Whale of a tale

Shilpa brought in a paper copy of the SF Weekly to work this week and gasped aloud at the self-important “Bouncer” column. As experienced San Franciscan bar-goers, we know our local booze and local bars, and were both so completely offended and enraged by the ignorance in this piece that we were apoplectic.

I don’t know who “Katy St. Clair” is, but she writes like a smug college intern who is new to the City and the mature bar crawl. The immaturity of her stream of consciousness column makes her come off as an early 20-something Marina Chick. If she’s over 30, she needs to just give it up and sit at home and drink with a dozen cats. I can’t imagine her being good company in any bar.

While her writing skills are just plain poor, her opinions are a painful combination of ignorance, arrogance, and stupidity. Ignorance can be remedied by education, but as Ron White is so fond of saying: you can’t fix stupid.

Brevity may be the soul of wit, but there is just too much to say in response to this monstrosity.

Read the original at the SF Weekly site, then come back here for the rant. If you are similarly inclined, I encourage you to add your comments to the Weekly's page.

After the Whale
Bouncer hunts for good tunes at Moby Dick
By Katy St. Clair
Wednesday, Jun 23 2010

I know scientists are working diligently to isolate the so-called "gay gene," but while they are at it, I hope that they can also pinpoint the part of a gay man's brain that likes shitty dance music.

Holy shit. Are you serious? Gay men have always defined dance music. Gay men are the dance DJs in the City. And LA. And NYC. Go to dancemusic.about.com and it’s DJ Ron, gay Master of the Tables in Nashville and weekend DJ at Splash (SBNY) in New York. If you’re into stereotyping, straight white girls are and always have been the antithesis of arbiters of “good dance music.”

And whoever claimed that Moby’s was playing dance music? They play DVDs from Europe of popular synth/electronic/pop. Was it the no dancing or the no dance floor that made you think this was supposed be the gays’ taste in dance music?

It's hard to say which came first, like the chicken or the egg: Do gay men in San Francisco like to drink along with Britney B-sides, or do all the bars in the Castro have some sinister plot to program their video jukeboxes to the aural equivalent of Star Magazine?

Um, Britney is rarely played in the Castro actually. And it was against our collective will that we ultimately liked the Circus album, but it did produce some really good dance tracks. And none of the bars in the Castro have video jukeboxes. There are only two bars with digital jukeboxes, The Mix and Twin Peaks, both of which have impressively diverse and downright awesome esoteric selections.

Old-school gay men also like shitty music,

Most old-school gay men are dead. We honor the survivors and they can like and play whatever they damn well please. They, and we, have lived through Hell. Do you really think that you have any authority as a prissy little straight girl to judge their musical tastes? Call me after everyone you know has died slowly, painfully, alone, and stripped of all dignity and I’ll be sure to tell you to turn off the torch songs.

like Barbra Streisand,

Hey, I am not a big fan of Babs either, but face it: she’s got a set of pipes. She has won two Academy Awards, nine Grammy Awards, four Emmy Awards, a Special Tony Award, an American Film Institute Award, and a Peabody Award—hardly the record of an artist who produces “shitty music.” Nine Grammys. Nine.

Erasure,

Oh shut the fuck up. Sure, Erasure is the go-to cliché for popular gay music, as is Pet Shop Boys, but they still rock and still manage to fill the back room of the Cat Club on a Thursday with dancers and club kids who bring it. Erasure has sold over 25 million albums. Again, not so shitty.

show tunes,

Showtunes have their time and place. If you don’t get it, then get out. Not that there are any bars in SF that play showtunes, other than open mic bars where the patrons--usually straight girls--come to sing them.

And what’s the freaking number-one show in America? That’s right: Glee. While personally I believe that showtunes should be relegated to theme parties/nights, they are the original “dance music” and are due their respect. Hardly “shitty” and hardly the preference of just the gays.

and Liza Minnelli.

Oh no. Honestly? This is the gay-icon cliché you reach for? You’ve already invoked Streisand. Too young for a Judy reference? Oh please. When was the last time anyone played anything by Liza outside of a drag show? Aside from that, Liza is only one of 12 people to ever achieve an EGOT, earning Emmys, Grammys, Oscars, and Tonys. She’s considered an example of “shitty music?” My GOD you suck.

