Leather bars, femmes, and alleys

[gordonzola]

Wow. What a great day I had on Sunday. Brunch at ilipodscrill and telebraker6’s house, Beer Bust at The Eagle, and seeing bands at the Clarion Alley Fair. It was a perfect day of drinking and hanging out.

There are simply too many LJers to namecheck everyone at the Guerilla Femme Bar final_girl organized but I arrived in good style with Illipod and amarama. You know what I love about The Eagle, besides, of course, the rowdy urinal line? What other gay, male leather bar plays "What we all want" by Gang of Four. That’s right. Not "I love a man in uniform" or even anything off of "Entertainment" but a song of the obscure, under-rated "Solid Gold" album. Forgive this moment of music geekery but I’ve never heard anything off that album at any bar anywhere.

As claudimp put it, probably with better phrasing than I can remember this morning, usually gay bar music inspires less positive thoughts. "Sometimes you have to wonder whether a life of deviant sexuality is worth having to listen to bad disco music every week."

And while I met a bunch of people there, I should note that I finally met rivetpepsquad who lives in my town and has been on my friends list since 1/9/03 (I checked). jwz is the only local Ljer on my list longer who I’ve never met. Heya Jess! Sorry about that unintentionally innuendo-laden thing I said about you not coming to my birthday party

I walked over to the Clarion Alley Street Fair with fightingwords, _astrozombie_ and a friend of theirs. Sorry about losing you guys so fast, but I was drawn to Veronica Lipgloss and the Evil Eyes who were playing near the Valencia St. side of the block. That band just gets better and better. It was so crowded that people couldn’t get through unless they danced through the "pit".

Clarion Alley, right next to Community Thrift, is a community mural project where many different artists murals over the years, They’re on people’s garages, houses, stores, whatever. The alley is alley-sized, not a euphemism. It gets extremely crowded when hundreds of people are crammed in for a fair and with very few lights by the time the night hits. Everyone brings their own beer in bags and travels the length of a single block. Fire juggling, electronica, breakin’*, DJs, punk rock…a lot of stuff in one small space. I ran into an old acquaintance when she left the porto-toilet (this seems to happen to me a lot these days. See my Folsom St. entry) and she was all, "Come see my band, we’re playing in five minutes!" Well, ok. Latina/o punk en espanol. I love SF street fairs.

While hanging out with my buddy Dianarama though, we did notice something odd. Trying to work our way through the crowd to the liquor store, indecisive indie rockers blocked our way. "Have you noticed how skinny all the young punks are?" she asked.

"Yes," I replied. Without saying another word to each other we linked an arm and pushed through creating a path while saying "Excuse me" sarcastically. White belts and backpacks went flying out of the way. They were no match for late 30s, 200+ lb, medium-old school punks! Don’t get between us and the liquor store!



*I’m old. Is it still called that?
**Hey wookiepocket!

Comments

[vestalvixen.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's still called breaking. And it's only acceptable if it doesn't take up the entire dancefloor.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

It took up the whole part of the alley, but that was ok.

[ladycakes.livejournal.com]

Where are the damn pictures???

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

oh, whoops. I made the entry "private" so I could make sure it worked right. Then I was editing the text so the pics weren't weirdly positioned. then I forgot to make it public.

[ladycakes.livejournal.com]

WELL???

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

sorry, I've been answering comments in my last entry. Eminem takes precedence.

[ladycakes.livejournal.com]

bah

[dcart.livejournal.com]

The gay clubs in Tallahassee tended (always to my surprise) to lean more toward goth and eurosynthpop. I ended up being one of those people who went to the gay clubs for the music. Crappy disco tended to be more the preserve of the sorority chicks. I much preferred spending the evening listening to Bauhaus, New Order, and The Cure and getting hit on by guys than listening to the latest dance crap to try to meet girls. And eventually just enough straight girls started going to the gay clubs that even though we were a distinct minority, we could still hook up with each other.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

Don't forget, everyone's bisexual at last call.

[rivetpepsquad.livejournal.com]

HEY THERE!

finally home and online again. holy hell.

kick-ass to meet YOU, too....and i KNOW you're not sorry about that inneundo ;p

and we have ways of making you meet the jwz.....

[rivetpepsquad.livejournal.com]

also, i can't believe you CHECKED (the date), you LJ-geek ("this is soooooo going on my LJ")...how do you find THAT out?

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

I just checked my marnanel: http://marnanel.org/joule?user=gordonzola wieirdly, I find that it gets checked almost every day whether or not I'm on the computer.

and that was a funny word choice. I'm glad final_girl was there to hear it too.

[rivetpepsquad.livejournal.com]

oh, yeah: i forgot about that one....i used to get the friendslist update by email, but that got discontinued.

and she laughed her ass off! nice job!

[claudimp.livejournal.com]

Wish I could take credit, but it was actually a Quentin Crisp quote:

There are many aspects of the contemporary gay subculture that I find ridiculous, but nothing could be more ridiculous than to say, as some critics have, that I am anti-homosexual simply because I do not embrace every twitty gay fad that comes along. I think that a lifetime of listening to disco music is a high price to pay for one's sexual preference.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

I would have believed it was you...

[wookiepocket.livejournal.com]

hello my ninja!

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

I await your command.

[anarqueso.livejournal.com]

Formaldehyde once found a dead body there, so now we call it Carrion Alley.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised everyone doesn't.