Category: Music

Pet Shop Boys: Relentless  (1993)

I love this album, mainly because it was so different from what PSB had put out up until that point.

I will forever associate this disc with a little club I happened upon called The Playground in San Francisco in August of 1993 because it seemed they were always playing it.

I discovered The Playground after I had started boxing up my life to move back to Arizona—for the first time—after nearly a decade in The City. City life—and still pining over Rory—I knew it was time for me to cut my losses and start new.

Once I’d made up my mind to leave however—going so far as to give notice at work and on my apartment—as she is wont to do, The City pulled out all the stops to get me to stay. One evening I was out in front of my apartment building washing the car, and an absolutely gorgeous man happened by, struck up a conversation, and the next thing I knew we were upstairs doing the nasty. I started meeting guys left and right. And then my friend Rick came over one evening and started singing the praises of The Playground.

I was no stranger to sex clubs, having frequented the 1808 on a regular basis just after moving to San Francisco and spending many a rainy night wandering the halls of Mike’s Night Gallery many years later, but I’d drifted away from those venues because it was easy enough to find sex pretty much anywhere in the city if you really wanted it. So why pay for it?

In any case Rick’s full-throated (pardon the pun) endorsement of The Playground let me to check it out one night.

From the description in my Journal at the time:

There ís something very primal about the place, something that ís very much linked to our deepest (and yes, darkest) sexual fantasies. The owners have a gold mine in their hands, if they know how to keep the ambiance alive.

It s a converted warehouse on 17th Street between Folsom and Harrison. The building itself is at the back of a large parking lot. It’s all gray metal with yellow painted trim. At night there are two rotating yellow beacons located on the loading dock where you go in. When you first enter, to the right is the admission area. When you pass through that, you first enter the television and refreshment area. There are several sofas clustered about a lone TV. If you proceed back, slightly to the left, the next area you come to is the glory hole space. It’s a series of black painted cubicles surrounding a raised platform. Naturally, there are more than ample holes drilled between the cubicles and the platform. Immediately to the right of this area is what I’ve come to call “the drive-in.” There’s an English taxi (vintage unknown) parked there that faces a projection television that plays the same porn videos that are playing in the television area. If you continue back toward the rear of the building from the drive-in, you get into another area dominated by separate cubicles. These cubicles surround another, smaller room, and they have small holes drilled at eye-level, allowing you to look into the smaller room and see whatís going on. When you exit the peep-hole area and head again, toward the rear of the warehouse, you pass “the dungeon” on your left, where you’ll find a sling and various other equipment I could not identify. To your right is the restroom (and yes, people do have sex in there). Continuing back, down a set of stairs, are three more spaces: the jail, the infirmary, and off the infirmary, a small room with a bed and a single lone light bulb. There’s something very eerie about these two rear rooms, although exactly what it is, I haven’t quite been able to put my finger on. The jail, which opened only recently, is very hot. It consists of a large area surrounding four cells, complete with bunks and toilets.

After visiting The Playground several more times, combined with all the men falling out of the sky, I abruptly changed my plans to leave and ended up staying in San Francisco for another nine months. By then the downpour of eligible bachelors had ended and I was at wit’s end with the same aspects of city life that had initially prompted my thoughts of moving back to Arizona months earlier. It was then that I returned to Tucson for six months before the siren call of The City prompted my return.