Straights Gone Wild - Are the Castro’s Complaints Hypocrisy?

On Sundays the outside balcony at the Lookout bar in the Castro is so crowded it looks like the Abercrombie & Fitch version of the Mariel boatlift. Spirited patrons, mostly gay men, are known to shout out ratings of pedestrians as they cross the intersection below at Noe and Market – as if passing judgment, a la “Dancing with the Stars.”

“Eight!” the crowd hooted as an attractive man passed.

Fueled by alcohol, it’s all in good fun (well, except for those who get a “three!”). Forget attending church, in this part of the city named for St. Francis Sundays are for daydrinking.

So why all the fuss about another booze bash across the street at club Lime? As I report in my column this week, there’s been a litany of complaints against boisterous behavior at Lime’s “bottomless Mimosas” Sunday brunches.

Is it because the Sunday patrons at Lime are, to a large extent, straight? Is there a double standard?

There might be some of that. In reporting this story I’ve had several Castro neighbors sneer at some of the women at Lime who come to brunch in high, high heels and short, short, short skirts. Yet when a drag queen walks by in a similar outfit, it doesn’t provoke a reaction.

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Would Kerouac Dig an ‘On the Road’ Movie?

Jack Kerouac had a love-hate relationship with Hollywood types. They loved to screw up his work, and he hated them for it.

The only major motion picture made from one of his books while he was still alive was “The Subterraneans,” a novel about a love affair between a white man and a black woman, which, like most of his writing, was based on Kerouac’s own life. 

Interracial love and sex – pretty incendiary stuff back in 1960.

But when the movie was made, it starred George Peppard and Leslie Caron. They’re both white! Racial differences were replaced by Franco-American hijinks. Oh là là!

Kerouac couldn’t even claim he sold out to pay his bills – he made very little from the ordeal. Understandably, the entire experience “left him feeling embittered” toward Hollywood, said scholar Gerald Nicosia, author of “Memory Babe: A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac,” and the forthcoming “One and Only: The Untold Story of On The Road” from Berkeley’s Cleis Press.

So if Kerouac were still alive (he died in 1969 at age 47) and his opinion had not changed, it’s unlikely he would have embraced a movie version of “On the Road.” But the film has been shot, and in today’s column I look at the efforts being made to try to ensure that this will be the first successful adaptation of Kerouac’s work. 

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Was Sit/Lie Unfair to the Haight?

There could be some media navel gazing this week in the wake of news that the Haight has been hurt by San Francisco’s controversial sit/lie law.

Well, not the law itself. It has yet to be enforced in any substantial way.

But the massive amount of news coverage last year about the anti-vagrancy ordinance (which narrowly passed in November) focused almost entirely on the Haight. All that press about marauding violent street punks taking over sidewalks has had an impact. Some merchants say their business is down, tourist visits dropped in 2010, and the idea that the Haight is dangerous has colored public opinion.

The toll of the sit/lie publicity on the Haight is the subject of my column today. 

What happened to the Haight is, unfortunately, textbook modern journalism. In an age of narrative storytelling, the neighborhood became the “face” on the story. Even though the law impacts the entire city, almost every news report cited the Haight. There are problems with aggressive panhandling and vagrancy in Union Square (which has far more visitors), but if you read a newspaper or watched TV news during the sit/lie campaign you’d have thought the Haight was the only place impacted.

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Are Gay Men Losing the Ability to Socialize?

Decades ago when the AIDS crisis was devastating San Francisco’s gay community, a group of friends gathered in a local living room to watch the Academy Awards. Frivolity was on TV, but death lurked outside the home, so they decided to pass the hat to raise money to try to do whatever they could to fight the plague.

From that small social gathering came the Academy of Friends, a non-profit group that throws an Oscar Night gala each year that has raised more than $8.5 million in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

That a social gathering turned into a social group with a greater social purpose is such a San Francisco story – the Academy is just one example of this happening in the LGBT community. Causes like same-sex marriage, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and the battle to end discrimination have all received funding from social groups.

But with the rise of online social networks, many social groups are in decline. How that trend is impacting the gay community is the subject of my latest column. 

While reporting the story there was a question stalking in the background – is what’s happening in social groups an indication of something larger? Are gay men losing the ability to socialize in person because of the Internet?

Walk through the Castro almost any night and there are plenty of people out on the town, but for many gay men keyboards have replaced clubs as the mechanism for meeting, especially for sex. Sure, the same thing is happening in the straight world, but gay men appear to be far ahead of others when it comes to leveraging the latest technologies for hooking up.

Yup, there’s an app for that. Lots of them, actually. Guys are using GPS location technologies via iPhone (and some Android) applications to find other like-minded men, sometimes standing just feet away. Websites also offer the same ease of connection with remarkable specificity: there are now gay social networks designed for those attracted to surfer dudes, bears, daddies, twinks, and men who seek unprotected sex or sex using crystal meth.

