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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.
In fact, folks in the Castro openly accept behavior that would be banned elsewhere. The nude old men for one thing. They’ve been hanging out in the hood for years, and the only ones who make a big deal out of them are occasional visiting journalists on the hunt for arousing column inches. To the locals, the nudies are a yawn.
Then there are a few scattered sex shops that aren’t shy about displaying their wares in window displays. They only get attention from outsiders, like when a group of second graders were recently taken on a field trip into the Castro to learn about Harvey Milk and area’s historical significance.
Some parents later objected (to the news media), fearing students saw those X-rated window displays. Actually, only children with their parents’ permission went, and the school made sure the field trip stayed on a narrow path of historical landmarks. Apparently the ruckus was started by a disgruntled parent who’s in a dispute with the school and wanted to embarrass administrators by calling a local news organization and planting the story of 8-year-olds touring dildo displays.
That never happened, but the Castro community responded to the controversy pretty bluntly: if you don’t like the way we roll here, stay away.
The one thing folks in the Castro won’t tolerate is intolerance.
So there’s some irony in the pushback against the Sunday scene at club Lime. The crowd is more heterosexual than other places in the neighborhood, and customers tend to come in from outside the area (if Yelp reviews are any indication, half of San Jose has been to the brunch).
Are gays being intolerant of straights? Wouldn’t that be hypocritical, considering all the intolerance and hate gay people have faced?
Maybe there should be some soul searching about that. After all, the last business to cause such an uproar in the Castro was Ike’s Place, the sandwich shop that also attracted large crowds of outsiders who also happened to be mostly heterosexual. Trend?
To be sure, sexual orientation aside, there have been problems surrounding Lime on Sundays. (For a list of issues tracked over several weeks, read the column.) Some weekends you could shoot a video for “Straights Gone Wild,” and residents are particularly irked when they see guys from the club peeing on the walls of nearby homes and businesses. Neighbors say it’s like watching heterosexuals marking their territory.
And in the Castro, that is going too far.
Scott is a columnist for The Bay Citizen and The New York Times. He has been telling the stories of San Francisco and the Bay Area for nearly 15 years. He founded the underground ezine ...
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David Crumrine
We moved from the Castro five years ago after the Halloween celebrations got so loud and violent that we had to stay inside our house. We were held captive in our house by groups on our front steps yelling "faggot" to the passersby. When we asked them to not yell at our neighbors and to move on, they instead destroyed the railing on our 1800s victorian house, tore balustres from the porch and threatened to beat us with it. We called police but nothing was able to be done. Instead of feeling like victims, we decided to move. Our complaints to our supervisor, Bevan Dufty produced no tangible results.
Scott James
Hi David,
Thanks for sharing your story. I'm sorry to hear what happened. Where was your house located? Within the Halloween barricades?
Best,
Scott
David P
I lived in the Castro from 1994 until 2007, and now live in the south bay and visit weekly.. To me, the issue is not about the sexual orientation of the crowd, but about the maturity level involved and the measures the bar staff are taking to keep order. About the only bar that I hang out at regularity is El Rio in the mission on Sunday afternoons, because I enjoy the uniquely mixed crowd that mingles together each week. The difference is I rarely see anyone overly drunk there.
Someone in these threads brought up a good point about bartenders not taking the responsibility to cut patrons off when they over-imbibe. I have seen many bartenders at other bars do that, but it is clearly not happening here.I walked by this afternoon and the level of intoxication of the dozen or so people out front was actually appalling.
My question is why is Mr. Bronstein not being held to those standards in his club? I agree that you can't legislate good behavior, but it has been emphasized over and over by the entertainment commission and liquor licensing boards that it is the owner's responsibility to maintain some semblance of order both in and around their establishments. I am glad to see him succesful, but that success is coming at a cost to the neighborhood. I would hate to see him sued out of business because one of these immature idiots kills someone while driving after getting toasted with no controls, but I also think it is only a matter of time before that happens.
Chris Waddling
No, the problem isn't that they're straight. The problem is the hoards of extremely drunk people in their early twenties blocking the sidewalk. You don't see the Lookout crowd on the sidewalk below. You don't see sex shop paraphernalia spilling out onto the sidewalk.
Myles Younger
Chris, I'd have to agree with the spirit of your comment. This doesn't strike me as a gay/straight thing at all. Seems like an Annoying Yuppie Thing and/or an Annoying Bridge-and-Tunnel Crowd thing. The Annoying Yuppie faction certainly has its share of gay adherents. I see them all the time and they annoy the crap out of me.
