Hello I'm Rich Brown and this is my personal website and blog. I'm just your simple, average, down to earth, professional, out gay man and aspiring circuit boy, living in Phoenix, Arizona with a few things to say while trying to find my place among all the scary, conservative, religious nuts in this sick and twisted world.
Monday, May 12, 2008
San Francisco & The Diminishing Gay Club Scene
So Justin and I are back in Phoenix from the trek to our former hometown of San Francisco this weekend. We went up to see our good friend Alexander spin on Saturday night at Adonis (550 Barneveld). This was our first time back to this space since we used to go the monthly Metropolis parties in the early 2000’s. Alex was on fire and he pulled together a truly great set to keep the boys dancing until around 5:30 AM when Gus finally shut down the party down and kicked us all out. I think we all agreed Alex's set at Adonis was actually better than his set at the White Party this year.
Immediately following the party a small group of us, including Alex headed over to San Francisco’s quintessential after-hours spot, the End-Up to continue dancing well into Sunday afternoon before having to gather our belongings and jump on a flight later that afternoon. Dancing again at the End-Up with the sun out, a few gay boys and the sketchiest gay-friendly straight people you’ll find in San Francisco really brought back some fond memories for us all. LOL.
While I had an amazing weekend in San Francisco, it does seem like the era of the dance clubs everywhere is fading. When we used to go to 550 Barneveld for Metropolis, there would be a line outside nearly all night, the entire club would be packed by midnight and all 3 rooms would be open with a different DJ in each. Sadly for the event on Saturday night it seemed like this once thriving event space was suffering the same fate as many others are seeing in cities throughout the states. We arrived just before Alex’s set began at Midnight and there was no line, which was good for us but a bad first indicator of the popularity of the event. We walked inside and while the main room was completely full, it wasn’t overly packed so there was plenty of room to move around and dance. Again I’m not complaining, I love having room to dance without being crammed in like a sardine, but the surprising part of the event was that the once thriving back dance floor (the green room) and the upstairs dance floor & chill out lounge were both completely closed off. I guess they just don’t draw the same size crowd as they once did in years past to warrant having these extra spaces stocked, manned and open. I was however impressed that reminiscent of the past they did put out an entire spread of fruit out for the event. This was actually an unexpected surprise, as they had stopped that amenity shortly into the second year or so of the Metropolis parties.
My friends and I discussed this at length on Sunday afternoon trying to come up with reasons why it seemed like things were different in the city then we remember from the past. Was it because of the dot-com bust, and all the former gay dot-com’er party boys left their faltering companies in San Francisco for more stable jobs in other cities (like Justin & I for example) Or was it just because the party boys have grown up and the younger boys just aren’t attending the gay clubs as frequently anymore? Back in the glory days of San Francisco’s dot-com boom, we would pack ourselves into Club Universe nearly every Saturday night and dance our asses off until the sun came up. Now there are only a few special event parties like Fresh @ Ruby Skye which typically coincide with holiday weekends that still manage to draw a large crowd of city residents as well as out of town guests.
All in all, I don’t know if there is any one reason as to why this is happening, but it’s really sad to me that it seems like the days of the predominantly gay dance clubs are numbered. I guess this is just the evolution of our community as we become more integrated and accepted in society. Evolution, acceptance and integration is certainly not a bad thing, it's something we've always strived to have. It's just the memory of days past and the experiences that we all had that helped shaped us individually and our community to this point that will be lost to this new generation of youth who may never experience what it's like to go out in a purely homogeneous environment.
Anyway, enough of that, I just thought I’d post an update on some thoughts and my fabulous weekend in San Francisco! Cheers!
