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Here's a definition of heaven: flying first class to San Francisco
high above the cloud line while chasing the sunset westward, streaks
of pink and coral and orange, all the while drinking champagne and
listening to Joe Caro's Pride 2005 mix. And I thought, God, it
doesn't get better than this, and I thought about a non-circuit
friend of ours who asked me if boyz really did fly around the
country just to attend circuit party weekends. And the answer is
yes and on Thursday night in San Francisco, they were flocking into
the Clift on Geary Street, like the lines into Roseland for Black
Party, already in chaps and vests, for Folsom Street Fair.
San Francisco hospitality: the guy at reception asks if we're here
for business or Folsom Street. The hotel is crammed with the usual
suspects one finds at an Ian Schrager hotel the too pretty, the
too loud, and the too trendy but the suite that we snare after
they first put us above a truck loading zone more than compensates
for any irritation. You don't want to throw New York attitude, but
sometimes the point must be made. There are loads of leather boyz
at the Clift which makes the public rooms a combination of Tom Of
Finland at the Playboy Mansion. The Clift used to be a stuffy
hotel, a San Francisco dowager, but now the Redwood Room looks
lovely and louche with leather boyz reclining on burgundy leather
banquettes in the glow of candlelight.
We haven't been to San Francisco in at least five years. I'd
forgotten how much fun it is to eat there. Olive oils peppery and
fruity and the Farmer's Market on Saturday morn at the Ferry
building. Peaches so juicy served by strapping California
farmboyz. Dirty Girl Produce has tomatoes so sweet they really are
a fruit. We eat dinner at Medjool in the Mission which is so loud
and filled with so many fashionistas we think we're in South Beach
but the Mediterranean food is incredible. And another dinner at
Scala off Union Square, where the gaslight setting is so romantic
and the food so fresh that brussel sprouts become elegant.
Saturday night is Magnitude, the party at the Gift Center, which I
recall is a great space, but we're holding back for After-Shock, the
after party with Abel so we eat at Millennium, a high-end
vegetarian restaurant, and then retire to the Clift where the beds
are the ones they give you in heaven.
It's five a.m. Sunday morn when Scooter calls us from the Castro,
saying he's on his way over to pick us up, and it's almost six a.m.
by the time we find a parking spot and get all the goodies sorted
and stashed and then we're walking across the street to a pizza
kitchen? That's what it says on the awning. But it used to be a
club. It used to be a club called Dreamland and truth be told, I
was at Dreamland for its opening night, eons ago, and it was the
club of the moment, built from the ground up to rival Trocadero,
buillt with money from East coast investors who wanted a slice of
the San Francisco nightlife pie, and that opening night had people
lined up around the block, all of them new members for it was a
membership club, and Dreamland was all white and built like a
Palladian palazzo, with a huge three-tiered fountain in the entryway
that spouted champagne that flowed all opening night. And now a
pizza kitchen? Oh dear.
But then never underestimate the power of a roomful of circuit boyz
moving to the sounds of Abel. We've been looking forward to hearing
Abel on the West Coast, having only heard him in South Beach,
Monteal and Alegria in New York and while this pizza kitchen once
known as Dreamland isn't quite the club that Crobar is, the dance
floor is packed with boyz who are clearly feeling it and there are
two iron cages flanking the stage for the likes of Joe Caro who
should be here but isn't and Abel is within touching distance but we
don't remembering our friend DayGlo Danielle who dropped her and bag on the turntables in the middle of a Galleria party. And
Abel keeps it happening if without that sustained intensity which
marks his times at Alegria. I keep hearing bits of Strings of Life,
that clackety-clack portion, which he mashes into something else and
there are frozen pops by the basket and buffet tables of fruit and
in the other room a lighted dance floor and the San Francisco boyz
are seriously working it out. There's something about San Francisco
which reminds us of Montreal something about the intensity with
which they play. Never say die; it's never too late; there's always
another party, an after-after-party. And Abel plays this one like
an after-party, designed to ease the boyz, ultimately, back out into
the street for the Folsom Street Fair which starts right after
this party ends.
I thought we'd seen it all. How many street fairs can you see?
