Last modified: Fri Jun 8 08:26:44 PDT 2001

GQB = Jail Bait

Guy 1: "Were you on the bus trip to Walnut Creek?"

Guy 2: "Yeah, my bladder and liver still aren't the same."

Guy 3: "Speaking of which, I need another drink."

The latest Guerrilla Queer Bar took over Annie's Cocktail Lounge, nestled quietly on Boardman Alley across from the front steps of San Francisco's county jail. Known to intimates by its address, 850 Bryant stood quietly watching our very large turnout of revelers from across the street. As GQB spilled onto Boardman with drinks in hand for a breath of either fresh air or smoke, the bartenders repeatedly admonished us with references to "the cop shop." The neon lights of bail bondsmen and bondswomen, open all night naturally, lit up the alley like a strip mall in Pleasant Hill. One big sign carried the name Sheila Lockett, a drag name waiting to happen, and another was "[Somebody's] Bail Bonds In The House," the convenient hip hop cliché cum business name.

This party saw over two hundred people in the course of the evening, and the bar was so crowded at times that it became hard to move. But fags and dykes and straight friends were exceedingly mellow about this, waiting for their drinks and wondering where all these people come from.

The much-anticipated 11:00 shift change at the jail did not have quite the impact on our dynamic we had hoped. By that point we had the bar locked down fairly tightly (no pun intended), so any cops and guards and sheriff's deputies who approached the door read the donut on the wall and went elsewhere.

In the interest of the free flow of alcohol, we broke this time around with our tradition of total ambush by sending Annie's a ransom note on Thursday via bike messenger. It consisted of a photocopy of the GQB Guardian cover from December and cutout letters reading: "Extra bartender. Friday night." One of the two bartenders reported: "Yeah, we got that, but it didn't do any good. Everybody is in Vegas this weekend!" (Including big boss Annie herself.)

We were blessed to be the first group ever to use Annie's old-style photo booth (none of that candy-ass sticker shit), which was being installed as we arrived. The full details of what all was memorialized behind that rubber curtain cannot be told, but if anyone wants to scan their photos and email them to Barney's Yahoo! email address, we will see about putting them on the site for the world to see.

The lovely and manic Gino was on the bar with his shirt off, yelling about something in the megaphone on an otherwise announcement-free evening. Two other beautiful men followed his example for a brief moment. Sadly, they opted not to remove clothing. The barback, a very agreeable (if dazed) young blonde woman, was fine with all of this, her only comment being to documentarian Moses: "Don't let Annie see that video you're making."

We had what was at least the second occurrence in the "it figures" category: a hot straight hookup! The first one I heard about followed the gleeful W Hotel leather night, I think. Anyway, Jail Bait Night was the romantic scene for a hot momma from Dallas and a fun straight guy she met. Congratulations, you two breeders. Now get outta here, you're making me sick with that.

And that's kind of how some of it went. (How's that for a post-modern spin on your plain old Walter Cronkite empiricism?) Stay tuned for what is likely to be one more simple-ish event followed by (shhhh, if you're good) a new holiday with its very own parade.