Saturday May 11th, I hung out in the neighborhood, and it was absolutely one of the best days I've had so far, and my first other than the one off day I took where I didn't get on any public transit.
Partly because it came recommended by Woody my nudist friend, and partly because I was intending to anyway, since it's on my walk to town, I visited the LGBT Museum, over on 18th Street, and was there right when they opened at 11am. (11am on a Saturday? What is with this town?)
So this place had a nice gayboy manning it, who asked me where I was from, and when I said, Maine, he immediately got on his computer and began looking up facts about Maine and telling me them out loud. "Hmm, lobster, lighthouses, Stephen King, eww, George H Bush! Wow, EB White! Longfellow! Bette Davis - no way! And good ol' Ed Muskie!" I'm not kidding - this is exactly how the conversation went. I have no idea how in hell he knew who Ed Muskie was - he was maybe in his early 30's.
So the place wasn't huge, but it started off really good - to my surprise, with startlingly personal stuff that had belonged to Harvey Milk - you can see what a hero he still is to people here - including his fucking kitchen table, his jeans, his "supervisor" t-shirt that I've seen him wear in tons of film clips - 'supervisors' here btw are like city council people, but most amazing of all was his fucking bullhorn, which he used to address gatherings of people in this neighborhood back when Anita Bryant was on a rampage and a local congressman, John Briggs, proposed a law that would mandate the firing of any gay teachers and even the straights that supported them - yes, this sort of thing was actually proposed - but ultimately lost when put to a vote. The display said the bullhorn was donated by Cleve Jones, the founder of the AIDS memorial quilt who was Harvey's cohort at the time. Cleve btw is one of the people appearing at next week's special screening of Milk, which I'm missing. Sniff.
Anyway, here are the pics. This was actually somewhat creepy and eerie to see.
Behind the kitchen table in the background is the original sign, which is sideways, for his shop, Castro Camera. Wow. I couldn't get the whole thing together in one shot, so you're only seeing the bottom of it.
The rest of the museum documented what you would expect - the history of police harrassment, beatings and roundups, which eventually led to the Stonewall riots in NYC - info about the local impact of AIDS (20,000 locals died, including it said, many within one miles of the museum), and also stuff like keys from bathhouse lockers, and matchbooks from local gay clubs:
My favorite has to be "Wilde Oscar" - one can only imagine what that place must've been like.
After, I visited a place on the same street I keep passing called, stupidly, Does Your Mother Know, which contains all manner of sex equipment, condoms, vibrators for men and women, leather items, restraints, etc., and right at the front as you walk in is a big glass case containing dozens of solid metal, unadjustable cock rings. I had to have the guy explain that to me. There were even ones that work with velcro, which just, to me, seems like a bad idea, but anyway, on one side of the place, amongst what appeared to be a display of sample-sized items, like the travel sized shampoo you'd find at your local grocer, was this:
Boy butter !! I'm in love with that name, and that graphic of a muscular arm churnin' it up.
Afterwards I was hungry and found a place up further on Castro called The Dancing Pig, another horrid name, but they had normal food, ie pulled chicken sandwiches, and shit, and also something so tantalyzing I just had to order it - banana cream cheesecake. I asked the cute waiter if he'd had it, and he rolled his eyes and opened his mouth and gushed. The sandwich was so-so, but the fucking cheesecake is homemade every day by the place's owner, the waiterboy told me, and even has homemade whipped cream. And it was ABSOLUTELY fucking FANTASTIC and I ATE THE WHOLE FUCKING THING. It was so good, it was like I'd never had cheesecake before - this is seirously how it should be all the time.
This is a terrible picture of it totally used the wrong instagram filter so it's too dark and looks like a piece of toast. It had a super thick layer of graham cracker crust - unlike most cheesecake these days - and overall was just hop up and down delicious, and I'm totally going back there this afternoon and having more.
The best thing, aside from the cheesecake, was, the waiter. Here he is:
He was just such a total sweetheart, so nice and attentive and friendly, and happily posed when I told him I wanted his picture for my blog. He was just super sweet, and cute as hell and I'm sure very, very popular in these climes.
