Full of Shopping

You know how I was just saying that I don't go shopping? I just went to Freeport Maine (home of LL Bean) where there are a ton of factory stores and bought things at Nautica, Gap, Banana Republic, and North Face.

It turns out that I am full of crap. Who knew?

Live from Portland, Maine

Hiyas! Is it just me, or does everyone need to clip their nails while they travel? I don't get it. Does riding on an airplane make them grow faster?

I am going to Portland, Maine tomorrow

I have to get up at 4:30AM to get to Oakland to catch a JetBlue flight. That suuuuucks.

I am going on a (discount) press trip to write about Portland for Frontiers Magazine. I'm also stopping in Freeport (24-hour L.L. Bean superstore, y'all!), Kennebunkport, and Ogunquit.

My pay for the story is rather low, but I get a free vacation out of it, and besides, I'm still getting paid vacation from Day Job while I'm there. Sweet.

I hate the long sunny days of summer

because the screaming horrible ghetto children on the playground abutting my apartment are out there until 9PM now when it gets dark. I wish child sweatshops were legal in the U.S.. My life would be so much more peaceful if they were locked away in a sneaker factory.

On the plus side

That last post was kind of a bummer, so here's a joke I read in Playboy:

Q: Where do they put the pictures of missing trannies?


A: On the cartons of half-and-half.

Shopping!

Fans, you may not know that I don't enjoy shopping anymore. I haven't been into it since about 2000, when I realized I had so many clothes (especially ironic t-shirts) that it was just stupid to buy anymore. So I stopped going to clothing stores.

A couple of years later, I realized that shopping is like eating at fast-food restaurants and watching television: after you rid yourself of the habit of doing it, you don't miss it at all. In fact, life is much simpler, and I have more time for smoking crack.

But like most rules, there is an exception to this one. I love shopping in sports stores. Especially the giant sports/camping/bicycle/lawn furniture/skateboard stores that carry everything having to do with being outdoors. They're the only ads (besides Walgreens) I read in the Sunday paper (that inspired this blog entry). I already own a fair amount of sporting equipment for somebody who doesn't leave the house all that much.

In my dream reality I'd wear nothing but matching track suits (like old Italian guys in New York), have a big yard with a tent, inflatable pool, horseshoe pit, croquet set, jarts (I'd have to buy them on the black market, as they're illegal now), trampoline, paintball and archery sets, ultra-deluxe grill (though as a vegetarian, it would be totally useless), as well as a low-tech home gym/dance studio (because dancing totally counts as exercise).

I'm pretty sure this is some sort of genetic male thing, because I'm not a gadget freak and I'm not all that big on repetitive activities outside of barhopping. And what's up with the grilling?

On Wednesday

I found myself stopping into the Pilsner as my pal Marke was hosting a Guardian happy hour party. The event was co-sponsored by Good Vibrations, purveyors of sex toys. They had some sort of wheel of dildos that you spun to win a prize. People were lined up for that thing; many of them old Asian ladies who must have read somewhere that there would be free stuff at this event, because they're not the usual gay bar crowd.

Good Vibrations also littered the place with their name brand extra-wide sized condoms. As in, they taped them everywhere- to the jukebox and ATM and on the bar stools and lined them up every three inches along the bar. If everyone in the bar had sex with everyone else in the bar, they wouldn't have gone through all the condoms there. It was a bit of overkill.

Marke came over to say howdy. He asked me if I had noticed all the condoms, and if I had noticed that they were all extra-wide.

Was he calling me fat?

It's all in the timing

I decided recently that I need a regular schedule, the idea of it being that with everything regulated- waking up at 7, working set hours, going to bed at 11 (happy hour is the new after-hours)- it will be easier to handle new assignments and appointments within the time frame. I felt I was spending too much time making up for lost sleep or working late to finish projects. Now I would be able to put everything into reasonable time boxes and life would be much simpler.

