The boyfriend brought this to my attention, and it looks pretty interesting; at the very least, it should provide a perspective on San Francisco techno and electro that doesn't rely on the usual suspects and what we've come to expect from them.
In The Dark Room at Club 6
Voltage Music Presents:
The First Annual Afrotek Festival
Celebrating The Bay's Best Live Soulful Electronic Music
Brokenbeat | Techno | Futurefunk | Electro | Drum & Bass
Performing Live:
Blaktroniks
Jaswho?
Replife
Douglas Pagan
On The Decks:
Leathal DJs Paul And Christopher Leath
Price $5 before 11pm
Time 9pm-2am
Club 6, 60 6th Street
Showing posts with label Club 6. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Club 6. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Friday, October 24, 2008
City Enacts New Noise Control Ordinance
According to this article in the SFGate, The City has enacted a new noise control ordinance for the first time since 1973. The interesting part is down toward the bottom of the article:
The EC has been complaining for a while now that they don't have any real enforcement tools, but I wonder exactly how this is going to play out. I think this does not bode well, for example, for Club 6, and gives any neighbor a way to harass other clubs out of existence.
Noise violations would become infractions instead of misdemeanor offenses, which officials believe will make enforcement easier. The city's Entertainment Commission would for the first time have authority to regulate low-frequency bass and drum noise.
The EC has been complaining for a while now that they don't have any real enforcement tools, but I wonder exactly how this is going to play out. I think this does not bode well, for example, for Club 6, and gives any neighbor a way to harass other clubs out of existence.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Pondering the State of the Scene
This past Friday the boyfriend and I went down to The Stud for the Shadowplay reunion party, which also served as the ending party for Lucky Pierre and Heat, which had previously occupied two of the The Stud’s Friday night slots. We had a good time, but I wound up spending most of my mental energy running through the catalog of other nights that have ended this year, and what this might mean for the current shape of our scene.
So far this year I’ve seen the end of The Workout, Frisco Disco, and (though they’re not officially done yet) Lights Down Low for the indie/electro/bloghouse scene; The Grind, Fag Fridays, Big Top, Drunk and Horny, Lucky Pierre, Basket, and Trannyshack for the gay scene; Heat, and (again, looking ahead to the closing of Club 222), Techno Tuesdays, and the end of the regular Dirty Bird parties at Anu among the more music-centered nights.
Of course everything is cyclical, the club industry is founded on whim and trend, and eventually more nights will come forth to replace the ones that have passed (it looks like Richard Oh?! and Sleazemore are just moving their scene to Vessel, for example, but on a Wednesday night). But it does give one pause when you look at the present state of things. The gay scene is looking increasingly like the same thing being iterated over and over again; bear party, circuit party, top 40/hip hop night, neo disco party, drag cabaret, lather rinse repeat. And while it’s gratifying to see techno, or at least tech-house, gaining in popularity among the straight set, it’s also difficult to rouse any sense of excitement for heading to yet another party at Mighty or Mezzanine.
There are certainly people doing interesting things within their own scenes; Kontrol, Auralism, and Staple are helping build the techno/tech-house scenes, Honey Sound System has brought underground energy back to the gay scene, and even the couple times I’ve been to Bearracuda the DJs showed a musically adventurous streak. But it feels like San Francisco nightlife is contracting, rather than growing, with a limited number of event producers taking the same ideas around to the increasingly limited number of venues that are available. When I first started this blog it was with a sense of excitement about what I would find as I prowled the clubs and bars of San Francisco. Now, as I put together the weekend events calendars, I find it very difficult to work up enthusiasm for much of anything; the word that comes to mind most often is “stale.”
I’ve devoted endless conversations to this topic, trying to put my finger on what combination of factors has led to this situation, trying to determine if my own jadedness has finally taken over completely, if we are truly in the midst of shift in San Francisco culture, or some combination of both. I don’t doubt that my own experiences in clubland have had an impact on me over the past year, nor do I doubt that the economy has had an impact as well. I also don’t know if I really have enough breadth of experience to talk about San Francisco nightlife as a whole, since I know that there are some clubs and scenes, like drum’n’bass nights at Underground SF, and dub nights at Club 6, that seem to be doing quite well. I do know that at the meeting of the Entertainment Commission to discuss the promoter permits I heard promoters from across the spectrum express the sentiment that San Francisco nightlife is in trouble, but the very circumstances of that gathering might have prompted the participants to paint a picture of the club scene in gloomy tones.