Of course, I know a few gay men who like different music, so before you fire up that e-mail, let me say that I get it, and I know I am generalizing, big time.

Too late you fucktard. What? Your keyboard doesn’t have a delete key?  If you know you’re full of shit, shut your mouth. Does the SF Weakly not have editors?

But mama always told me that there is truth behind stereotyping.

Don’t get me started on yo’ mama.

So, all together now: S.F. gay men's music taste sucks.

Says the little white straight girl. One of the best lines from Glee this season: “I’m gay; Mercedes is black. We make culture.” And what are you basing this on? One trip to a gay bar? I follow the local urban Americana scene. My friends are into country, pop, rock and indie. I had a date last week with the front man of a local hard-core punk band. Any track from their collective catalogs could kick your I-think-I’m-cool-because-I’ve-shopped-at-Amoeba’s ass.

I cemented this theory last week when I went to Moby Dick for the first time.

Holy crap. You reached a definitive conclusion based on an uninformed single data point? How the hell do you have your own column?

It's a quaint little tavern on 18th Street.

That’s your takeaway?

From the outside it has an air of distinction, with gilded lettering and stately blue paint.

It’s blue with some faux marbling. Hardly Wayne Manor.

Of course, it is named after one of the greatest works of American fiction — one man's quest for a large, white beast that haunts him. He lives only in the hope that he may some day overtake it and penetrate it with his giant harpoon. What this has to do with gayness is beyond me.

Perhaps it would be clearer if the bar were named “Dixie Normous” or “Homosexuals Like Puns About Really Big Penises.” Really? A Moby Dick joke? If you are going to use the aquatic reference, at least mention the enormous salt water fish tank above the bar.

Is this column a bar review or a tirade on dance music. Where the hell are you supposed to be going with this? You’ve trashed all gay men’s taste in music. Are you now going to bag on a neighborhood gay pub?

I walked in expecting to see older gay men tapping their toes to some jazzy background music,

Why? Were you walking in during 1927?

but was disappointed to see that I could just as easily have been walking into Badlands.

For FUCK’S sake those bars are NOTHING alike. Moby’s is a neighborhood pub with 40-year-olds up front and a pool table in back. Badlands is a disco video dance bar full of twinks. And the music could not be more different. I have never seen a video or heard a song at Moby’s that would be played at Sadlands.

There was the video screen playing some stupid dance song, with women soaping up cars at a carwash while a man stared at their tits from behind the windshield. To be sure, there were older men there, which made me all the more puzzled at the music.

Because older gay men influence modern pop music so much so that production companies have stopped showing women in skimpy clothes in music videos. Or that the old gays have any control over the DVD player behind the bar.

Moby Dick consists of one main room with a bar with stools, and ledges along the walls for more seating. This is how every other bar in the Castro is designed. There is a pool table in the back. There was also a very large fish tank over the bar; the little guys swimming in it looked quite content.

What I didn't expect to see, but did, was a middle-aged blond woman with her breasts hoisted up in a low-cut, form-fitting top who was buying drinks for just about everyone. "What'll you have?" she slurred. I am always put off by people who offer to buy me drinks, because I feel I will owe them something, like conversation, and I don't always want to do that.

Poor baby. Meeting a woman who loves drinking in a bar, and is happy to share the wealth. Your popularity must be such a burden.

I politely demurred.

How “writerly” of you.

She ordered herself a mai tai and asked for extra rum, and I wondered whether the bartender was going to cut her off, but she didn't. The server, Mary, was very nice and took my order quickly. The video changed to a song by Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas, and I went and sat on a ledge.

There is something to be said about dance music being played while you are slowly getting drunk. As your buzz increases, the music sounds better and better, the guy you are talking to looks better and better, and the idea of smoking crystal and banging all night moves to the forefront of your brain. How else to describe the Castro in the late '70s, when disco ruled?

