Event Review: Halloween in the Castro, Much Ado About Nothing

By now you've probably read the Chronicle article about Halloween in the Castro, and what a lame fizzle it turned out to be. After dinner, around 8, the boyfriend and I got into some appropriate duds - he in a fox suit, me in an East German border guard Lieutenant's uniform (yes, the real thing). I was hoping for a chance to riff off the police state-like aspect of the Castro by asking people for their papers, but since the vast majority of people in the Castro were already dressed like cops, there wasn't much point.

We walked from our place on Diamond Street down to the Castro, up Castro to Noe, and then back down the other side of Castro. Boring, boring, boring. There were some people in costume, and a few moments of camera flash-flash, but nothing at all like in years past. At Market and Castro there was a someone dressed as a nun with a megaphone intoning "Don't vote for Gavin Newsom," but it was more evocative of a brain-dead megaphone than any real act of provocation.

We saw two bars open - Badlands, which was charging a $3 cover, and the Bar, which was dead empty - and probably would have stopped in for a drink if I hadn't been such a lame-ass and forgotten my wallet. But overall, there were far too many other things going on in the city and I think everyone just decided, meh, why deal with it when there are other things to do and places to go?

So, this turned out to be the Halloween that wasn't. On the one hand, I was thrilled to not have to deal with the goons and yabbos who regularly show up and make Halloween in the Castro a less-than-pleasant experience. On the other, I wanted my goddamn neighborhood back. I wanted to be able to get dressed up and walk around to the bars and see people I knew and enjoy the holidy, rather than feeling like I was under quarantine. The boyfriend and I had planned to go over to Oakland for a party, but when we realized that we couldn't take any public transportation back, and I was unsure about having to deal with the whole parking thing, we decided to stay in the City. If we had wanted to really go out, we would have had to have headed off to some other neighborhood, and honestly, nobody we knew seemed that enthusiastic about going out.

I really resent the way that, because some assholes are unable to figure out how to comport themselves in public situations, the rest of us have to lose out on fun. I also am very tired of the way in which the whole "controversy" around Halloween has had less to do with addressing those issues, and more to do with the political ambitions of those making the controversy. Does Alix Rosenthal really want to make Halloween in the Castro fun for those who live there, or does she just want to use it as a wedge against Beven Dufty? I didn't see much from the Citizens from Halloween that would lead me to believe that they had any better ideas about how to manage this event than the city (well, aside from portalets, portalets, portalets); rather, it seemed to me that it was more of a collection of anti-Newsom forces than people with real ideas about how to deal with a crowd as large as a third of the entire city of San Francisco in a space of about twelve square blocks. What is the city supposed to do about managing an event like that? Yes, we can handle Pink Saturday, and we can handle Folsom Street Fair, but we have to realize that those events are actually dispersed over wide areas and they attract very specific crowds who are into the event. Halloween, on the other hand, attracts a much more diverse crowd, including a lot of people who are very uncomfortable with being around gays and lesbians. And, of course, a fair number of just drunken assholes who, once they put on costume, lose many of their inhibitions around good conduct. I don't particularly like Gavin Newsom as a Mayor, but I also don't know what he and the city can do about making people not behave like assholes if that's what they want to do.

Next year Halloween falls on a Friday, and I imagine that, with the typical run of Friday night events, there will be plenty to distract people from showing up in the Castro. I hope that's the case, and, after two years of "nothing special" in the Castro, it might return to being more of a neighborhood party. And by that time, I also hope that we will have people ready to address the issues around the event in a constructive manner, rather than making it another example of the poison politics that dominates our city's cultural landscape.

Thoughts on the San Francisco Mayoral Race, or, The Problem with Chicken John

It's coming up on election time here in the City, and, for all intents and purposes our incubent, Gavin Newsom, is running unopposed. Oh sure, if you read the papers there are a handful of fringe candidates, like a taxi driver and a nudist, who are running against him, but it's not like they have a chance in hell. Two candidates, Chicken John and Josh Wolf, have emerged as the leading symbolic candidates, meaning that they, too, don't have a chance in hell of winning, but are trying to "open a dialogue" around city politics. At least, that's the positive spin on their candidacies; to me, they're both emblematic of the major problem in San Francisco politics, which focuses on mobilizing base constituencies around cults of personality with the eventual aim of being able to engage in patronage politics.

I actually can't say much against Josh Wolf; he's young and his big claim to fame is not handing over video tape of an anarchist riot to the Feds, but at least he's earnest and shows some thought around bigger issues. Chicken John, on the other hand, is becoming the alterative crank of choice, and while he admits he doesn't have a chance of hell in winning (and even his supporters will tell you he is lousy at politics), his candidacy is enabling him to set himself up to bestow patronage on those he favors, without doing anything real to improve the overall quality of life for everyone in this city. And that's my biggest problem with all of this: San Francisco has real problems that everyone can see, and everyone can see that our present Mayor isn't dealing with them. But instead of candidates coming forward who have real ideas about how to change things, what we get are symbolic candidates who are in the running only to further their own self-interest.

Chicken John is a burner type, who claims to be an artist and who has a truck that runs on coffee grounds (this is his big campaign point, by the way). His manifestos and public appearances have largely focused on his complaints about the state of the arts in San Francisco, and his personal grievances with the Arts Commission. Now I hear that his squeaky wheel is potentially being greased by giving him a position with the Arts Commission, from which, in classic San Francisco tradition, he will be able to direct funding toward those in his favor. Great. Meanwhile, he is still attempting to get $75,000 in matching funds for his mayoral race, even though he and his supporters know that he doesn't have a chance of winning. Hmmmm, isn't that public money that comes from taxes? So it seems that Chicken John's entire campaign is about scamming the system to mis-use public funds for his "performance art" candidacy.

I would agree with everyone running against Newsom that the nature of San Francisco is being changed in such a way that it's in danger of becoming "Monaco on the Pacific," but real issues like affordable housing, funding for the arts, crime, and jobs for everyone are ill-served by using public money to fund self-aggrandizing "candidates" whose only real interest is in setting up themselves and their friends around their pet projects. I can't blame the real progressives, like Matt Gonzalez, for not wanting to run, having seen what a blood sport San Francisco politics has become (or maybe always has been), but it's also clear to me that we won't get anything better until we can find a way to foster candidates who embrace real civic virtues and concerns, rather than just another set of players in the game of patronage politics.