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gqb home > archives > write-up archives > Wonder Twin Powers Deactivate! |
Last modified: Fri Jun 8 08:33:47 PDT 2001 |
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Wonder Twin Powers Deactivate! Jun 7th, 2000By the Power of Tanqueray, I Have the Power! Thursday, July 20: Part 1: POW! Bar, 6th and Mission. Part 2: Rawhide, 7th and Howard. "I've had my fill of the evils of man's world!"
Fag #1: "Would you like to play a game of pool?" Guerrilla Queer Bar hit its first snag last Thursday at the very snag-o-philic corner of 6th and Mission. As what is becoming a reliably large, friendly, and attractive mixed-queer crowd gathered outside the superhero bar POW!, the horrible truth became clear: Holy numb-nuts, Batman! They're not letting anyone in! Where was Spiderman when we needed him? Thor with that hammer? The X-Men, fresh from their silver screen debut? All we had on hand was the rode-hard-and-put-up-wet Wonder Chica, a true assault on Wonder Woman's non-jiggling bosom and perfect coiffure. And a tall guy in a SuperFreak t-shirt and threatening eyeglass-frames. We stood outside the door feeling very un-heroic. The crowd grew into a big line, which now included three of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. A line. Jeez-o-Pete. This was Guerrilla Queer Bar, not some TenFifteen disco queue or a Friday night at the AMC Kabuki movies. A line, for Aquaman's sake. Ugh. Yuk. Pa-tooey. We want gloms of people uniting with their alcohol of choice, immediately, in happy clusters, mixing, scamming, cruising, saving the world from all sorts of evils. Superheroes don't wait in lines to drink. As time drug on, and POW! was not relaxing their official, very limited capacity (= 49! How will they ever make any money??), an advance team of superheroes scoured the area for a suitable place to relocate the whole GQB. Several large clubs were closed in the nearby blocks, and other bars were smaller than POW! It was a very guerrillesque moment in which the Wonder Twins burst into the cavernous and disco-ready Rawhide. Empty but for two bartenders, they were ready for the business. So the true guerrillas of the evening (and/or those most in need of a drink/lay) abandoned the inside and the outside of POW! and paraded en masse through the misty evening to this new, unplanned destination. A veritable big ole Bat Cave with dance floor, pool tables, and an outdoor roof deck, we had plenty of room for the 70 or so people who made the transition. Drinks all around, finally, and there we were, some till closing time. There were Prolifik DJ's in from Dallas, just for us it seemed. The roof deck was popular with all sorts of smokers. One of Wonder Chica's water balloon tits ended up behind the toilet in the men's room, eerily enough. From this group came over $200 for Guerrero House, the first charity of choice for GQB's "Gettin' Some and Givin' Some Back" campaign. Thanks to the Sisters for their collection efforts and the generous crotch rubs with that feather pole thing. So ZING! WHIFF! KA-BLAMMIE!, just like that, the GQB's most awkward evening came off. Our advance communication with POW! about the night only seems to have hurt our ability to get in. No mention of the capacity issue was made. To deprive anyone of any drinking or socializing was never in our minds, so that line thing was really a kick in the head for all involved. The issue of waiting in line for a drink is what helped start this whole thing in the first place (see "Manifesto" on the GQB home page). If you made the move with us, I'm sure it was worth it. Everyone I spoke to was happy to be there. If you went home after POW!, hope you made it inside for a drink. If you just stood outside and got pissed off and went home, well, sorry. I know the guerrilla spirit of flexibility and adventure is hard to maintain when you are holding up a wall outside a bar in a bad part of town. Also, please: Don't hate POW!, pity the place. I'm sure they wanted to make a lot of money that night, but they had to hold to their capacity and then became crabby. What's more for little POW!: they got tagged the "Best Bar for Bisexuals" in the Guardian's Best of the Bay this week, thereby dooming the place forever to be filled with frat boys chasing that two-girls-at-once fantasy. Eeek! |
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2001 (c) Urban Anthropology Institute |