For many, typing and texting have replaced talking. There have been concerns for quite some time about how this is impacting San Francisco’s gay community. In 2007 Patricia Leigh Brown wrote an article for The New York Times where some worried that the rise of the Internet was “contributing to a declining sense of community.”

Back then Doug Sebesta, a medical sociologist at the San Francisco Department of Public Health, said, “I’ve had therapists who have told me they are asking their clients to go back to bars as a way of social interaction.”

And that was before many of today’s most popular websites and phone apps were invented.

Of course social networks and technology can also be used to build communities. There was certainly evidence of that after Prop 8 passed in California, rescinding gay marriage. Technology helped mobilize and fuel an uprising.

So perhaps that’s what’s needed for social groups to thrive in the Internet age: a strong purpose.

The New Rules for Dogs

Folks in the Bay Area could soon need instruction manuals to own dogs.

The Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which includes some of the Bay Area’s most popular waterfront national parks (including Crissy Field and Fort Funston), is considering a new set of rules for dogs.

A massive federal study – 2,000 pages – is making recommendations on where dogs should be allowed in the parks, if at all. The National Park Service is trying to balance its responsibility to protect nature with the desires of visitors to enjoy the parks.  The plan is now up for public comment and has become a source of controversy – it’s the subject of my column today. 

The Park Service has developed four categories for how dogs behave in the parks. Here are those definitions, along with what I imagine a dog’s reaction would be:

Off-leash play = woof!
On-leash walking = ruff
Banned = grrrrr
Regulated off-leash = ? (ears up, look of consternation)

That last category will be new for most dogs and their owners. Under the proposal, seven areas scattered throughout the parks, including some portions of Crissy Field, would allow so-called Regulated Off-Leash Access

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Famed Lowell High, By the Numbers

I had fanciful expectations before heading over to San Francisco’s esteemed Lowell High School. This is, after all, a school that has produced some of the most accomplished Americans in history, reaching the highest ranks of government, business, science and the arts.

I figured I would find the Taj Mahal of education, some sort of mythic marbled-columned Acropolis with scholars roaming the campus reciting the classics, perhaps from unfurled scrolls.

However, as I quickly discovered, Lowell is very much a public high school. Tidy, but not fancy. The buildings feel dated, the floors are plain blue linoleum, and the walls are scuffed and could use fresh paint – typical of most public schools these days.

Oh, and no scrolls.

And just like other California schools, despite its many achievements, Lowell has faced budget cuts because of the state’s fiscal crisis and the recession. But Lowell is dealing with these shortfalls in an unusual way – outsiders have stepped forward and raised private donations for the public school.

Sure, other public schools do fundraisers, but at Lowell we’re talking about a substantial amount of money, and it’s not to build some fancy new wing. The funds are being used for day-to-day operating expenses, or as one alumnus called it, “the nuts and bolts.”

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A Brief History of Wine By The Glass

It’s standard fare these days to find quality wines served by the glass in restaurants. In fact, the trend has become such a phenomenon since the recession that it’s having an impact on the Bay Area’s celebrated wine country – that’s the subject of my column today. 

It wasn’t always this way.

Sure, inexpensive “house red” and “house white” wines by the glass have been around for generations. But the concept of being able to purchase an upscale wine by the glass had its beginnings in the Bay Area.

It started in 1987 with Opus One, the famed red wine created by Napa Valley’s Mondavi clan in partnership with the Baron Philippe de Rothschild wine aristocracy of France. Produced in California, back then Opus One sold for the unprecedented price of $50 a bottle. The most expensive American wine until then cost $19.95 a bottle.

“We had to do something fairly extraordinary to familiarize people with Opus,” recalled Stu Harrison, who worked at Opus One in those days. Getting folks to splurge on a full bottle would take some convincing, but perhaps if connoisseurs could try it be the glass, they’d be smitten.

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CSI: Dog Poop

Several people have suggested that this week’s column should have been entitled, “Sh*t on a Shingle.”

I get the joke. It’s the story of a San Francisco woman who discovered that the roof of her building in the Mission was covered in dog poop. She didn’t own a dog, and neither did any of the other residents in the building.

So began a case of whodunit, and eventually the city got involved. That’s where events took a twist that no doubt will have many tongues and tails wagging. Did the city do the right thing? Or is this one of those nutty only-in-San-Francisco controversies? Read the column and you be the judge.

While reporting this story there were several attempts to throw me off the scent. Phones were hung up on me a couple of times – people were incredulous, terse, and annoyed. I was scolded for reporting a story that might make the city look bad. Some at first claimed they’d never heard of the incident, and then later admitted that they had. Frankly, no one wanted his or her name publicly associated with a story about dog poop. I can’t blame them – I’m not exactly thrilled that I will now forever come up in search engine results about this topic.

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