you all know anyone who needs a (technical) writer for a project, pass the word.

Burning Man Meditation: An Exercise in Solipsism

When I return from the playa I always have this feeling that I’m returning to civilization after several months in the bush; everything is familiar and expected, but I spend a lot of time wondering about why things the way they are, and wondering if they could be different. And, like the explorer who has gone a bit native, I wonder if I’m not more suited to life in the bush than I am life among my civilized peers.

Having made it through my third burn, I’ve given up, in some ways, on thinking of Burning Man as a significant, life-altering, culturally revolutionary event. It is, for me, simply an opportunity to have fun, absolve myself of certain quotidian responsibilities, and experience challenges that are more physical and material than intellectual in nature. For a few days every year I get to swing a sledgehammer and build things with a drill, eat camp-out cuisine and enjoy a beer with my morning eggs without any feelings of guilt. It is ultimately an exercise in solipsistic self-indulgence, and this is the reason why, for me at least, attempting to dress it up with themes and rhetoric that position it as a force of cultural movement ultimately seems hollow.

I think that just about everyone who goes to Burning Man wants to come back to the world feeling that something significant has happened to them, that a question they’ve been asking has been answered, that a new path has opened up before them, and if those things haven’t happened, then the event is a disappointment. I definitely felt that way the first time I went, and to a lesser extent the second time as well. But the problem is that life in the bush can only prove to you something about life in the bush; you can try to bring those ideas and lessons back to civilization with you, but if you try to bring the structures of one paradigm into another, you only generate un-resolvable conflict – I can only be depressed that civilized life isn’t bush life, and, eventually, give up on the civilized world.

Instead of expecting the Burning Man experience to change my life, I’ve come to look at it in the same way as I do New Year’s Eve, as a marker in time that provides an opportunity for rumination and resolution as I try to create change for myself. Having now passed through the portal of a New Burning, I’m ready to act on my resolutions.

This year, I have two things that I’ve been pondering. The first, as you all might expect, is the value of our “scene” and my own role in it. The second, slightly more personal problem, is what I want to be when I grow up.

Regarding the scene, I did have a moment of realization at Burning Man that has helped set my course. Lord Kook was throwing down a great set at Glitter Camp on Tuesday night when I spied PeePlay in the audience and started chatting with him. “Maybe now you can understand why I’m so down on the concept of ‘the scene’” I said to him, to which he replied “The scene is all about money.” Of course this is obvious, but when you’re deep into the scene and the who’s who if it, it’s easy to lose track of this basic idea. So, I realized at that moment that, as much as I enjoy music and DJing and the culture surrounding it, I really don’t like the scene. From this follows my first resolution, to scrap the whole idea of being a scenester, and instead be somebody who champions the things I find really interesting and creative. I had been chewing on this idea well before I left, but it took the experience of trying to be part of the scene, of playing certain games and exploring certain avenues, to make it clear to me (among those certain things, writing for Beatportal demonstrated for me the general emptiness behind so much of what passes for music journalism these days). Burning Man helped put a point on all this for me because, once you’re there, it’s about as anti-scene as you can get.

Regarding the issue of figuring out what I’m going to do with my life, I already had some strong ideas about this before setting off for the Burn, or at least some ways to approach the problem. If anything, Burning Man creates a situation that is much more open than others, one that lets you catch a glimpse of other possibilities, But if I hadn’t already been primed to think about these things, I doubt that Burning Man would have provided me with any kind of crystallizing experience. I went because I already have a dislike of the corporatized, regimented, capitalist world I have to live in on a daily basis, and want to experience something at least a little different for a few days every year; it’s not like going to Burning Man suddenly made me think about things in a way I never had before.

The thing about trips to the bush is that they remove constraints and let things within us come out that are normally hidden or repressed; sometimes those are good things, and sometimes, pretty often in fact, they’re bad. Events like Burning Man don’t change us in any way that wasn’t already potentially there, they just let us get to know ourselves a little better. When the dust has all been washed away, when we’ve settled back into the routine of work, the thing that endures is whatever we’ve learned about ourselves, for good and bad, and maybe the desire to be more of who we are during those few weeks out of every year.

Back from the Playa!

We rolled back into down on Saturday around midnight after leaving the playa at 4.20 in the midst of a crazy dust storm, and are still cleaning the dust out of our bodies and belongings. I'll be weighing in with some deep mediations in the next few days, but in the meantime the boyfriend has posted up some photos and commentary on his Livejournal blog you all might enjoy.