So gang, tell me what you think: is the scene slowing down, or is it just me? Are there things you get excited about, or do you also find yourself thinking that drinking at home with friends is more appealing than dashing off to the club? When you go out, what are you looking for, and what do you find? I really want to know, cuz I need some inspiration.
So far this year I’ve seen the end of The Workout, Frisco Disco, and (though they’re not officially done yet) Lights Down Low for the indie/electro/bloghouse scene; The Grind, Fag Fridays, Big Top, Drunk and Horny, Lucky Pierre, Basket, and Trannyshack for the gay scene; Heat, and (again, looking ahead to the closing of Club 222), Techno Tuesdays, and the end of the regular Dirty Bird parties at Anu among the more music-centered nights.
Of course everything is cyclical, the club industry is founded on whim and trend, and eventually more nights will come forth to replace the ones that have passed (it looks like Richard Oh?! and Sleazemore are just moving their scene to Vessel, for example, but on a Wednesday night). But it does give one pause when you look at the present state of things. The gay scene is looking increasingly like the same thing being iterated over and over again; bear party, circuit party, top 40/hip hop night, neo disco party, drag cabaret, lather rinse repeat. And while it’s gratifying to see techno, or at least tech-house, gaining in popularity among the straight set, it’s also difficult to rouse any sense of excitement for heading to yet another party at Mighty or Mezzanine.
There are certainly people doing interesting things within their own scenes; Kontrol, Auralism, and Staple are helping build the techno/tech-house scenes, Honey Sound System has brought underground energy back to the gay scene, and even the couple times I’ve been to Bearracuda the DJs showed a musically adventurous streak. But it feels like San Francisco nightlife is contracting, rather than growing, with a limited number of event producers taking the same ideas around to the increasingly limited number of venues that are available. When I first started this blog it was with a sense of excitement about what I would find as I prowled the clubs and bars of San Francisco. Now, as I put together the weekend events calendars, I find it very difficult to work up enthusiasm for much of anything; the word that comes to mind most often is “stale.”
I’ve devoted endless conversations to this topic, trying to put my finger on what combination of factors has led to this situation, trying to determine if my own jadedness has finally taken over completely, if we are truly in the midst of shift in San Francisco culture, or some combination of both. I don’t doubt that my own experiences in clubland have had an impact on me over the past year, nor do I doubt that the economy has had an impact as well. I also don’t know if I really have enough breadth of experience to talk about San Francisco nightlife as a whole, since I know that there are some clubs and scenes, like drum’n’bass nights at Underground SF, and dub nights at Club 6, that seem to be doing quite well. I do know that at the meeting of the Entertainment Commission to discuss the promoter permits I heard promoters from across the spectrum express the sentiment that San Francisco nightlife is in trouble, but the very circumstances of that gathering might have prompted the participants to paint a picture of the club scene in gloomy tones.
So gang, tell me what you think: is the scene slowing down, or is it just me? Are there things you get excited about, or do you also find yourself thinking that drinking at home with friends is more appealing than dashing off to the club? When you go out, what are you looking for, and what do you find? I really want to know, cuz I need some inspiration.
Monday, June 9, 2008
Event Review: Honey Soundsystem Presents Stefan Goldmann at Club Six
Honey Soundsystem’s party with Berlin producer Stefan Goldmann at Club Six this past Friday was a bit disappointing, attendance-wise, for reasons I suspect having to do with it being in competition with Gentleman’s Techno as well as the location of Club Six, but the music was stellar, in a space that was almost perfect for evoking the vibe of a Berlin techno club.
The boyfriend and I arrived around 10, during Ken Vulsion’s set. He laid down some solid four-on-the-floor acid tracks, including some stuff that I suspect was first issued a decade ago, but it still sounded fresh and engaging, and was some of the best techno I’ve heard since his set at FSLD last month. Unfortunately, I don’t think there were more than fifty people in the club at the time to hear it. When Jason Kendig came on around midnight and dug into some deeper, Detroit-style techno, there was a small dancefloor of about twenty or thirty people, but not nearly the kind of crowd I had expected.