What could possibly be new? What's the difference between walking
along Ganesvoort in New York and walking down St. Catherine in
Montreal? We've seen the photographs of Folsom Street so we think
we know what we're in for. It's going to be like Pride in New York
but with everyone in leather. So we get to Folsom and 7th around
one in the afternoon and it's PACKED. 400,000 people. It's so
crowded we can hardly move forward or backward and it's not only
PACKED but the crowd is comprised of such diversity, such
strangeness, such freakism, such hedonism that we are IMMEDIATELY
disoriented. We can't tell if we're moving north or south. There's
a woman in black leather in an 18th-century black carriage whipping
a woman who's pulling her. "Make way, make way," she cries. And
another woman trussed to a security gate in red ropes. And a
flotilla of men in black gladiatorial togas with black balloon
tubing fanning out from their backs like the wings of Icarus. And
boyz on leashes led by catsuited dominatrices. And dicks and
dicks and more dicks. So much dick in the middle of the day.
Hard dick and long dick and leather dick and tied dick and leashed
and collared and There's no modesty in this crowd, no shame
whatsoever. It's all hanging out. And over on 10th Street and
Folsom, there's a a block party with everyone dancing in the street
while an iron cage dangles from a crane and swings over the crowd,
the boyz captive inside. The sun's shining bright and the beer's
flowing and everyone is clearly on acid. The kind of acid from the
Sixties which put us all where we are today. Boyz are getting blow
jobs on the street corners and f*cked against the sides of
buildings. It's enough to make you have faith in this country
again. There really might be enough freaks to offset the religious
right.
San Francisco is such a crazy town. Those extra three thousand
miles distance from Europe makes it less prone to rules and regs.
It's such a young town, only 150 years old. They're babies out
there a whole bunch of unfinished product, still trying on
different personalities. They're not about the polish; they're
still pioneers. They're pushing boundaries and buttons. So much
sex in the streets it's the revolution we've been waiting for.
And so we're psyched by the time we get to RealBad that night.
RealBad is an organization so typical of San Francisco, a bunch of
friends getting together to do the right thing which means that
100% of the party proceeds go to charity, which this year means the
San Francisco LGBT Community Center and Project Open Hand. (Circuit
Noize had a very good article about this group in the autumn
issue.) RealBad is an invitation-only party, so you have to find a
host/sponsor to get your ticket in advance. It's a party that Susan
Morabito has played, as have Michael Fierman, Julian Marsh, and
Warren Gluck. And this year, it's Reed McGowan, from the Eagle in
New York, and since 1999, the party has been held at 1015 Folsom,
which is a club the San Francisco boyz love and with good reason.
1015 Folsom is no pizza kitchen and when we arrive around ten
p.m., the joint is packed with boyz, the kind of boyz we associate
with Alegria, that professional kind of partying boy, the ones who
work out all week and know how to dance and how to party without
falling over. Boyz who know their music. This is a party where
we're immediately at home and thank God for Scooter who snared us
three tickets. Now we get why this party is so successful. It's a
well-managed and very well-organized affair. And this club is big
with two levels and nicely-graduated staircases of beautiful wood
and a stage across from the deejay booth and a VIP room above the
booth and a backroom further upstairs and everywhere it's packed
with hotties. YES. YES. YES. This is just what we want tonight.
And we've never heard Reed McGowan before and he's very good.
He's very very good. He's perfect for this party. He's mixing in
bits of this and that so that some of it's familiar but warped by
the surrealism of the day. Doncha, for example, overlaid with the
voice of that idiot who lives in the White House. It's music for
leather, hard and throbbing, but also with bits of lace thrown in,
those vocals every so often. And just as there was the night
before, with Abel, there's melody. It's that San Francisco melody,
the sentiment provoked by the moodiness of the setting. You see the
city from so many vistas, all those hills and that sparkling water,
and the bay and the bridges and then the fog slips in, shrouding
the city in romance. And Reed McGowan mixes in that romance with
the sex, the translation of which means that at one point we're
dancing on the stage, while behind us, the star of the porn flick
BONER (or something like that, I couldn't hear for sure) is getting
it on with another couple of porn stars and the two of them are
getting double-d*cked from the one porn star while kissing each
other which, imho, is one way to marry sex with romance.
And this being San Francisco, of course, there's an after-party
but for us, this is it. This is just where we want to leave it
and besides, there's always next year.
Because Folsom Street Fair is, for us, some of the best of what the
circuit can and should be: a group of people doing good for the
community and helping to show the rest of the world how love and sex
can go together. Thanks to all the volunteers at the Fair and at
the doors to the clubs and to all the organizers who made this past
weekend in San Francisco such a surreal show for these two New
Yorkers who might've imagined that they had seen it all.
Best always,
Mark and Robert
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