A Little Vacation from the Scene

Hey kids,

you might have noticed that I've not been posting much of late - in fact, I didn't post a Saturday Night Guide for last weekend, whoops! A major reason is that my new job has turned out to be really intense, and where, in my previous situation, I was often able to find time to write posts, now it's pretty much work-work-work all day long, and sometimes into the evenings as well.

Another reason, though, is that I'm feeling pretty burnt out on "the scene." If you know me, or you've been reading this blog for a while, you can probably figure out why. I've never been that much of a cheerleader for the scene, and I've had my moments of wondering what it's all about, Alfie, but lately it seems that I've slipped into an even more morose state of mind about things than usual. So, this tells me that it's time to take a break.

Now is probably a good time for that, since next weekend I'll be out of town for a lovely retreat with some Sisters and other friends in the Mendo mountains, and then the following week it's off to Burning Man. Taken together that likely means I wouldn't be posting much anyway, so I'm going to cut myself a little extra slack.

I might make a couple more posts in the meantime, and when I come back from Burning Man I might also start another blog with a somewhat different focus. Right now, though, I feel the need to step back a bit, think about some things (including why I write this blog in the first place), and decide what I want to do next. For all of you who've followed my adventures over the past year and a half, I hope you will continue to do so, whatever the next chapter might be.

SFScene on Vacation!

Hey kids,

well, after the madness of Pride I got on a plane Monday morning at 11.30 to make my annual pilgrimage back to the homestead, and right now am writing this entry from the den of my parent's house in Charlottesville, VA. I'm back on Friday, but I'm taking a week off from the blog, so you're all on your own for figuring out what to do this long weekend. I'll have the Pride after action report ready soon, but meanwhile, talk among yourselves.

500 Posts!

A memorable milestone, 500 posts as of Saturday! That's roughly a post a day for the slightly longer than a year that this blog has been running. Seems like a good time to take a moment and reflect on what a year this has been. I've certainly made some new friends through writing SFScene, and gained the enmity of a few people as well (I've been really quite surprised at how seriously people take the things I write, since I'm really not anybody special). It has given me good excuses for going out on the weekends ("I have to find something to write about for the blog") and has also, at times, been a real drag going out on the weekends, simply to find something to write about. I'm happy that San Francisco nightlife seems to have been gaining strength during the time I've been writing this, but also somewhat disappointed in the general lack of vitality that permeates the club scene - at best it seems that there's only enough of a market for nightlife to sustain two or three events on any given weekend evening. I still think that there's lots of room to develop the gay scene, especially when you look out and realize that there are only a small handful of people responsible for most of the gay nights in the city, and often they are only reiterating one of an even smaller number of themes or musical genres.

There have been a couple of times when I've considered giving up this blog - after the furry incident, for example, when I learned the error of taking on an entire Internet-enabled community - but I still like to think that I'm doing something, in some small way, that has an influence on San Francisco's cultural fabric, even if it's just by making other people aware of what's going on and what might be worth checking out. So, I think I'm going to try and tough it out for another 500 posts, taking some of what I've learned from the previous 500 to make this blog something that even more people will want to read. To those of you who've sent me emails, subscribed, and commented, thanks so much, I hope you'll continue on with me in this excursion into the San Francisco demimonde.

Layoff Blues

Well kids, I got hit for the second time in three years with the layoff bug today; I can't really say from where, but if you follow the tech headlines or blogs like TechCrunch, you can probably guess. At least I have 119 companions in this situation. Soooooo, if anybody out there knows of a place that needs a good writer, one with a background in technology, new media, blogging, web content development, information architecture, etc., do please drop me an email.

Back in the Saddle

Hey kids, you know what sucks? Viruses that aren't quite the flu, but are easily among the worst colds you have ever had. That's what I spent most of last week, and this weekend, contemplating, as I dosed myself with Nyquil, laid on the couch, listened to NPR, and futher discovered how nice it is to have a kitty curled up with you and purring when you feel truly awful.

As a result, I'm afraid I don't have much to report on for this past weekend; I did make it out for a drink at Bender, but I didn't have any real stamina for the events I really wanted to check out, like Audion at Mighty, or Boys Noize at Fat City. Sooooo, if any of you did make it out to something cool over the weekend, tell us about it in the Comments section so your fellow readers won't be deprived of their weekly dose of scene reportage.

San Francisco Disco Revival Up on Beatportal

Hey kids, I just posted a new entry on Beatportal about "the San Francisco Disco Revival," and I'm super-pleased with it. I've been working on it for almost two weeks (doing the links today took an hour alone), it's the first thing where I've been able to "interview" people (though via email), and it's my best attempt so far, in my opinion, to develop a more polished voice (and attitude) while still trying to answer the question of what it all means (and the potential implications of that). If you check it out and have any comments, please make them there, as it will help keep the entry alive for a little while longer and might spark some discussions with the larger global community that reads Beatportal.