Some of the issue may have been with the party taking place at Club 6, which does not have the best reputation in the club world, mainly because it’s on Sixth Street, and is generally unfamiliar territory for many of the gay boys who make up the core of the Honey Soundsystem constituency. I hadn’t been there for several years myself, but the downstairs space was just about perfect, with plenty of lounge areas off the main dancefloor and a really fabulous sound system. There was the matter of the $8 well drinks, but I would be happy to check out more parties there.
The boyfriend and I took off around 12.30 after getting a text from our friend J, who we met up with over at The Stud, so we missed out on Goldmann’s set. I’m hoping that more folks showed up after we left, but when we got over to The Stud, which was hosting Lucky Pierre, we found a small crowd there as well, leading us into endless speculation about the state of the club scene. It does seem that there is a much smaller audience for DJ-oriented nights these days, such that if you have two techno events on the same night, one winds up cannibalizing the audience for the other. But, in general, it also seems that that the comment made by Joshua J in a conversation we had several weeks ago holds true, that people generally go to a party not necessarily because of the music, but because of the kind of scene they expect to find there, and when it comes to gay club nights, where they expect to find the kinds of guys that they are into. Any night that focuses on bringing in specific kinds of guys, whether they’re muscle boys, bears, Asians, or whatever, will always have a higher turnout, regardless of the music, than music-focused nights, because they offer a well-defined product for their consumers. Music-focused nights, on the other hand, are about appealing to a different expectation of experience, one that’s harder to sell to a sex-focused market. If HSS had advertised “hot go-go boys” or "baby oil wrestling" for the Stefan Goldmann party I have no doubt that they would have attracted more of a gay clientele, but that would have also shifted the focus of the event and made the music something that was simply there to support the prospect of sex. If focusing on the music means getting a smaller, but more enthusiastic, crowd, then I think that’s an acceptable trade-off, and I hope that groups like Honey Soundsystem will continue to bring us more music-focused events despite the somewhat discouraging attendance numbers.
The boyfriend and I arrived around 10, during Ken Vulsion’s set. He laid down some solid four-on-the-floor acid tracks, including some stuff that I suspect was first issued a decade ago, but it still sounded fresh and engaging, and was some of the best techno I’ve heard since his set at FSLD last month. Unfortunately, I don’t think there were more than fifty people in the club at the time to hear it. When Jason Kendig came on around midnight and dug into some deeper, Detroit-style techno, there was a small dancefloor of about twenty or thirty people, but not nearly the kind of crowd I had expected.
Some of the issue may have been with the party taking place at Club 6, which does not have the best reputation in the club world, mainly because it’s on Sixth Street, and is generally unfamiliar territory for many of the gay boys who make up the core of the Honey Soundsystem constituency. I hadn’t been there for several years myself, but the downstairs space was just about perfect, with plenty of lounge areas off the main dancefloor and a really fabulous sound system. There was the matter of the $8 well drinks, but I would be happy to check out more parties there.
The boyfriend and I took off around 12.30 after getting a text from our friend J, who we met up with over at The Stud, so we missed out on Goldmann’s set. I’m hoping that more folks showed up after we left, but when we got over to The Stud, which was hosting Lucky Pierre, we found a small crowd there as well, leading us into endless speculation about the state of the club scene. It does seem that there is a much smaller audience for DJ-oriented nights these days, such that if you have two techno events on the same night, one winds up cannibalizing the audience for the other. But, in general, it also seems that that the comment made by Joshua J in a conversation we had several weeks ago holds true, that people generally go to a party not necessarily because of the music, but because of the kind of scene they expect to find there, and when it comes to gay club nights, where they expect to find the kinds of guys that they are into. Any night that focuses on bringing in specific kinds of guys, whether they’re muscle boys, bears, Asians, or whatever, will always have a higher turnout, regardless of the music, than music-focused nights, because they offer a well-defined product for their consumers. Music-focused nights, on the other hand, are about appealing to a different expectation of experience, one that’s harder to sell to a sex-focused market. If HSS had advertised “hot go-go boys” or "baby oil wrestling" for the Stefan Goldmann party I have no doubt that they would have attracted more of a gay clientele, but that would have also shifted the focus of the event and made the music something that was simply there to support the prospect of sex. If focusing on the music means getting a smaller, but more enthusiastic, crowd, then I think that’s an acceptable trade-off, and I hope that groups like Honey Soundsystem will continue to bring us more music-focused events despite the somewhat discouraging attendance numbers.
