I can taste this photo.
Memories of SF in the 80s
I wonder where she is today?
Storytime
(Forgive me if I've posted something similar to this in the past. I'm too lazy to actually go searching through a decade and a half of posts.)
Picture it: San Francisco 1988 (or maybe 1989)…
I learned of The Whispering Bushes at the end of Golden Gate Park long before we moved to San Francsico via Tales of the City. It wasn't until sometime after our arrival that I actually went exploring there, and I'm here to tell you. It's all true. (Or at least it was.)
Over the years of cruising the venue, I had more experiences than I could ever relate (and for some reason, generally did not record for posterity in my journals), hooked up with guys who I became friends with, and fulfilled more than one fantasy (see: Jeff York). Despite AIDS ravaging the gay community, sex was still to be had, and amazingly everything I saw or participated in was considered "safe" sex. Police patrols were rare. I recall only one instance when I pulled up to park before hitting the trails and saw several police cruisers had beaten me there. Naturally I turned around and went home.
Oh, the stories of Golden Gate Park I could tell…
This picture reminded me of one afternoon in particular: It was the day Al Parker relentlessly pursued me up and down the trails until it reached a point where I had to leave the park simply to get away from him.
That picture is also pretty much how he looked that afternoon.
When he first started following me I thought, "Well that's interesting. Al Parker. Chasing me? Yeah, he is. I'm flattered man, thanks. I really am, but I've seen where your dick has been and no thanks!"
Now I know that many of my readers would've jumped at the opportunity to service Mr. Parker any which way, but even in his prime, he never pushed any of my buttons, and frankly at the time this happened it was common knowledge in the community that he too was battling advanced HIV. So yeah…no.
After about 30 minutes, it was obvious he wasn't taking my hints, so I ended up going back to my car and driving off.
Thirty Four Years Ago…Ah, Youth!
20 June 1990
Yesterday I finally got around to getting that card/photo thing together to send off to Bill Poole. I found a cute card that had an image of a guy stepping off a cliff; down below were hungry alligators. The caption read something like, "A new romantic steps out into the world" or some such thing. I covered the inside with a burnt-orange zip-a-tone. On top of that (on the left side of the card) I pasted the photo of me in the phone booth (the only one I had an extra of), and on the right, a little note. It read as follows:
Hi…it's Mark. Yeah, like I was saying the other night…our paths keep crossing, and our eyes keep meeting, but its hard to tell if he's flirting or just wondering why I'm staring at him. I can't help feeling that I've known him before. Like another life or something. When our eyes meet there are all these unresolved feelings. Pretty weird, huh? Yeah, I know. Guess I should have said something on one of those occasions…but it never felt right. Still…I dunno. Hell–I didn't know who he was until I happened to turn on Channel 35 a few weeks ago and caught some show called Electric City. You've seen it? Oh, well I hadn't. His name's Bill. Call him? He's not in the phone book. And even if he was, what am I gonna say? "Hey, you don't know me but we've flirted on the street and in Safeway several times? No, he'll think I'm a lunatic–and he probably gets thousands of cruises every day anyway–how's he gonna remember me? Any suggest-ions? The BBS? Hey, that's a good idea… someone's bound to know him there. Maybe I can get an address for the program so I could send him a card or something. Maybe a card with a photo. Kinda tacky but at least he'll know who I am that way. But it can't just be a card with a photo. It's gotta be something different. What? You gotta go? Okay guy…I'll catch you later. My number? Whadda ya mean don't have it? It's 861-4039. Call me sometime…
I popped it in the mailbox that afternoon. Well, I got a call this evening around 5:35 pm from Bill. It kinda threw me off at first cause he said that it was Bill….and that I'd sent him a card yesterday. That made the connection. Seems he's been very aware of me as I have of him. We're meeting in person tomorrow evening…
22 June 1990
Last evening was very interesting. Bill called promptly at 5:30 just as he'd promised night before last when he called. I was already standing in the shower when the phone rang, but still made time for a brief chat. He came over a bit past 6:00, dressed in a black leather motorcycle jacket, faded jeans, cowboy boots, and black leather motorcycle gloves. Can you say, "Hey Daddy?"