And now a word from our sponsor . . . .

Hey kids, sorry I've not been providing more daily desktop reading material, but the jaded gay DJ has been feeling a bit more jaded than usual over the past couple weeks, and this past weekend I decided to go for some quiet time with home, hearth, friends and cat to try and revive my enthusiasm for the music and club scene. So far, I'm still feeling pretty "mopey," to use the generous term for my melancholic humour, but I hope that a nice Valentine's Day dinner with the boyfriend, a four-day weekend, and the Joakim/Glass Candy show at Fat City will restore me to a more sanguine temperment and the posts will begin to flow freely again. Meanwhile, I'm working on a post about the San Francisco Disco Revival for Beatportal (which might come as a suprise to long-term readers, given some of my past comments), and I hope that you might head over and check out my postings there if you really feel the need for some jaded gay club reportage.

Event Review: Sick at The Matador

Sometimes, after a long hard week, it's difficult to muster the energy and enthusiasm for a big night out. Sometimes you just want to find a dark, unpretentious bar where they'll pour you a strong drink, where you can hear some groovy music that sets your mind to wandering away from all that you've been dealing with, a space away from home where you can talk with your friends and unwind enough that when you leave, you feel refreshed and ready to take on something new. Thank God I found that space last Friday at The Matador on 6th Street during Sick, a minimal techno night that started up last November.

Last week was a rough one for yours truly, since I was not only dealing with the usual mental and physical exhaustion after two long and active weekends on the party circuit, but, in writing my review of Further Confusion 2008, I wound up sticking my hand down into a hole full of angry badgers. Links to that review wound up being posted on a Livejournal community, and all around on various boards and forums, so that by Friday I had the highest number of daily hits (351) that I've ever gotten on this site, and I found myself embroiled in defensive manuevers on several different boards at the same time; while some were supportive of what I had to say, there were those who also felt that the best response was to say what a terrible, stupid, vapid, nasty person I must be to have not had a good time at that event. Worse, I found that I had unintentionally offended a good friend of mine, resulting in a tense phone conversation on Thursday night. I wrote and wrote and wrote, trying to clarify and refine the things I had said in my earlier post in the hope of opening up a more constructive dialogue, but by Friday evening I felt like I was getting into an extended tennis match with several different machines shooting balls into my side of the court, and I quickly realized that I was just one person, while there hundreds of potential opponents. So, after dinner on Friday night I turned off the comments for my FC posts, cancelled the reply notification for the topics I was following on other boards, and decided that it was best to let those who agreed or disagreed with me battle it out on their own. After all that what I really wanted on Friday evening was to be out someplace where I didn't feel this nervous itch to log in and check my email. We already had plans to stop in and say hi to the folks at Lucky Pierre, but since The Matador was kinda on the way, I thought it might be nice to stop off and have a drink there; as it was, we wound up staying for three.

The Matador was known as The Arrow Bar in a former incarnation; I never went there, but I've heard stories about it being a dark, dirty, cavernous hole that was well-loved by the attendees of Frisco Disco when it was in that location. I'm pleased to say that the deep, dark hole aspect is still present, though the cave decor, if it was ever more than just a metaphor, is gone. The Matador seems to be one of those ancient San Francisco bars that has somehow just kept going through the decades; it's narrow but deep, with a bar running down most of its length to a small DJ/dance area in the back. The wooden and mirrored bar with the gold Deco accents put me in mind of a working man's saloon where you'd stop in for a belt on the way home, and the Spanish matador kitsch decor was just enough to bring some humor to the surroundings without being ovewhelming. The young Asian guy behind the bar poured us a couple stiff drinks, including a very reasonably priced ($7) Red Bull and Blueberry Stoli concoction, and eventually we wound up having a conversation about Freud.

I'm unsure how I first heard about Sick, though it's been going on since early November, another little mushroom popping up in the San Francisco techno garden. When we first arrived the music was on the knarzier side of the minimal spectrum, but the boyfriend and I both remarked on how wonderfully tight the mixes were. We had a drink and thought it would be cool to hang out for another, just to see where things went. The second DJ came on and, after a bit of a problem with getting the levels set, embarked on a nice journey into slightly more abstract but still groovy territory. The only track we recognized was Supermayer's "Two of Us," but that should give you some idea of the overall flavor of the set. We were thrilled that, not only were the drinks good and the music fine, but that the volume of music was low enough that we could have a real conversation while sitting at the bar. So, we ordered up a third round.