WTF? (1) While I am happy to hook up with someone at Moby’s, it is neither a cruisy or meth-centric bar, (2) Is this a continuation of your musical tastes assault? (3) There was no crystal in the ‘70s; and (4) Most urban gay club communities were all about liberation, sexual freedom, disco/dancing and some serious party drugs in the late ‘70s, but it hardly describes the Castro then (which did not have any large discos) or now, much less Moby’s, and much less the entire gay community and or their taste in music.

I seriously think that whatever beats we like are hardwired into our DNA. Dave Chappelle did a skit about how Latinos respond to certain rhythms, black people respond to different beats, and white people hear a guitar solo and suddenly feel the urge to shotgun a beer.

Nice use of someone else’s bit. At least you gave it credit. Is there a point? Is “shitty” gay music homos’ right as it is hard wired next to the man-sex gene? Should I forgive your poor taste as it is hard coded to the stupid-straight-white-girl gene?

The blond lady moved up to the pool table and seemed to be enjoying herself, although she was having difficulty chalking her cue.

Reports are to the contrary. Friends who were there have commented to me that she won that round, and then followed her new friends to the Lookout for drag trivia night. But how nice for a self-professed bar-hopper like you to mock a bar gal for drinking and playing pool in a bar.

I looked around at the art on the walls. That's another characteristic of bars in this area: There is always some penis-centered art. Sometimes it is quite good, but often it is hella stoop.

“Hella stoop.” Seriously? You get paid for this?

Case in point: the drawing of an erect phallus with a bite taken out of the tip, complete with chomp marks, as though it were a chocolate Easter bunny.

Yes, penis-centric art is asinine, but hardly pervasive. It’s part of the repressed-gay-tourist kitsch. Some poor guy is trying to sell his art on the wall of a dark bar with a mirror over the urinal trough. It’s not the Louvre. Dick art is oddly in keeping with the scene. We glance at it, roll our eyes, and continue to drink. BFD.

The men around me were having a great time. It was happy hour, and Moby Dick has a long one with great prices.

Actually, Moby’s has the shortest happy hour in the Castro, and arguably the least favorable discounts (bargains only on well and certain drafts). Only the Lookout is similar. Twin Peaks has no happy hour to speak of at all. Everywhere else: bring on the drunk with two-for-one top shelf cocktails and cheap shots.

Maybe I am just jealous of the gay men in this town — they are obviously enjoying themselves more than I am.

Then leave us be and shut up with the bringing us down.

They don't show up to my Neil Young tribute drinkathon and shit all over it, so why should I disparage their entertainment choices?

I don’t know, but you dedicated an entire column to doing so.

I am certainly guilty of liking The Golden Girls, so at least we have that in common.

And BAM! Another out-of-date cliché! Nevermind editors, does the SF Weakly have any gay people over there?

Here's another thing that makes me jealous of gay men: They make it look so easy. Meeting another man, flirting, and getting it on seems to be a cinch. There has to be a bar in S.F. for single straight people where it is just as easy, but I haven't found it yet.

They are everywhere. It’s just you. Trust me.

Straight men have to deal with straight women, and we are a difficult lot. We tend to put ourselves in two categories: sluts and nonsluts, and a fella has no way of knowing which one we are until it may very well be too late.

Most straight women I know do not in fact classify themselves as sluts and nonsluts. But when it comes to a straight man’s ability to spot a girl that’s good to go, Honey, they can tell. That’s why you’re not getting any. It’s not the slut-versus-tease perception you have to worry about. It's the cool-versus-tool contest you're losing.

I made it through about eight songs, and then I had had enough. This was not my world, and although I love to go to the Midnight Sun to watch Project Runway, I can't abide hanging out with men who like men, just because there is a killer drink special.

Then DON’T. If this is how you are, we don’t want you at the Midnight Sun, or anywhere else around us. Your coming to the Midnight Sun to watch Bravo’s Gay Programming for Straight White America is not doing us any favors. We are not here to amuse you, and we don’t need your validation. You’re not only crashing the party, you are being a shitty guest.

Call me old-fashioned. Or, better yet, call me Ishmael. What the heck.

I’m calling you a cab.


Go be smugly superior with the other hipsters annoying locals in the Mission.