When we were chatting on the phone while I was standing in the tub, we'd discovered that we were both from Phoenix. He wasn't a native, but had been there since high school (1978), and had arrived in San Francisco only about two years ago. I had a feeling that he was a newcomer, but couldn't put my finger on anything specific. Supposedly he even knew Steve Golden, but alas, even he did not know his current whereabouts.
After he arrived we talked of many more things, but the conversation was punctuated with long periods of tongue-tiedness. I sensed (especially as time drew closer to 7:00 pm—when he had to leave to pick up his lover) that he really wanted to jump my bones. Frankly, I would have loved it if he had, but at the same time, I want this to be something more than a sexual liaison, however impossible that request may be. There is an undeniable attraction in operation here, and though he doesn't admit to any "I've known you before feelings", he slipped by saying that it must have been Phoenix where he knew me from. Quite unlikely, considering his age and the various bars he hung out at during his tenure there.
It was an awkward parting. We hugged goodbye and that was enough to give both of us a bit of discomfort in the jeans. He turned to face me as he stood on the deck; his discomfort was quite discernable. I told him that since it was probably going to be days and days before I saw him again perhaps he had better come back inside so I could at least kiss him goodbye. He readily agreed. I didn't want to stop or let him go. In fact, we kissed twice. The second time I patted him on the butt and told him he'd better get going or he'd be late picking up his husband. As he left, he said, "Thank you for making a fantasy come true."
There was no second rendezvous and I never really heard from Bill again, although we did cross paths for several years thereafter.
Perfectly Captures…
…my memories of San Francisco in December
Just Because
France Joli: Come To Me (1979)
5 Things to Know About Disco Queen France Joli
With a number of hit songs and a trajectory that has lasted her through four decades of performing, Joli is an icon in her own right. Yet still, many people don't know much about the disco legend.
On the runway of the "Warhol Ball" on RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars 3, Brooklyn's own Aja got read the house down by RuPaul for not polishing up her disco knowledge. While there were multiple problems Mama Ru had with Aja's statements, her major gripe came when Aja mispronounced the name of disco star France Joli.
The name may be unfamiliar to some, but upon hearing a few bars of her smash hit 1979 song "Come to Me," audiences will recognize the diva's stunning voice, still played on radio stations across America. While Joli was unable to repeat Billboard Hot 100 success with her follow-ups, her catalog remained popular within the disco scene. Four decades later, Joli is still performing, an icon in her own right.
Yet still, many people don't know much about the disco legend. Here are five things that you ought to know.
She was 15 years old when she recorded her debut hit album.
A natural performer since a young age, Joli was adamant about breaking into the music industry. The opportunity presented itself when a young Joli met musician and producer Tony Green. She auditioned for him at age 15, and three days later, Green already had her hit song "Come to Me" written for her. They recorded her self-titled album in 1978, and it was released in 1979, when Joli was 16.
Her performance at Fire Island in 1979 is the stuff of legend.
After the release of her album, Joli was presented with an opportunity that would go on to effectively change the course of her career. Donna Summer — the disco legend and Joli's personal hero — had suddenly canceled a performance at a beach concert in Fire Island. The promoters reached out to Joli to see if she could stand in for Summer. Joli agreed.
Now famously known as the "Beach '79" concert, Joli performed for a crowd of 5,000 cheering gay men. Her performance was so strong and so good, that her song "Come to Me" began to skyrocket. After this performance, Joli became an overnight sensation.
"Come to Me" peaked at No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart
On the heels of her massively popular Fire Island performance, Joli saw her song reach a peak position of No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. While Joli went on to have a prosperous career with several popular songs, none of them were ever the sensation that was "Come to Me."
She still performs across America today
After 40 years in the music industry, Joli is still performing. She travels around the country performing at clubs, benefits and festivals, still singing her hit songs from the height of disco. In a 2017 interview with Instinct magazine, Joli said "If someone had told me in 1979, when I was just 16 years old, that I would still be singing my first and biggest hit almost 40 years later, I would have thought they were crazy."