If we hadn't already been planning on going to Lucky Pierre I would have been quite content to hang out at The Matador all night, getting smashed and listening to techno. We arrived between 9.30 and 10.00, and left between 11.00 and 11.30, and during that whole time a few people came and went, but it was far from being crowded; it would be interesting to hang out later and see how that scene develops as the night goes on. Regardless of the crowd size, it's a great place to get a Friday evening techno fix (Sick happens every Friday between 9PM and 2AM, and there's no cover), whether you're out and about early and just want a pre-party drink, or you're looking for a nice atmopheric joint where you can settle in for the night.

Check Out My Posts on Beatportal!

As of today your's truly is the San Francisco correspondant for Beatportal, the content site associated with the Beatport music download service. My first post is up now, a brief history of the San Francisco club scene over the past eight years, with shout outs to some classic crews, the San Francisco Late Night Coalition, and other folks surely familiar to all you local yahoos. I've got several more posts in the queue, including overviews of the psytrance, techno, and gay scenes that you might want to check out. I'll still be blogging here about more local matters, while over at Beatport I'll be going for the broader picture of interest to the (woo-hoo!) global Beatportal audience.

Year End Wrap-Up

I think that sometime this morning, after having a chocolate chip pancake, two sausage patties, and a cup of coffee, I finally got over my holiday hang-over. Thursday morning I was still bleary from one last evening of indulgence after helping the Drunk and Horny crew clear out of their ill-fated occupation of The Gingerbread House, and the weekend's rain and power loss mostly inspired me to stay home and huddle in front of the TV.

Actually, I'm a little disappointed in myself when I look back over the holiday festivities; I had a whole calendar of events that I wanted to check out, and yet most of my party time was spent inside private residences. I did make it out to French Kiss on the Sunday before Christmas, though it was obviously an off-night, and also found myself at The Transfer for part of DJ Kidd Sysko's set at Big Top, though it was also not quite what I had mind for the night. Aside from a social call at Lucky Pierre this past Friday those were the only club events I made it to over the full thirteen days I had off. There was also helping out with the Comfort and Joy Solstice and Afterglow parties, and of course Drunk and Horny New Year's Eve, but I can't really say that I partied at any of those events. Instead, the boyfriend and I hosted an orphan's Christmas at our place, enjoyed hanging out with Jeff and Gary and other members of the DnH crew after clearing out the Gingerbread House, and had quite a nice early morning of tuning our third-eyes when we got back from the impromptu NYE party that the guys generously held when their original plans fell through. This isn't to say that I didn't engage in some serious indulgence over the holidays, and, in fact, I let loose so much that some New Year's resolutions were made as a result.

Looking back over the year it seems that this was the year in which the party scene picked up a little energy, even though the continuing economic conditions of the city are making it increasingly difficult to re-capture the freewheeling party lifestyle that ruled back in the glorious pre-dot-com days. Several new parties, like Lucky Pierre and Frisco Disco, demonstrated that there is still an underground energy that people respond to, and Honey Sound System almost single-handedly revived the otherwise moribund gay dance scene. At the same time, there were some notable losses, like the demise of the How Weird Street Faire and the cancellation of Halloween in the Castro, and there are continuing issues around mixed use spaces in SoMa and the ability of the Entertainment Commission to keep our nightlife alive in the face of encroaching condominium development.

Even with the party scene picking up a bit, though, there remains the question of whether there are really enough people going out to support it. On many occasions I have gone out to an event to find it almost completely empty, leading one to wonder if we have enough of a party population to support more than a few club nights. Under these circumstances it's hard to muster much excitement for going out, since it's often a case of the same people, the same music, the same scene week after week, and there's nothing so discouraging as spending our hard-earned dollars for taxi rides, cover charges, and overpriced drinks (and all the bars seem to have raised their prices as of January 1) only to realize that the night we gambled on has turned out to be a fizzle.

Looking into the New Year I realize that these are the weeks of slack, the times when everybody hunkers down a bit and gathers their world around them rather than going out into it. My hope for this new year is that we will see a little more excitement return to our scene, and that I will feel a bit more anticipation for the approach of the weekend. I hope that reading this blog will help each of you find an adventure of your own, and I hope that the boyfriend and I will be able to show you a good time at Fuck Shit, Let's Dance. And finally, sometime this week let's all find a moment to raise a glass and say "So long, George Bush, and don't let the door hit your ass on the way out."