Ever since then, I haven't woken up within 4 hours of the time I woke up the previous day. Friday I got up at 10AM. Saturday at 5:30AM. Saturday night I went to bed at 4AM and woke up Sunday at 1:30PM. Sunday night I went to bed at 11PM but didn't get to sleep until 5AM so I got up at 10. Today I got up at 5 again.

The best laid plans of party people always go awry.

Networking

Last night I was debating whether or not to go to a networking event with MediaBistro. At the last minute I decided to check it out, as I usually have fun at these things. It was at the Bubble Lounge in Jackson Square, where an Absolut Citron on the rocks costs $9.00. It was a big glass, but still. I ended up having three of them (this was a bad idea), and I realized I could have bought a whole bottle of the stuff for my $27 plus tips.

As usual, I was there from the beginning of the party to the end. I met a bunch of people, and some of them may very well be able to assign me some additional writing work. Sweet!

Then I met some gays and we took the bus to the Pilsner for an additional beer. It was about this point where my blackout started. I left the Pilsner and on my walk home got a call from Maria, who was celebrating her birthday at Dalva.

I stopped in there and I don't remember whether or not I had an additional drink. Knowing what a retarded drunk I am, it's a safe bet that I did. Eventually I decided it was time to go pass out at home, but then ran into my friend Spider on the way out. We had a conversation but I don't remember a word of it. I hope we didn't figure out a cure for cancer or anything.

The rest of the night is a complete blank. I found some greasy paper in the trash, so I'm guessing I got a slice of pizza somewhere. This morning I also found a mystery stain on my sheets. It was more of a mystery smush, actually. It kind of looked like bird poop but I doubt a bird pooped in my bed without me noticing. I don't think it's pizza cheese, and it didn't appear to be a body emission of any sort, so who knows. I needed to do laundry tomorrow anyway.

** Update: I think the mystery stain was athlete's food powder. I'm still washing the sheets.

A Cocktail Safari

The quality, consistency, and creativity of cocktails in San Francisco (and of the bartenders who mix them) has been improving by leaps and bounds over the past couple of years, unbeknownst to people who actually go to restaurants to eat. When I sit down at a bar and ask for a menu, the last thing I expect to see on it is food. Drinking is the new eating.

Our expectations increase along with the caliber of our cocktails, and we demand that our mixologists do more work than a performing chef at Benihana, twisting, infusing, and muddling fresh and trendy ingredients into our drinks. My assignment was to investigate the latest in liquor-slinging calisthenics and hunt down the most exotic cocktail ingredients in the city. It's dangerous work, but I was up for it.

Read about the drinks in the following venues:

• Redwood Room
• Lobby Bar at the St. Regis Hotel
• Cortez
• Rye
• Solstice
• Aziza
• Bissap Baobab
• Fresca

The rest of the article is here.

Hate of the Plate

For the record, small plate restaurants can eat a big bag of fuck. Ninety percent of the time, they're just excuses to charge entree prices for half (or less) portions.

This afternoon I ate at a big plate restaurant- Valencia Pizza and Pasta. Small salad, garlic bread with refills, a piece of lasagna that was 5 inches wide on each side, and steamed broccoli, carrots, and zucchini on the side. This entire lunch was one (1) menu item. It cost eight bucks.

For eight bucks at a small plate restaurant you get three slices of tomato with a piece of mozzarella on top. Doesn't cut it!

Dancing Queens

So you're a go-go homo tired of disco but you've still got dancing feet? Are you worried that the other cats won't be cool with your same-sex swing? Fear no more, fruity! In the Bay Area it's hip to be square dancing no matter who's wearing the hoop skirt, and there are plenty of places to line dance, too.

These non-nightclub dance parties, practice sessions and lessons are here and they're queer, and as most of them welcome singles, you don't need to be part of a twosome to tango. The queer dance community is a close one, so before you know it, your dance card will be full.

Now take off those light loafers, put on your dancing shoes and start stepping out.

Read my list of alternative queer dance lessons and parties here, including salsa, square, line, and country-western dancing.