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Updates on Club Six and The Hole in the Wall
Back in April I wrote about the difficulties being faced by the venerable "dirty little biker bar," The Hole in the Wall Saloon, as they tried to move to a new location, while in late May I wrote about Club 6's struggle to deal with noise complaints being filed by residents of the SRO hotel above the club. Though a bit late with the reporting on my side, it looks like both situations have reached some accomodation. According to this Examiner article, the Hole in the Wall was expected to get clearance for the move from the Planning Commission, while Jim Meko, who also sits on the Entertainment Commission and was fingered as the ringleader for neighborhood groups who opposed the move, said he would drop his protest of the bar's move to the ABC Board if the planning commission gives it the stamp of approval. Meanwhile, according to this Examiner article, Club 6 went before the Entertainment Commission and got slapped with a 30-day license suspension, but this was held in abeyance, seeing as how the club owner, Angel Cruz, had taken steps to rebuild the ceiling of the club so that noise levels above it wouldn't exceed 88dB. However, if the club violates the noise ordinance within the next 120 days, they'll face another 60 day suspension in addition to the 30 days held in abeyance - in other words, they'd have to close down for three months, and that would probably be the end of Club 6.
Meanwhile, the Eastern Neighborhoods Draft Impact Report was just released this week, and it includes three options for re-zoning the Eastern Neighborhoods, which includes SoMa. Since the Eastern Neighborhoods represent some of the largest tracts of space available for residential development, there's sure to be some impact on the ability of clubs to open, or even function, in the area that has been traditionally reserved for them. According to the Examiner article Entertainment Commissioners Terrance Alan and Bowman Leong are working with members of a civil grand jury to determine the future of entertainment in the area. Let's hope that they are able to figure out a way to bring some badly needed housing development to the area while also still maintaining what remains of San Francisco club culture.
Meanwhile, the Eastern Neighborhoods Draft Impact Report was just released this week, and it includes three options for re-zoning the Eastern Neighborhoods, which includes SoMa. Since the Eastern Neighborhoods represent some of the largest tracts of space available for residential development, there's sure to be some impact on the ability of clubs to open, or even function, in the area that has been traditionally reserved for them. According to the Examiner article Entertainment Commissioners Terrance Alan and Bowman Leong are working with members of a civil grand jury to determine the future of entertainment in the area. Let's hope that they are able to figure out a way to bring some badly needed housing development to the area while also still maintaining what remains of San Francisco club culture.
Friday, May 25, 2007
More on Club 6 and Mixed Use Issues
One of the constant problems plaguing the scene in San Francisco is clubs being located in "mixed use" areas that are both commercial and residential. In SoMa, for example, which used to be primarily industrial wasteland, you had a perfect location for clubs; they could pump the beats at night and no one cared because no one was there. But then, during the boom, there was a lot of residential development in SoMa (really the only part of SF left to develop) and there were inevitable conflicts between residents who wanted their quiet and night and the club goers who wanted to party. In recent years these problems have only gotten worse as limitations on available space force clubs and residential developments into ever closer proximity.
The case of Club 6 on 6th Street is shaping up to be a test case of how to deal with so-called "mixed-use" areas. As reported by Steven T. Jones in the San Francisco Bay Guardian (a report that has caused some friction to erupt between that paper and local politics blog beyondchron.com), Club 6 is located in the basement of a building that also houses a residential hotel, and the sound from the club reverberates throughout the building. The club owner has allegedly taken steps to improve the soundproofing, but, having been in Club 6 on a couple of occasions, I can tell you that the bass will vibrate the fillings out of your teeth. Given that Club 6 tends to host mainly hip-hop and reggae events, where you're going to hear a lot of music with long, deep, bass sounds, I'm not particularly suprised to hear that this sound travels beyond the ceiling of the club (a little physics lesson here, at least as I've learned it: waves have actual length, and in the cases of long waves, which are at the bass end of the spectrum, you won't even hear the sound unless you're at the end of the end of the wave itself. This is why if you stand right on top of a sub woofer, you won't hear the bass nearly the way you will if you step back several feet. For a long 30hz wave, which is about as low as humans can hear, it takes about 20-30 feet to get the full impact of the wave. Also, bass is omnidirectiona and notorious for travelling through walls, while upper frequencies travel in straight lines and are reflected back). I'd be curious to see if Club 6 hosted rock bands, which tend to get more into the upper frequency ranges than lower, and kept the music to the same decibel level, if they'd have the same problems.