She has always been an ally to the gay community.
Joli, to this day, still recognizes that her career would never have been the same without the thousands of gay men on Fire Island who catapulted her into the spotlight. She was an active voice during the AIDS crisis of the '80s, and still supports and raises awareness for LGBTQ issues today. Not to mention that many of her shows to this day are at gay events and clubs.
[source]
Those GUNS…
Meet Mike, my latest YouTube obsession… for obvious reasons. (And he can be spotted sporting a rainbow Apple Watch face in nearly all of his videos!)
Actually, his videos remind me of the very unpleasant history of early PCs that launched me on my career trajectory those many years ago. Looking back, it truly was stone knives and bear skins in comparison to today. MFM, RLL, selecting IRQs, terminating resistors; the crap we had to deal with! But at least we were treated like gods—or at least like first responders—for understanding how it all worked and getting the shit working again when it stopped.
Now it seems we're viewed as just janitors, cleaning up everyone else's mess because they're too intellectually lazy to even try and figure anything out on their own.
Since We're Reminiscing About Old Technology…
…let me wax poetic for a bit about my very first hi-fi system.
The Sony TA-5650 was my first hi-fi amplifier, purchased with some high school graduation money. I'd owned "stereos" throughout my school years, but this was my first real piece of high end gear. Utilizing the then-new V-FET (vertical field effect transistor) technology, it produced a sound that could only be described as delicious. Unfortunately, it had the rather annoying penchant for self-destruction, that I've written about previously.
I purchased these Infinity loudspeakers at the same time I got the Sony amp. A good friend in high school had gotten a pair a year earlier and we both liked them, even though they were at the low-end of the Infinity lineup. I remember several things about the purchase. Firstly, the sales people were like, "You're putting these with that Sony?!" Secondly, the salesman had a blond mustache I wanted to take a ride on, and lastly, I'd had a pair on layaway for a month. When I went to pick them up, they told me I'd have to take the display models because they didn't have any stock. I wasn't having any of that bullshit. "They're on layaway. You will find a new pair."
Miraculously, a brand new in-box pair appeared in the back room. Sometimes causing a scene is necessary.
I'd been lusting after my friend's SL-1300 since it first appeared in his bedroom in 1973. It was a beautiful piece of tech, but sadly was no longer being manufactured when I actually had the funds to buy my own. It had been replaced with an upgraded version, the SL-1600 (which was, actually, so much better in so many respects). I kept this for several years, until I gave it to my sister after upgrading to this:
Another beautiful, cutting-edge piece of tech that had issues. This is still probably my favorite Technics series ever produced, despite it's long-standing issues with the tonearm lift mechanism. I still have the one I purchased off eBay in the early 2000s whose arm was permanently repaired, although I'm not currently using it, having acquired a SL-1200mk2 about two years ago.
I got this beauty out of frustration after the 1300mk2 had been sitting in the shop for over three months. Again, I had wanted to buy perhaps the all-manual version of the 1300mk2 (the 1500mk2) and then sell it when I got the 1300mk2 out of repair, but like the 1300/1600 debacle, the line had been discontinued. So this was a decent, relatively inexpensive alternative. This is the one table that stayed with me until I foolishly sold all my vinyl after moving to San Francisco in the mid 80s.
This was my first cassette deck, finally acquired in 1984. It was good, not great, but certainly served its purpose. Even with the advent of CDs, minidisc, MP3s and streaming, I do still kind of miss cassettes. They were wondrous things in their day. At one point I think I had a hundred or so mix tapes…
I think I still have maybe a handful squirreled away in a box somewhere, but nothing to play them on.
Of course, there is a lot more to the story of my hifi journey over the course of my life, but this was where it all started.
Blast From the Past
How many of you played this from the Plus Pack of Windows 95?
Blast From the Past
Who had one of the originals? I certainly didn't. I was heavily into Minidisk at the time and wrote off this whole idea as a fad.
Can I file this under "vintage hi-fi" now?