Gray Bars

This town is swimming in gays and chock-full of bars. Though gays lay claim to many of those bars, there are enough left over to keep the straights sloshed, too. But there is a strange lack of middle ground in San Francisco -- call them gray bars -- that attract a good mix of gay and straight people at the same time.

San Francisco's neighborhoods, politics, workplaces and social settings are already pretty integrated with and accepting of the "alternative lifestyles" -- but they don't seem terribly alternative here. It's less surprising to have a transgender co-worker than it is to have a Republican one. But though some 10 percent of the city population is GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender), there are only a handful of watering holes where 10 percent (or more) of a bar crowd is. Can't we all just drink along?

Certainly much of this separatism has less to do with antipathy between orientations and more to do with romantic opportunity. People go to bars to socialize, but also to look for love, and the odds of finding a gay husband are significantly higher in the Castro than in North Beach. This explains why bars that go gray are usually populated by younger people -- clientele less likely to be looking for a lifetime commitment as a chaser for tequila shots. Likewise, restaurants and other mellow scenes are more mixed between gay and straight patrons because many of those patrons are already coupled.

What gray bars may lack in mate-shopping possibilities they make up for in atmosphere. People are more receptive to starting up conversations with strangers when they're not worried about those strangers trying to cop a feel. In gray bars, the other features of the venue stand out -- the quality of the drinks, the music and the people you meet.

Here's a toast to these few, proud gray bars and the people who patronize them. Maybe they'll inspire you to stop by, meet in the middle and to create new gray bars -- you have the power.

Read my list of San Francisco's Gray Bars in this article in the SF Chronicle.

Pirates!

Does anyone want to go to this play or whatever it is with me? Ten bucks. June 16 or 17. You know how I feel about pirates.

Mayor Washes Feet

I've always been skeptical of Mayor Gavin Newsom's Project Homeless Connect, a sort-of monthly media-friendly event where tons of services are offered to the homeless all on one giant day in a concert stadium downtown.

From a volunteer perspective, big volunteer "days of service" are completely bogus. The people who volunteer on those days are the ones who don't volunteer any other days- like the self-centered types who 'give up' their Thanksgivings to work at soup kitchens on the one day of the year their services are absolutely unnecessary.

What happens at these grand events is the people who volunteer all the time organize these days of pampering so that the annual volunteers do the minimal amount of work with the biggest amount of free meals and maximum amount of clapping for their efforts. Each annual volunteer is probably 15% as productive as someone who comes in regularly.

But these events are also made to trick those inefficient volunteers into giving money. Often the big volunteering days are ones where you get your company and friends to 'sponsor' you, like at an AIDS walk. In the end, more projects get done that day than would have otherwise, but more importantly the agencies who farm out the volunteers who do the real work all year round raise enough funds to continue doing so long after the annual volunteers have left.

Back to Project Homeless Connect: At the most recent and largest one to date, there were 2,124 volunteers serving 2,358 homeless people according to this puff piece in the SF Chronicle. That's nearly a one-to-one ratio.

Most of the services offered there are offered elsewhere throughout the city all the time- free clothing, housing services, various types of counseling and city services. One thing good about this project is that they're centralized so that the homeless can get lots of errands done in one day such as Methadone, HIV testing, food stamps, free food, and substance abuse counseling. Because lord knows their busy schedules don't allow them to just sit around waiting in lines... oh wait, all they do is sit around all day. But I guess this day saves them having to walk far.

Oh yeah, and just in case they had to walk far to get to this freebie bonanza, the homeless can get free foot washes and massages from volunteers including the mayor during the half-hour photo opportunity written about in the Chronicle story. Foot washing? I'm sorry about your Jesus complex.

Other bonus services include pet sitting, veterinary care, on-site shopping cart storage (even though the shopping carts are stolen from commercial businesses), dental screenings, eye glasses, and free books. When I was unemployed, spending all my savings and cashing out my IRA in order to make ends meet, all that stuff still cost money.