Listening to Bob Mould on City Arts and Lectures

This past Sunday I caught the Bob Mould interview on City Arts and Lectures on KQED, part of their Talking Music series. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a taped version of this on their website, but there were some cool stories about Bob's days with Husker Du and their crazy tours, including a long stopover here in SF while they crashed at Jello Biafra's place.

It was a thought-provoking experience to listen to this on an afternoon when I was intending to go to a disco night later in the evening, since, when Bob talked about wanting to get rid of "that music" on the radio, he was making an oblique reference to the disco and pop tunes of the late 70s and early 80s that dominated the charts. I really didn't get into punk music until about 1984, and discovered Husker Du following the release of Zen Arcade, but listening to Bob made me think about how we followed similar paths - angry small town boys who first found an outlet for our feelings in punk music, and who also came around to dealing with our sexuality through that same scene. I remember when Bob was outed by Spin, and then the sudden uptick in Queercore bands like Pansy Division and queer punk zines coming around at the same time.

It's interesting to think about the difference a few years would have made in the identifications I had with the gay world. I was still in high school in rural Virginia when AIDS was identified, and by the time I had gone through college and begun investigating the gay scene a whole generation of men who had experienced that first wave of gay liberation and danced in the discos had been wiped out. Those who survived and came after them brought with them a lot of anger, as I did, over everything from the political climate to the way AIDS patients were being treated. When I hung out with guys in ACT-UP in Baltimore, they didn't listen to disco, they listened to Fugazi and Husker Du and Minor Threat, Nirvana and Ministry. We had pretty typical second-generation attitudes toward the first generation of out gay men, in that we saw their culture as stifling and traditionalist, and wanted to make things for ourselves. When I wanted to scope boys I didn't go the gay bars, but to rock shows and goth/industrial clubs.

Bob Mould and I are pretty much products of the atmosphere in which we came out; while the mood of the 7os generation might be characterized as happy and liberated, our generation felt angry and oppressed. Then, by the mid-90s, all those queer punks found that the second movement we had mobilized had lost its teeth, settling now for issues like marriage and military service, things we vehemently opposed. I guess it makes sense that disco is now undergoing this tremendous revival both here in SF and, from what I've heard, in New York; it evokes happy memories for an older generation, and connects the most recent with a gay identity that seems to offer more radical opportunities for self-expression. It is somewhat galling to think that the gay culture that I and my friends rejected has now re-emerged as a dominant cultural force, while the main accomplishment of our anger and political motivation has been to create a class of gay bourgeoisie, and this, I must admit, accounts for at least some of my own attitude toward the disco aesthetic. And then there are the times when I look around at the current state of the gay scene and I just feel like a curmudgeon, much in the same way as that first generation of gay men must have felt when they encountered my generation and realized that there had been a tremendous shift in values and aesthetics that had taken place without their realizing it.

Bob Mould is still putting out albums, but it seems that he's changed a lot since I last saw him do a solo acoustic show at a small bar in Baltimore; he's now DJing are regular night in DC and New York called Blowoff, and I noticed that on his myspace page, one of his friends is the Service Members Legal Defense Fund. It also seems that Bob has traded in his punk identity for being a bear; I didn't even recognize his current physical incarnation from the husky, intense, geeky guy I watched with rapt attention. I'm glad that Bob has found a way to re-define himself as he starts creeping up on 50; it's pretty hard to maintain that angry energy your entire life without turning into a total crank. I'm a little disappointed in looking at their setlists; maybe I'd like it better if I was actually listening to it, but it seems a bit like a repudiation of the punk aesthetic for pretty mainstream stuff. But at least Bob has found a way to position himself in relation to contemporary gay culture, something that, for all of us, becomes much more difficult as the years pass.

The Long Thanksgiving Weekend

Thanksgiving is a hard holiday for all those San Francisco residents who are émigrés from elsewhere; it’s the one time of the year when you might reasonably be expected to make the expedition to see your family, however they may be defined, while, on the other hand, anybody who has experienced the long cattle drive of holiday travel might be more inclined to hunker down and wait out the whole weekend with a stock of food and booze. The pull between these two directions leaves the city seeming somewhat hollowed out over the long weekend, and the faces you see when you do go out are just as likely to belong to someone visiting their Uncle Bruce as they are to an actual resident.

I had five days off to look forward to over this holiday weekend, and I went into them thinking that I had a good idea of how they would pass; stock up on food, booze, and pot, hit a couple parties, maybe get a little crazy. Instead I found myself drawn more to the comforts of the hearth and wound up cooking a steak dinner, getting a Christmas wreath for the front door of the apartment, and, god help me, becoming a cat-owning gay resident of the Castro.