There were only three table out on the sidewalk, right up against the front wall of the place as the sidewalks here aren't that wide. At one point, a solo woman walked up and sat at the adjacent empty table, right when I'd first taken a bite of my cheesecake so I was sort of flipping out, and could help myself not and turned to her to rave about it, and she turned out to also be ridiculously nice. We talked for probably 20 minutes. Her name was Dallas, and she was actually from Dallas and moved to SF about 8 yrs ago - lives south of here, over on 23rd street in a condo, she said. I told her I was visiting after being laid off, and all about my crazy trip and turning 47 and life being short, etc. This is how much the conversation was flowing, and she totally commiserated and discussed moving from Texas and what that was like, starting over on her own. I gather she was divorced, and she mentioned a son. I asked her what made her move to the area, and she said one of the things that began to get under her skin was the questions people would ask down there. She owned a business and at conventions and business functions, she said people would routinely ask two questions: "What does your husband do?" And, "What church do you attend?" I offered that the first question seems perhaps presumptuous, though less intrusive than the latter as statistically, most people marry, (but now that I think of it, this woman could have been a lesbian, though she certainly seemed straight), but the latter question is obviously totally inappropriate, and yet down there, isn't, apparently. The default presumption actually is that you are religious, and I would imagine, a Christian.
Anyway, she had very high praise for SF, and for this neighborhood. She said the folks here in Castro in particular are incredibly nice - she figured it's because of how badly the gays are treated outside of their community, so inside of it, they wanna be nice. I offered that I'd sort worried about encountering a lot of bitchy queens, and she said there is some of that, of course, but for the most part, they are really nice folks. Jesus.
Incidentally she was also 47, and also works in insurance! For Nationwide, and said she knows the director of claims, even. And I guess has some business of her own on the side, still.
At one point I asked her, because I'd been meaning to go to a bar that night and have a drink before I went to the movies, which place would be appropriate, if any, for somebody like me, ie would I walk in, and every head turn, and the music would stop dead? She said, no, not to worry, and began to speculate as to which places to go, and the waiterboy came out and she asked him what he thought, and they both began discussing various places they knew, including a place the owner of The Dancing Pig also owns, which is the one I ended up going to later on, called The Mix, further down on 18th, and a place called the Cafe Flore, and another place I can't remember. He offered that he works on Mondays and Tuesdays at a place around the corner, I think called The Edge, and that it would be cool to go there, also. In short, these people were ridiculously nice and it was really great.
*
I next headed up the street, and a few doors down walked into what ended up being an AIDS charity shop called Under One Roof, and was met at the door by a really nice, really cute guy (I swear I'm not making it up, how many of the men here are cute), who was maybe 35, who told me the story of the place and all of the artists that contribute work there, and what the store is all about, and it was so nice. What a great idea. I know they have these things in England - second hand shops which cater to a specific charity, but I don't know that we have these Back East.
One artist whose work totally caught my eye turned out to be a local gal named Katie Gilmartin - the guy at the shop knew her and when I realized the one I liked best, which was framed, was likely simply too heavy and big to ship - or would cost me a fortune doing so, he offered me and gave me her home phone number and email address in case I wanted to buy just the prints, which they didn't sell, there. Unbelievable.
Here's some samples of her stuff. My favorite thing about it, aside from all the kitchy mock pulp novels, is that they all feature local settings:
And here's my favorite, and the one I wanted to buy:
Anyway, the store was huge, and had, aside from art prints, books like any bookstore, magnets and typical tourist shit, and also, at the back, someone had donated two used baby grand pianos, for god's sake, which were priced at $1,000 each. The guy told me some store had donated something like 300 brand new wedding gowns a few months back, and they'd sold out of them at $100 a piece - too cheap, really.
So I bought a few things, and when I got to the register, had a chat with the guy, who told me he had a house in Florida, and had decided to rent it out and give living in SF a try, for a year, and he'd now been here 13 months, but would probably go back as he only had 5 yrs left on his mortgage.
