It Takes A Gulch, Not A Village

[Had a pleasant evening with the (seemingly) Angry (but really a pussycat) Young (well, that's relative) Man (yeah, OK) last night. I experienced a little trepidation when he called: the last time we tried to hang out, I ended up storming off at the after a drunken night in the Castro. Not surprisingly, my abrupt departure wasn't "about" anything, except maybe the Long Island Iced Teas at the 440 and Mix bars. Yesterday was Friday, though, so a drink seemed the natural idea for evening entertainment, and I want to be Chris's friend in some way other than commenting on his blog, which means seeing him. I decided to chance it.]

[We met at the cable car turnaround like we used to do, and shopped a little at Urban Outfitters for a birthday present for his pal Bree. I've come to hate U.O. because it carries a lot of things I probably would like if I saw them for sale (or free) in another setting: kitschy/campy/clever pop-culture stuff and your basic expensive upscale-disguised-as-downwardly-mobile-disaffected-youth fashion-and-housewears. But because U.O. has found a way to commodify "cool," to pigeonhole its sublime elements into demographic analyses and package it at retail prices, nothing you see at the store is "cool" anymore. There ends up being no there there. I felt uncomfortable and annoyed. Because I have neither the time nor the taste to find "cool" at thrift stores and flea markets as I imagine was done in the past, U.O. is made for people like me. But I can't shop there.]

[Anyway, Chris didn't buy anything for Bree, and I steered him away from the Vans table, where he was headed with a glazed, "must-buy" look in his eye. There's a Vans store in the new mall now, Angry Young Man: go there, and don't spend money at Urban Outfitters. I heard its owned by right-wing Biblethumpers or something, so don't shop there.]

[After that, we strolled thru my neighborhood, the storied Tenderloin. Chris was scared of the street people, who were so whacked out that they presented no threat to him or his bike. Because these particular street people happened to be black, I had to tease him about looking stricken like Mrs. Pingleton in Hairspray. We made it safely to Polk Street (the lower reaches of which have always been the eastern part of the 'Loin, although gentrification is trying to take root even there - Polk Village, I am so sure!), drank easily and without rancor at the Cinch (where I narrowly avoided being whisked away by a youth-hostel manager with a lisp and bad hair), supped at Sushi Rock (me: beef udon with lots of mushrooms, since we're having our usual summer chill; him: teriyaki chicken (boring) and an avocado roll - trust Chris to find sushi made without fish), then ambled down to Vertigo.]

[OK, Vertigo has been around only for a short time by Polk Street standards. It's owned by the same guys who own the Lush Lounge just a few doors down, these two sweet gay men I've known slightly thru Leah since the days of the Friendly Neighborhood Cabaret. The Lush Lounge (a.k.a. "Pottery Bar" by John, Leah, and me because...well, it made sense at the time) is where the Polk Gulch bar used to be (I saw an early, brilliant performance by S.F. drag celebrity Suppositori Spelling at the old Gulch years ago) (I think the neighborhood should go back to calling itself "Polk Gulch," by the way; it fits better than the effete "Village"). It's a fairly innocuous gay bar - pictures of 20th century movie and music stars on the walls, a lot of decor, and cute bartenders. Chris didn't want to go there last night because he thought it was too "fah fah fah," and it's true that there were a lot of fairly coiffed queens in the window.]

[We went to Vertigo instead, a place which has always seemed like an afterthought to me. It almost seemed like Kenny and Steve (the aforementioned owners) opened the Lush Lounge, redid it to fill a need (because while I'm all for the gay hustlers, tranny hookers, drug dealers, and porn shop clients who constitute "local color" on lower Polk, sometimes one does want to enjoy a quiet, "fancy" cocktail out unmolested), and then, just because one of the spaces up the street that used to be a notorious gay hustler bar became available, decided to open another bar just because it was close.]

[Vertigo is larger than the Lush Lounge, has a beautiful, old, carved antique bar, a dance floor and DJ booth, and a spacious smoking room (which made Chris happy). I'm not sure what the boys thought Vertigo would become: they threw up the same Homo Depot decor as in the Lush Lounge (minus the celebrity photos), made an effort by having Hitchcock's Vertigo playing on a loop on the bar TV, and opened the doors.]

[I doubt they expected they'd start the Marina-lite colony that seems to have established itself on that block of Polk. Mayes Oyster House is now the overdecorated O'Reilly's uberIrish boite; an excruciating wine shoppe/bar called S.N.O.B. ("Sonoma, Napa, or Bust" - yeugh!) opened in the Leland residential hotel; the Giraffe (another former gay dive where Leah once dodged restroom-floor vomit) is now the Hemlock Tavern (straight rockers and the cops who loathe them stand on the sidewalk), and Vertigo is where the straight folk who aren't glamorous enough for the Marina but not hip enough for the Mission go to boogie.]

[It's not that bad: there's none of the pretension of the Marina or the Mission. It's like going to a suburban bar, I think, or what I imagine bars in the Avenues are like. No one was too pretty, thin, or "cool"; the music was your basic 70s-80s-90s wedding reception mishmash; Chris befriended this almost-scary-but-pleasant Aileen Wuornos-lookalike from the Peninsula; and I ran into someone I know! Yazmine used to work with John at his last real job in S.F., a dot-com in U.N. Plaza. Although Yaz (I wanted to ask if they called her "Yazoo" in the U.K., but she's too young to get it) is a native San Franciscan and so needed no help, John and I (mostly John) took her under our (his) wing for a time in 2001 or so.]

[Yaz is now twenty-seven, and is having a little trouble matching her plus-sized beauty (and she is a beauty) to male expectations of stick-insect women. She's actually considering gastric bypass surgery! Is this what we've come to, when a gorgeous, delightful young woman whose weight "problem" isn't really a problem is considering dangerous, disfiguring, expensive surgery just to create a willowy silhouette so Biff will take her home from Vertigo, give her an STD, and not call? Yes. Chris thinks it's San Francisco (he doesn't have one nice word to say about the city these days); I think it's the universal capitalist-sexist matrix. Anyway, Chris; Yaz's equally Rubenesque friend Rose; the pseudo-Aileen Wuornos; and I all urged Yaz not to do it. Then we took a pic on Yaz's cell phone and sent it to John in Backwoods, N.Y., to show him how much fun we're having.]

[No argument with Chris, no hangover this morning (never mix, never worry), and I have someone new on my MySpace page for the first time in like a year.]

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