Project Homeless Connect is breaking the myth that people do not seek assistance and services and would simply prefer to be on the street. The data proves that when people are approached in a respectful and kind manner, and with available resources, they are eager to accept help towards self-sufficiency.

How does lining up for a ton of free stuff that even the average citizen doesn't have access to encourage self-sufficiency? If you put out free stuff, people come to get it, whether they're homeless or not. (See: radio concerts with free t-shirts.) It's pampering, and it encourages further homelessness. Many homeless people move here from other cities because SF has such a reputation of making life easy for them. Gee, I wonder why.

Newsom won the election on his Care Not Cash platform, the goal of which was to allow homeless better access to housing and services instead of handing out a cash stipend that was supposed to pay for those services. To me, the logic of the plan seemed simple: we'll help you out in a generous and respectful manner, as long as you respect the rules yourselves. You have access to everything you need to get you out of the bind you're in, but we can't just hand out checks and assume that you'll use it for good. Makes sense to me.

I'm just not sure where free books and foot massages fit into that plan.

On a mission

The last time I did my laundry, there were two missionaries chatting up this lady for a good half hour while she was waiting for her clothes to dry. She didn't seem to mind, but I did. Missionaries are just another kind of salespeople with another product that people don't need. I don't want to deal with that nonsense when I'm doing laundry- the screaming children and speed freaks and crazy people are bad enough without Jesus getting in on the action.

This morning I did my laundry again. The missionaries walked back and forth outside a few times casing the joint, but as I was the only one in there and my evil radiates outward, they were too scared to come in.

My neighbor has sex

My neighbor has been getting laid a lot lately. How do I know? Because she doesn't shut her window while doing it. (The shades, yes. The window, no.) And as she has a deep, raspy voice, her moans of ecstasy (at four thirty in the motherfucking morning) sound more like someone passing a kidney stone than someone having fun. This sometimes goes on for an hour, which is both annoying as it keeps me awake, and annoying because I'm jealous.

Gay Sunday

Make sure you pick up the Sunday SF Chronicle this week, as I've got two articles in it for their Gay Pride issue. And you know how I'm practically bloated with gay pride. It just oozes from me. One of the pieces is on alternative (to house music) queer dance venues, such as square dancing and tango, and the other is about Gray Bars, which I define as bars that aren't totally straight or gay but have a good mixed crowd.

Deconstruction

The family of screaming white trash, abusive alcoholics, and retards (not exaggeration) finally moved out of the top unit of the apartment building across the garden from me. Hooray! Those people were freaky scary, and proof that if marriage and spawning are part of God's Plan, then God needs to rethink the plan.

So now they're renovating that unit after who knows how many years the one family has lived in it. (I'm guessing at least 15.) The guy who has been the gardener for the property is going to move into it after they finish the repairs, which I just learned will take 4-6 months.

This is probably because the property owner doesn't like to hire outside contractors, but use the gardener and her nephew to do most repairs, even though neither of them are particularly adept at this sort of work. So we get shoddy work that takes three times as long as it should to finish.

Worse than all that is having to hear their conversations. I think I may have bitch-blogged about them a few years ago. So. Dumb. At least regular construction workers swear a lot and talk about inappropriate things. These guys are just going back and forth trying to follow simple directions.

I wish the landlord had hired an astronaut and an ichthyologist to sand the floors instead, so at least I would have something good to overhear.

Hopping

I worked all weekend!
I had to go to 12 bars between Friday and Sunday!
Pity me!

X

Last night after I got home I watched American History X while trying not to black out. Though I'm really not into the whole important lesson about racism genre, I did finally figure out why people think Edward Norton is hot. So. Hot. Never having seen this movie, I used to think he was just a snivelling little bitch.

Couples' Math

At one of the six bars I went to yesterday, I overheard a case of couples' math:

"Okay let's see: There's the 94 minus 50 from the truck, plus I'm getting the movie, divided by two with the tip... So I guess it's your turn to pay."