Wednesday evening the boyfriend and I were in total agreement for what we wanted: to go out anywhere. We started prowling the Castro around 9.00 PM and were drawn into The Bar by the sound of some decent club electro from DJ PB, who was warming up the crowd for Juanita More’s Booty Call party. It was a surprisingly lively crowd, though I suppose all of us who were there didn’t really have anything to do the next day. The boyfriend wound up talking to a guy from Sacramento who was visiting, and after two drinks we decided to hook up with our friend Matt and see what was happening at The Transfer. We were a bit surprised when we got there by both the sparseness of the crowd and the sound of dub step coming out of the sound system. We had a drink while we waited for Matt to arrive, but since we were feeling self-conscious about being the only guys there not wearing black hoodies, we decided to head back to The Bar. On the corner of Market and Fillmore we ran into Gary of Jeff and Gary fame, passed some time with him and other denizens of Drunk and Horny at an apartment across the street, then headed back to The Bar. After our experience at Juanita More’s Playboy I was somewhat hesitant about another of her parties, but this time the music was much better and the mixing somewhat improved; in fact, Juanita sounded tighter than both the DJ who preceded her and the one who followed, and was considerably better than when we last heard her at The End Up. We hung out for a few more drinks and then stumbled our way home. In retrospect this was the best evening of the entire weekend; the boyfriend and I had the pleasure of one another’s company, we set out looking for adventure and had spontaneous fun with our friends, and when we went home, it was with a feeling of satisfaction that we had found what we wanted for the night.

Thursday the plan had been to visit some friends in the Outer Richmond prior to dinner, come back, cook for ourselves, and head over to Gobble at Temple. Plans that require a lot of activity tend to go astray, however, after many bottles of champagne and a delayed, then sedating, dinner. At 4PM we thought we had better be going, but since “dinner is almost ready,” we decided to stick around to sample the delicacy of Tur-Duck-Hen. At 6.30 we finally sat down to eat, and after our trek at 8.00 PM to find a cab in the wilds of 45th and Geary, we decided we had had enough of socializing for the night, came home, watched an episode of Family Guy, and passed out. Lameness, thy name is mine.

Friday was the day of false anticipation; as some readers made me aware, the all night Disco Party at Mezzanine, for which we have tickets and were expecting this past Friday, is actually this coming Friday, so we went with the back-up plan of Honey Sound System at The Transfer. We arrived early and had a nice chat with Ken Vulsion about their inheritance of a record collection from one of the founders (along with Sylvester) of Magnetone records, which not only includes vinyl but actual session tapes. They will be debuting some of these finds at an upcoming part, but Friday Ken gave a little tour through disco to whet the appetite. I must admit that I still find it hard to listen to disco; hearing Rod Stewart’s “Passion” on Friday night brought back a number of unfortunate memories associated with high school and the Solid Gold TV show, but I will say that, of the various DJs in this city I’ve heard playing disco, Ken certainly is among the best for knowing how to put all those complicated, and often quite cruddily mastered, mixes together. We listened to part of Josh Cheon’s set, but nothing was really making us move, and the crowd was a little odd – I kept having the feeling that the kids there had come thinking that it was Frisco Disco, and several people we had expected to see never showed. We wound up calling the same guys we had hung out with on Wednesday night to see what they were up to – which, as it turned out, was a night of stimulated conversation. We hung out, had some drinks, got a little stimulated ourselves, but still turned it in by a respectable 1AM.

After three successive days of vacation, Saturday arrived and we didn’t really know what to do with ourselves, nor was there anything really compelling on the club schedule. The boyfriend had a cold, and after hanging out with some producer friends, eating a steak dinner, and soaking in the hot tub, he was ready to call it an evening at 10.30. I, on the other hand, had been offered some after-dinner digestive powder, and was feeling restless – I wasn’t exactly in a mood to go out and party, nor did I really have anyone to go out with, but I also didn’t feel like playing Xbox until I was ready for sleep. I compromised by taking a walk to return a video, thinking I would find something along the way. I checked into The Bar, but it was already more crowded than I was interested in dealing with; the same was true of Frisco Disco, and since my haircut didn’t match up with those of the other kids in line, I got the sense it wasn’t exactly my scene (which seems to have been proved true by a reader report of the evening). I stood on the corner of Filmore and Market for a few moments, contemplating my options, before finally turning and heading up to Drunk and Horny at Underground SF, thinking that I could at least hang out with a few people I might know there.