The dude was so super nice, and handed me a map of the Castro sites, and some other map thing. He was like a total ambassador for the area. Totally didn't need to be this nice. Man.
*
After I headed across the street and visited a dog supply shop, featuring doggie shirts which said "I have two daddies."
They also had ones about "my two moms", as well as those with the word "Castro" on them, and a rainbow of dog paw prints beneath it. Damn, this place loves their pups.
Then I went up the block to the location of the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay rights group, who are housed in what was Harvey Milk's camera shop, and right away, there was a big, beefy, goateed blonde guy welcoming me to the store. I'm not making any of this up, I swear! He was super sweet, and I told him I was a Harvey fan, and he pointed me in the direction of a display they had about him - some pictures of him and of the shop, and a little blurb on the wall about it.
*
After all of this Castro wandering, I headed home and hung out until 8pm, when I went over to The Mix for a quick gin & tonic. It was a bit weird to enter a bar at all, let alone, by myself, but thanks to my Iphone, I didn't look to conspicuous. You don't look so alone with one of those in your hand, when you're tweeting away, like I did for most of the time. The drink btw was only $4.50, which is super cheap for a mixed drink.
Next to me as soon as I walked in - I stood right at the bar the whole time as all the stools on either side were occupied - was a little drama. A super tipsy gayboy was clutching a small dog to his chest, who was sitting in some sort of harness thing, and was out of breath, praising the girl who was there, thanking her over and over and he seemed in a bit of a panic.
I turned to him and told him the dog was cute, and the guy said to me.
"I almost hard a heart attack!" Without qualifying this with any sort of explanation, until he finally came out with it: He'd gone onto "the floor" and had become separated from his dog. "And we're never, ever separated!", and the girl had saved the day by looking after the dog. Turns out she was a stranger to him.
I said to him, so what type is he, a daschund? The look I got back from him was absolutely priceless. Like I'd totally insulted him, or his dog, and he had to recover. There was a definite pause, there, before he informed me that it was in fact, a "Min-Pin", translation: a miniature pincher, which is like about as stereotypical a foo foo dog as any gay man could have.
I looked behind them into the joint, btw, and saw no "floor". I had thought he meant a dance floor, but there didn't seem to be.
Anyway, he took off, and then it was gay drama #2. One girl joined the one who had 'saved' the dog, and then the latter discussed, drunkenly, loudly, the woes of having girlfriends vs boyfriends, and vice versa, and her friend kept saying, "don't make any decisions now, you're too drunk."
Before I left, I noticed there was sort of a back room to the place, and went to investigate, and also to find a bathroom. It turned out the back area was just more of the same - a crowded bar, and the bathroom it turned out, which was separated from the rest of the place by only a curtain, had an image on the curtain indicating it was unisex, which wouldn't have bothered me in principal, but then I decided against it, and as I turned to go, there was a guy walking right into the place, so I bolted. Too weird to be pissing next to guys whipping their dicks out at a urinal.
*
I then headed up the street to the Castro Theatre to see The Life Aquatic, the quirky as fuck old Bill Murray movie, featuring old Bowie songs sung in Portuguese.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTDVgE3_HT8
The above is video I took of the inside of the place, prior to the film, of the organ player, David Hegarty, who has been playing it for 34 years, and describes it as "the best job in the world." I don't doubt it.
The theater had, I estimate, maybe 500 or more people in it. It was SO nice to see an old movie house SO well attended like this, and clearly loved. And it's not like this film was any sort of hit, or has any special following to my knowledge, and yet everyone stayed til the end, and applauded when it was over, as I guess is standard here, becaues they did the same thing at the end of The Graduate, and shucks. It's really just so nice, y'know? Polite, and sweet, like maybe what people would have done in the old days.
*
Afterwards, on my way home I walked past I think literally 8 clubs, all with blaring music and people - guys and girls - spilled out the front doors onto the sidewalks. Fuck, this place is just so fucking alive and vibrant, and like, happening. And this is only one neighborhood in this city.
Fantastic.
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