No matter how annoying they are, people have every right to go to Lime for a boozy brunch, but if the aftermath of said brunches are negatively impacting the quality of life for residents of the neighborhood, then maybe the city should re-examine their liquor license and/or eligibility to serve bottomless mimosas. The likelihood of that actually happening: very low, of course.
But it's not as if curtailing drinking at Lime is going to somehow abate the Annoying Yuppie-ization of the Castro or San Francisco at large. That population has way too much disposable income for SF merchants to ignore. There are still "normal" neighborhoods in this city not teeming with entitled, drunk, overpaid 20- and 30-somethings (both gay and straight), you just have to go farther and farther towards the periphery to find them. Unfortunately for residents of the Castro, it would seem that their neighborhood has been swallowed by the encroaching horde.
Jimmy Donahue
Thank you! I posted my long, rambling comment below... somewhere.
s b
Do Chinese people complain when Caucasians visit Clement Street or Chinatown? If they did, would we tolerate that kind of complaint? Yet, for reasons peculiar to the history of SF, we tolerate the Castro worrying about straights.
Jimmy Donahue
If the Caucasians were out of control drunk and clogging the sidewalks, every weekend, they'd have every reason to complain.
Andrew Zacks
The suggestion that a gay book store in the Castro closed because the neighborhood has attracted more straight occupants seems wrong. Small book stores are closing throughout the City, State and Country. Noe Valley recently lost Cover to Cover after more than 20 years of serving our community. The closing of small businesses is a function of the recession, not the mix of straights and gays that reside in the Castro.
Jimmy Donahue
Books Inc seems to be doing ok. It's not a 'Gay' store... but it might as well be. And I mean that as a compliment. Different Light's been on its way out for years now.
Jimmy Donahue
I think the major difference between LIME and The Lookout is that The Lookout doesn't bleed out onto the street.
Walking past LIME is a freakin' nightmare. I've been threatened while moving through the mob with an "Excuse me." Now I just plow through and if I get any grief I A) tell the doorman that it's HIS job to keep the sidewalk open to pedestrian traffic and B) to whomever has an issue, I offer to get right back in their face. I'm 6'4" 220 lbs.
A few weeks ago some drunk woman (and her equally drunk friends) staggered out and fell on me. I was VERY nice about it until she snapped, "DON'T FUCKING TOUCH ME FAGGOT." One of her less drunk friends stepped in but it got worse. First, I'd swear they were lesbians. One of them got in my face about how her husband was a cop. Next time? I'll move and let her fall on the sidewalk.
The Lookout may be loud, but it's all contained upstairs. I've never really noticed anyone yelling anything other than random stuff. If they're raating me, I have no idea. I walk past and pay no attention.
Between those two bars... It's not about Straight vs Gay. LIME IS out of control. And living a block away... I'm fed up.
Anyone who thinks people are just complaining really needs to take a an hour one random Sunday, say, around 3:00 (for the full effect) and check out both places.
Matt Smith
Scott –
I think an interesting point is that the “out of control” factor of Lime is an open secret. EVERYONE in the Castro knows about this – it’s not just gay men and lesbians who are over it but try walking a baby stroller through that smashed crowd. So every gay person knows this but because the gay press in SF relies on bar advertisements they refuse to cover the story. So thanks Scott for bringing the topic up for people to discuss. On another note I bet if you ask gay men how they feel about the naked dudes walking around the Castro and allot of guys wish they would just go away. Or at least that they would be remotely attractive.
Frank Snapp
Fascism sucks folks. Too bad drinking doesn't help guppy-nimbyism. The castro's a hang-out for the rich. They're just bleeting about the "noise" and the "bad behavior" the way all yuppy nimbys do in any setting. That's what happens when you are so fascist you have to live in a ghetto in 2011. The overall society is NOT to blame in the case of the gay separatism of the Castro. I bought the propaganda years ago that San Francisco is "gay friendly". Then I moved here. It's only gay friendly if you're a horrifying soulless greedy insular separatist. That's not the "gay friendly" I ever experienced in even supposedly gay unfriendly cities back east, which usually was far superior and real gay friendliness, which must be in practice. I don't think this Castro locals being over the drunks at a brunch is about gay or straight. It's about yuppys always having something meager and niggling to complain about. That sort of socioeconomic hypersensitivity is what got Block-E in Minneapolis (super genesis area for art, theatre of all kinds) bulldozed by 1980's and 1990's soulless fascist yuppy scum with their anticeptic values. Yuppy nimbyism is also what got the fascist Giuliani and Bloomberg sterilization of 42nd Street and so many other parts of Manhattan accomplished. NY is nearly irrepressible and could never be called boring; but it had a lot of it's art and soul excised crudely, and crudely is the only way that fascists role. Keep on picking you perfectionist guppy nimby scumbags.