Unfortunately, Drunk and Horny proved to be more depressing than simply staying home. Though I am good friends with many of the folks involved with that party – Sparky had been one of the people eating dinner with us previously in the evening – I really cannot relate to that particular scene. I’ve spent a lot of time wondering why this is; it’s certainly lively, there are lots of guys who are having a good time, and on this occasion there was a go-go boy with a Mohawk, loincloth, and hot tribal tattoos that would normally make me drool – but every time I go there I feel this sense of distance between myself and everyone else. I think this may be because Drunk and Horny has been very good at crafting a high-school/collegiate vibe that, in the end, makes me feel kinda old and lame. This is largely because of the music; either it’s good-time party standards that make me remember my own high school dances, or it’s contemporary “urban flava” that is all the stuff that became popular after I left college. Thus, musically, I get caught in space that either make me feel old, or out of touch. If I had felt moved to dance, and perhaps flirt a bit, I probably could have passed a couple hours there and gone home feeling well-spent, but as it was it only added to the out-of-synch feeling that dogged me throughout the night – I was out of synch with the boyfriend, who was tired and out of sorts and wanted an early bedtime, I was out of synch with the crowd at Drunk and Horny, and I left feeling out of synch with the whole vibe of gay San Francisco on a Saturday night. I went home to the last resort of many gay men who find that their Saturday has not gone quite the way they would like; I checked out some online porn, took care of business, had a drink and a Vicodin, and passed out on the couch watching episodes of Futurama.

When Sunday dawned I was still feeling kinda geeked out from the night before, but this was the day of the kitty. On my way to feed a friend’s cat, I got a call from the boyfriend, who had gone to the gym, telling me that there was a cat rescue service with kittens down at Castro and 18th. Our plan had been to go check out the kittens at Macy’s, but after he called I knew exactly how the day would turn out. Sure enough, by 3PM we had obtained an Abyssinean kitten (now named Disco Biscuit, Disco to his friends, Mr. Biscuit to you), I had had my first experience in a Castro pet store (nothing will make you feel more bourgeois, I assure you), and our friend Kitty had come over to meet our newest family member. Up until that point I had been firmly determined to check out French Kiss at Pink that evening, but now, staying home and bonding with my new friend seemed more important, and more appealing, than another night out on my own.

I had Monday off, and it was a day of reflection. I had started the weekend with definite party agenda, but, in the end, had only really gone out to one event on it. Instead, it was the spontaneous moments of going exploring with the boyfriend, meeting up with friends to hang out in their or our apartment, and those moments of bonding around our new kitten that had seemed the most satisfying to me. When I thought about how unhappy I had been on Saturday night, I realized it wasn’t because I had gone out by myself – I’ve done that often enough, and the boyfriend even thinks that my spirit of adventure in doing so is an admirable quality – but because I had felt so sunk down within myself. I had wanted connection, and fun, and adventure, and instead I only wound up feeling alienated. It put the point to something that I’ve felt for a long time – that the only reason for going out is to have that sense of connection to others through the sharing of experience; when going out is just about “making the scene” it’s an ultimately shallow experience. You’re there, but that’s it, and in your “thereness” you realize just how alone you are (the being of being in being is awfully painful, as you Heideggerians know). If there’s good music and dancing I can feel myself in connection with something else, and with other people, but if all that I’m doing is standing around with a drink in my hand, then I might as well go home. As another long holiday approaches I hope I’ll have more opportunities for experiences that bring me closer to others, whether they’re in a club or just hanging out with the people I want to know.

The Best Laid Plans

Saturday night Kitty, the boyfriend and I all had tickets to go hear Superpitcher at Temple. It was one of those last-minute things that I put together on Thursday, thinking that a) it would be cool to hear Superpitcher, even though I’m not that huge a fan b) it would be a good chance to check out this new club. As it turned out we didn’t make it, for a combination of reasons that Kitty aptly summed up later in the evening as “our passive-aggressive way of saying we don’t want to go,” and which made me think more about the balance of expenditure and reward involved with being an active clubber.

I should preface by saying that I’m usually only good for one big night out a weekend, unless I have substantial chemical assistance, but that kind of weekend is something I can only manage psychically and physically on a quarterly basis, if that often. Friday night at Heat was a big night for the boyfriend and I; we certainly drank enough, and were both really tired after walking halfway there from the Castro, dancing all night, and then walking halfway back. I had to get up and out the door on Saturday to finish a couple large homework assignments, and when I went back to the bedroom to say goodbye, the first works the boyfriend spoke to me were “I don’t think I’m going to want to go out tonight.” The stage was thus set for at least part of the play that would unfold later in the evening.