There's a hearing on June 5 that will determine what's going to happen in this situation. It seems pretty unlikely that Club 6 will be allowed to operate in the same way for much longer, esp. when it's being portrayed as a fight between irresponsible partiers and the disenfranchised (as evidenced by the comments to Steven's article). Eventually, however, some kind of city-wide compromise is going to have to be worked out or soon there won't be any place where a club can safely operate that is also not totally inaccessible.
The case of Club 6 on 6th Street is shaping up to be a test case of how to deal with so-called "mixed-use" areas. As reported by Steven T. Jones in the San Francisco Bay Guardian (a report that has caused some friction to erupt between that paper and local politics blog beyondchron.com), Club 6 is located in the basement of a building that also houses a residential hotel, and the sound from the club reverberates throughout the building. The club owner has allegedly taken steps to improve the soundproofing, but, having been in Club 6 on a couple of occasions, I can tell you that the bass will vibrate the fillings out of your teeth. Given that Club 6 tends to host mainly hip-hop and reggae events, where you're going to hear a lot of music with long, deep, bass sounds, I'm not particularly suprised to hear that this sound travels beyond the ceiling of the club (a little physics lesson here, at least as I've learned it: waves have actual length, and in the cases of long waves, which are at the bass end of the spectrum, you won't even hear the sound unless you're at the end of the end of the wave itself. This is why if you stand right on top of a sub woofer, you won't hear the bass nearly the way you will if you step back several feet. For a long 30hz wave, which is about as low as humans can hear, it takes about 20-30 feet to get the full impact of the wave. Also, bass is omnidirectiona and notorious for travelling through walls, while upper frequencies travel in straight lines and are reflected back). I'd be curious to see if Club 6 hosted rock bands, which tend to get more into the upper frequency ranges than lower, and kept the music to the same decibel level, if they'd have the same problems.
There's a hearing on June 5 that will determine what's going to happen in this situation. It seems pretty unlikely that Club 6 will be allowed to operate in the same way for much longer, esp. when it's being portrayed as a fight between irresponsible partiers and the disenfranchised (as evidenced by the comments to Steven's article). Eventually, however, some kind of city-wide compromise is going to have to be worked out or soon there won't be any place where a club can safely operate that is also not totally inaccessible.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
New Call to Extend Closing Times to 4AM
According to this article in the Examiner Terrance Alan, in his role as a member of the Entertainment Commission, is once again trying to get the state legislature to change last call from 2AM to 4AM, a measure that was last considered in 2004. I think Terrance is completely right on this one when he says that the mass exodus of people from bars and clubs at 2Am is behind most of the noise and other complaints lodged against bars and clubs. Anybody who has rolled out of Drunk and Horny at 1.45 on a Saturday night knows about all the jacked-up people looking for something to do who then congregate on the sidewalk while they try to find out where the afterparty is. If bars closed at 4AM you'd have much more of a steady trickle between 1AM and 4AM, as Terrance points out, in addition to the fact that people tend to binge drink and emerge a lot more fucked up than if they were taking it in throughout the night (this was also confirmed by the British when they looked into extending closing times for pubs). Closing at 4AM would also alleviate the problems of cab hell that emerge when everybody is looking for a way home at the same time.
Also in the article, The Zebra Club in North Beach gets its license suspended after a deputy sheriff gets punched in the face, and the owner of Club 6 in SoMa (on 6th Street, one of the worst streets in SF), is issued a citation for noise.
Also in the article, The Zebra Club in North Beach gets its license suspended after a deputy sheriff gets punched in the face, and the owner of Club 6 in SoMa (on 6th Street, one of the worst streets in SF), is issued a citation for noise.
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