Oh Michael… (NSFW)
This Reminds Me…
…of a boy who called San Francisco home at the same time I did. For all I know this is the boy, as the vintage of the photo—not to mention that 'stache—certainly seems on point. For the longest time I only referred to him as "Mr. Mustache" (for obvious reasons).
The night before the gay parade in 1988 I spotted him wander into The Detour as I was walking up Market Street. The Detour wasn't really my cup of tea, but I followed him in and after he'd made a circuit around the bar, he turned around and left. I don't know if he was looking for someone specifically, or if no one piqued his interest.
Undeterred, I also left the bar and followed him further up Market to where he'd parked his car. As he was walking a couple guys passed him and yelled, "Hey Chuck!"
Chuck. I could finally attach a name to the boy.
I ran into him again later that summer at—of all places—The Whispering Bushes at the end of Golden Gate Park. We didn't hook up, but we started talking as we walked along the main path and ended up crossing the Great Highway to sit on the sea wall bordering Ocean Beach to watch the sun set. As I recall he was having boyfriend problems and just needed someone to talk to. I obliged.
After the sun slipped under the horizon he thanked me for listening, and said he needed to get home. We exchanged names but not phone numbers, and never did hook up—although afterward he always greeted me with a warm smile whenever our paths crossed.
Memories of My Childhood
(The tarantula and the horned toad never cooked properly.)
(My parents undoubtedly hoped the Johnny Seven gun would butch me up. It didn't.)
https://youtu.be/zLPm1vx-UOg
To this day I remember exactly what that stuff smelled like.
I Am An Old Geek
I found this via a link at Mostly Words and found it fascinating. Anything BBS-related brings me back to the Wild West, pre-AOHell days of the internet…
The author of the above post has provided an update.
It Was The 70s…
Flashback Friday
Not me this time, but my late friend Steve Golden, spinning at Hotbods in Phoenix, spring 1983:
And in a more relaxed state of mind…
He always thought me silly because of the number of photos I shot of him at work in the booth, but now, some 39 years (!) later, I'm so glad I did. Yeah, I was new to 35mm photography, never did really get the exposure right, and a lot of the shots are out of focus, but I'm so glad I took them. But that last one? Chef's kiss…
He would've been 64 last year.
A Musical Interlude…
…for those of us who came of age dancing to Patrick Cowley's music. Put on your headphones and let your ears bleed. Regardless of your current age, I dare your feet to not start moving in time with the music.
I'm fighting back tears of joy…
The pictures are from my personal collection, shot at the now long-defunct club Hotbods in Phoenix (ironically only a couple blocks from our current domicile) in spring of 1983. I don't remember these were shot the actual night I first heard Patrick's music, but it was definitely the same season. (Phoenix always lagged months—if not years—behind both coasts in the music scene.)
Before his death in 1982, Patrick Cowley produced some of the American gay underground's most thrilling dance music, from chart-topping disco to radical club tracks. In recent years, San Francisco record label Dark Entries has devoted itself to released Cowley's lost art, from porn soundtracks to original albums and erotic journals.
As the label celebrates what would have been his 69th birthday with a new compilation, DJ Mag discovers how Cowley is finally being recognised as an icon. Meanwhile, Dark Entries' Josh Cheon serves up a 69 minute mix of his biggest and boldest tracks
Read the full feature: djmag.com/longreads/patrick-co…ey-gay-genius-hi-nrg
Tracklist:
Patrick Cowley – Mechanical Fantasy Box
Patrick Cowley & Jorge Socarras – Robot Children
Patrick Cowley – Mind Warp
Sylvester – Do Ya Wanna Funk
Patrick Cowley – Primitive World
Patrick Cowley – Megatron Man
Donna Summer – I Feel Love (Patrick Cowley Mega Mix)
Patrick Cowley – Menergy
Patrick Cowley – Lift-Off
Paul Parker – Right On Target
Patrick Cowley – X-Factor
Patrick Cowley – They Came At Night (Remix)
Patrick Cowley – Sea Hunt
Patrick Cowley – Big Shot
Patrick Cowley – Tech-No-Logical World (feat. Paul Parker)
Patrick Cowley – If You Feel It
Patrick Cowley – Get a Little
Patrick Cowley – Goin Home (Remix)
Patrick Cowley – Somebody To Love Tonight
Patrick Cowley – Thief Of Love
Patrick Cowley – Primordial Landscape
Patrick Cowley – Menergy (Reprise)
It Was the Best of Times…
…it was the worst of times.