Whenever the boyfriend decides to stay home it puts a bit of a damper on my party spirit, for reasons I hope are obvious. I love going out with my friends and have had some great nights without the boyfriend, but for a party like this, where I was unsure of how things would go, having him along makes a big difference to me, if for no other reason than having yet another person I can kvetch with. I thus went through the rest of my hungover day, trying to solve a Javascript homework assignment through the use of pure brute force, feeling like I actually just wanted to stay home and play with our new Xbox 360.

Kitty came over early and we all ordered Indian food, which would turn out to the major source of the evening’s undoing. After dinner, in prep for going out, Kitty also treated himself to a party favor. I suspected that this would turn him into a bowl of jelly in about three hours, at which time we would either have to find a good chill space to pass the time at the club, or leave. Since I was going “sober” for the evening I was a little anxious about managing this aspect of things, which may have contributed to what happened next; not suspecting anything was wrong I went into the bathroom and, instead of doing what I thought I was going to do, I threw up dinner. Twenty minutes later, the boyfriend was in the bathroom experiencing some gastrointestinal issues of his own. By this time it was about 9.30, right when I thought we should be leaving, and right about the time that Kitty was beginning to feel some effects. I sat, he sat, we all sat and waited to see what would happen with our respective systems. Around 10 I puked again, but by 10.30 was thinking well, maybe if I can get some air and walk around without getting sick, I’ll make it. So we took a stroll down to 24th and Noe, and by the time we got back I was like “yeah, right, okay, I’m ready to go now.” At which time Kitty said “I just need to sit down and collect myself for a few minutes.” Well, a few minutes turned into about three hours, during which we hung out and watched The Simpsons movie instead of going to hear Superpitcher.

On the one hand, I felt really, really lame – I mean, I couldn’t get it up to get out on a Saturday to hear a major recording artist in my favorite genre of music? But I also realized that I really didn’t want to go out, and the reasons had as much to do with what I anticipated for the evening as they did with the general crappiness I felt after throwing up bad Pakistani/Indian food. The main negative anticipation was about money; I knew that on Friday night I had pretty much blown my budget for the weekend, though I had only bought about six drinks (not all for me), and paid for a cab there. Knowing that I would have to take a cab there and back for a total of about thirty bucks, plus probably about four drinks at downtown prices, made my wallet start to hurt. The other major negatave anticipation was about just being tired; I’ve been to enough of these “until after hours” shows with big names to know that they don’t usually put the headliner on until about 2AM, meaning at least 4AM until I got home. And then I was worried that we would go through all this to get down there, only to find it kind of a lame show, or we would variously be unable to deal with the situation (this is a club with bottle service, after all) and turn around and come back after only an hour or two.

Against these negative anticipations I had very little in the way of positive ones, and this is what made me realize something important about the nature of club life for me; the negative anticipations are usually countered by the ease of the situation, and the amount of effort required to participate. If I know that it’s just about dressing up, going out, hanging with my friends, dancing, and coming home when I’ve had enough, then I can overcome a lot of inertia to get myself out the door. But when expense, difficulty in getting to the club, and the potential of dealing with a non-fun situation comes up, I find it harder to motivate myself. In general, I prefer the smaller club party over the big celebrity hoe-down because it’s easier to match my expectations against what actually goes on. Though the boyfriend and I agree that we want to go out and hear more live music, which generally qualifies as a big event, there’s a different relationship to the event when it’s about a live performance, rather a big name DJ.

The other factor, of course, is that I just wasn’t excited about this event, and I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about why that was. When I used to go out to undergrounds on an almost weekly basis I was always excited, mainly because I had some idea of what to expect, but also because going to those events made me feel like part of a community. Going out to a big club night makes me feel like a sheep about to be fleeced; the bottom line is always about how much money can be extracted from you while you’re inside, and this why they do things like not putting the headline on until late – the longer you’re there, the more you’ll drink. On this occasion, despite my interest in the peformer, I just wasn’t that enthusiastic about the idea that he was largely the magnet for attracting all the money out of my pocket.

I’ve pretty much avoided the big club scene for a while now; I can’t remember the last time I was at 1015, I’ve never been to Ruby Skye, and I don’t know that I’ll make it to Temple any time soon. Instead, I think I’ll turn my attention back to those small events where I feel more like I’m taking part in something, where my presence means more than just another fifty bucks in the bar till, and where there is enough anticipation of something fun, innovative, and exciting to get me out the door even after I’ve barfed twice.