Last modified: Fri Jun 8 08:36:29 PDT 2001

Pimp This! Thursday, August 31

"If anything gets rid of a lame crowd, it's a gay crowd."
--Peter Glikshtern, owner of Liquid and Six, in his SF Weekly cover story

"You wouldn't even look at a clock unless hours were lines of coke, dials looked like the signs of gay bars, or time itself was a fair hustler in black leather."
--Scott Favor (Keanu Reeves) in My Own Private Idaho

The Bohemia Bar is a nice place. It has been open about six months. It has a nice ski-lodge-style cone fireplace and a nice hardwood dance floor, and a nice pool table that looks like no one has had sex on it. The nice paint is still quite fresh on the walls, and the nice bathroom has a big gilt-framed mirror and doesn't stink. Of an evening, it is populated by nice, well-dressed, well-behaved people. All quite nice.

Enter the men/boys and women/girls of GQB to taint that niceness with a friendly reminder of what a night out on Polk Street used to mean. On Thursday, August 31, it went a little something like this:

The crowd began gathering at 8:30. Even the earliest arrivals were ready for action with lots of skin and skin-tight. Straw cowboy hats were big throughout the night. Everybody's favorite accessory that hustlers might like, too? Works for me. The dance floor was dominated early and long by a really cute and happily hip-grinding Eastern European guy and a few friends. (Sorry, sweetie, I forgot your name.) He danced like a Solid Gold dancer with a brain full of very tactile ecstasy. The middle-aged regular guys, all nice guys, around the pool table, all very nice, kept looking up as if they were standing next to a sci-fi wormhole to a parallel universe. Let's call it SluttySmallGayDancePartyPlanet. They weren't really offended, exactly, but you could watch them storing the information to wonder about later. Or maybe do something else with later, who knows.

By this time, some more unmistakable characters had arrived. A few guys were mostly naked. The vest with bare chest with tight shorts and jackboots, the half-shirts with tight low-slung jeans, some unbuttoned polyester shirts with the Mr. T-gold-chain-starter-set. One particularly tempting t-shirt: "If you can rope me you can ride me!" There were some really inventive outfits on some of the women that I won't even try to describe, except to say this about one of them: mesh. Many knew how to work their wear, cruise convincingly, and make everyone mad with desire. Others looked kind of, well, naked once they got inside.

The promised DJ never started spinning, since the manager decided he was worth more behind the bar. We kept three of them busy making drinks. The manager himself was the handsome frat-boy type, and thrilled to have us. When I asked him how long he'd been open (meaning the bar) he yelled: "I'm not! I'm still in the closet! I have issues!" What a fun, sexy straight guy, what a boisterous bar staff, what a wild compulsion to find out if there was any truth behind his jest.

Due (I imagine) to the drugged-up, escapist hoo-ha in the Nevada desert and other big doings over the holiday weekend, the crowd maxed out at about 80 or so, down from the 130 range we have enjoyed at the two or three prior parties. But total turnout is less important than what one does with one's self once he or she arrives, of course. The clothes-theme response was much better this time than at any prior party. Draw your own conclusions about why: inner hustlers? already had the slutty clothes sitting around?

And naturally there were some of those Pursed-Lip People. You know the ones, those who go around waiting to be impressed, whereby they miss all the fun. Pursed Lips didn't get anybody into the bathroom stall with the handsome and generous blue-eyed, black-haired guy with the impressive stuff. Pursed Lips did not get anyone an audience with the life-sized cardboard Princess Diana, faithfully dragged around by a bevy of five or so Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. (It's bound to be fun when the nuns show up. Look for them at the gates to the Folsom Street Fair later this month.) And Pursed Lips did not earn the hysterical perspective of the happy lesbian who came to the party directly from a meditation session. What insight.

As always, new if temporary couples formed. And many men were touched and felt by others who were touchy and feely. And, as always, several groups of straight bar-hoppers walked in, got an eyeful, and walked back out looked really confused. And the bar made a lot of money. The party continued that night in directions down Polk Street and all over town. Thanks for the sexy memories. See you next time.