Flashback Friday
I was never that young.
Flashback Friday
"Manspreading"
From the Analog Archives: CD Record Rack, January 1998
From the Analog Archives: Point Bonita Lighthouse, October 1996
From the Analog Archives: Around the Hood (and Beyond)
San Francisco, September 1993
Early Digital Photography: My Morning Commute
A photographic record of the morning commute from my apartment to the Levi Strauss Corporate Headquarters, San Francisco October 2000. Taken with a Sony Mavica digital camera that used a floppy disk for storage (hence the poor quality).
I didn't take the underground with this gig because the surface trolly would basically drop me at Levi's doorstep. I would, however, often transfer to the underground on the way home.
Did I ever mention that on one of those evening commutes, while still on the trolly (coming as it was from the tourist destination Fisherman's Wharf), Mark Hamill—Mr. Luke Skywalker himself—and his family were on board? AND HE FLIRTED WITH ME?!? I think I displayed an incredible amount of self-control and respected his privacy by not asking for an autograph. Were his family not there, however, who knows what would've happened? It might've been a story for the ages!
From the Analog Archives: Church Street Station
San Francisco, July 2000
1886 Burritos
As promised, a story I promised some time ago…
I stumbled upon Rosie's within months of arriving in San Francisco in 1986. I was in the Castro on a Saturday morning, looking for a place to grab lunch and as I walked down 18th Street I came across Rosie's and it looked intriguing. I remember I ordered the California burrito, and from that first bite I knew I was in love.
San Francisco burritos (no matter where you get them) are a very distinct and unique breed. Some say they're the best burritos to be had anywhere. Not having lived that many places over the course of my life, I can say unequivocally however that they are the best burritos I've ever had. I've found a few that come close, but fail to meet the San Francisco standard.
Over the course of the sixteen years I lived in The City, I must've conservatively eaten at Rosie's 1886 times, based on 1-2 times a week for those entire sixteen years. I used to joke I would want a Rosie's burrito to be my last meal.
Rosie's in long closed (now longer than the entire time it was originally open), so I'll never have another opportunity to enjoy a meal there, but it doesn't matter. All I have to do is close my eyes and I can taste those delicious burritos. (To be honest, everything on the menu was excellent, but I gravitated toward the burritos more often than not.)
The owners of Rosie's also had a burrito shop on Haight Street (the name escapes me at the moment)—which, for some reason I never knew of until I started going to Amoeba Records. I often ate there when I was in the neighborhood, but it wasn't quite the same.
Letters From the Past
The other day I received a package in the mail from my long time friend Kekku. We met back in 1985 when we were working in a shared architectural space and since we were both a little—out there—we quickly became partners in crime (something our respective firms did not appreciate).
In this package was a devilish face mask and two letters I'd mailed her back in the early 90s. They offer an interesting peek into the past and what a different person I was 30 years ago…
So Many Double Entendres…
So many long hoses filling holes…
The last time I can remember getting fully um…serviced…at a gas station was in the early 80s. Even then I think you had the option of pumping your own gas.
Growing Up In the 1960s
Yes, I still have the last one I ever made: 53 years old, 34 moves and 1 fire. He's a survivor.
More From '79
The fact that disco was the cover story on goddamned fucking Newsweek should've been the first clue that its death (or at least transformation) was imminent. When you have pictures of pensioners shuffling along to the beat, you know it's a goner—at least where the gay nightlife was concerned. After the mainstream killed it, it went back underground and was reborn under a dozen monikers. Thankfully the beat still lives on today, but you won't find anyone calling it disco.