the increasing messiness of the Castro

I've been thinking about writing a longer piece, taking some photos and some information samples, about what I have been referring to as "the Bourbon Street-ification of the Castro."

That is to say, the Community of the Castro has become less neighborhood and community bars, restaurants, and shops and more lowest-common-denominator gay strip-mall shops (look! yet another tobacco, porn and lube shop!), mediocre eateries, and full on drunk crowds of barely 21-year-olds and tourists foreign and domestic, i.e. the SF equivalent of Bridge and Tunnel.  I can't remember a Friday in the past year where I didn't see three girls on the corner of Castro and 18th.  Not always the same three actors, but always the same characters: One girl loudly bitching on her mobile phone, throwing attitude while another girl comforts the third who is throwing up between the cars parking in front of Harvey's.  I would take bets that none of these girls live in the City.  Odds are only 30% that they are gay.

The wider recognition of the "gay pour" and the standard Castro happy hour specials of two-for one has made the Castro the new popular spot for young people to get drunk cheaply and quickly.   And they cannot handle their liquor.  I think of this as the New Year's Eve crowd but now out every weekend.  They are just so excited to be out, drinking late and up past midnight.  Or what I call "Wednesday."

I do love 440, but didn't really consider it "my bar" until I spent the past several weekends entertaining out-of-towners who wanted to tour the Castro and hit the "young" bars.  I'm sorry, but I am established and established socially, and I have a policy that I do not (1) wait in line for a bar or (2) pay a cover.  There are zero bars I consider worthy of either.  I am, of course, happy if not eager to pay a cover if there is a performance, but that is more about my supporting the arts, and I consider SF drag to be an art.  I will also wait a few minutes for Bear Fridays at the Midnight Sun, although my enjoyment of that is more in theory than in practice.  440 truthfully has become my community/neighborhood/home bar.

My sneaking suspicion that the Castro has just become a drunken toilet for tourists, baby gays, and the gaggle of accompanying often annoying straight girls, was cemented last week when I popped out briefly to see a friend on a Thursday night.

Usually Thursday is a Sundance Saloon night, with a possible stop at 440 with the cowboys afterward, but last week I was home busily cleaning and cooking for the Dinner and a Movie event.  The Jamez had been dragged escorted out with Special K and her friends and he found himself hugging the side of the dance floor while the drunken girlfriends were salsa dancing at Ladies Night at, God help him, the Café.  I still consider James to be my best friend even though I see him maybe once a quarter these days.  So when I got his text asking if I were perchance in the Castro and if I could come hang out with him, I took that as a rare opportunity not to be passed up.  I got to a stopping place, put clothes back on (not that I was cooking naked mind you, just going Out clothes) and met them as they were leaving the Mess that was the Café.

They had been at it for a while.

The girls still wanted dancing, and James was happy to continue the crawl with my company.  The next reasonable dance venue was Sadlands Badlands, which mid-week has become a total shit show, but does play dance music.  Sometime me and mine will stop in there mid-week just to watch the base crowd debase themselves in a rather extraordinary manner.  I don't think that I have just gotten older, and I don't think it's just that the crowd has gotten younger.  The crowd has just gotten that much trashier.

Unfortunately, between here and there Special K went from 60 to Zero and put herself in a cab.  The four of us made it into Badlands, but I could only do so much before giving up to warn the girls to clothes their purses and consider the coat check as pick pockets and casual crime has really overrun Badlands and Toad Hall.  The crowd was all early 20-somethings, young techies and "girls on the town" and messy, messy, messy.  One large Asian kid was leaned on the bench, swaying and drooling, and being checked on by his friends every so often between his spitting on the floor in his build up to getting sick.  Nice.  After a round of drinks had been ordered, James returned to me for cash unaware of the cash-only nature of the Castro.   Unfortunately, shortly after drinks were poured, James was called back home as K had left her house keys in her other jacket, leaving me to care for the absolutely charming and absolutely lovely but also absolutely hammered girls I did not know.

Even they looked at the dance floor and asked WTF?  "These are the lamest gay dancers I have ever seen."  Yes.  Welcome to the Shit Show.

And two shows on Sunday.