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Almost Complete!

Almost complete. Just missing MDNA, Who’s That Girl, and Evita. (MDNA is arriving next week.)

Madge (I’m two months older than she is)—along with Pet Shop Boys—has provided the soundtrack of my life, especially during the height of their influence in the 80s and 90s. I will forever associate Papa Don’t Preach and West End Girls with my arrival in San Francisco.

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Fuck You, Instagram!

Every time I log in through the web. EVERY GODDAMNED TIME!

The fucking app forced me to change my password six times yesterday, and as of 11 pm last night it was still giving me issues.

I guess I pissed off the algorithm by flagging too many ads as inappropriate or posting too much political bullshit. Yet there are “influencer” accounts that post nothing but soft core porn and they seem to be doing just fine.

I closed the account I had since 2009 in 2012 when Instagram was bought out by Facebook. I almost immediately regretted that and came back, but what Instagram has become over the past twelve years bears little resemblance to what it once was: a fun, lighthearted place where people posted photos of their food or pets, or just random shots they’d taken during the day. I know what I see is determined by who I follow, but it still seems like it’s now a feculent, toxic hellstew of brain-dead influencers, pathetic, validation-starved men showing their enormous bulges, guys whose self-worth seems to revolve around their abs and pits, and ads. Ads, ads, ads. Every third post is an ad for some stupid piece of crap or something advertised that “you can’t live without” that you wouldn’t buy even if you saw it in person.

I closed my Facebook account a decade or more ago because it too, had simply gotten too toxic. It wasn’t easy, fighting that urge to log back in and reactivate everything was a daily struggle for months. But eventually the need passed and I moved on with my life. I know Instagram has become the same unhealthy addiction that Facebook had become and that I need to walk away from it, but I’m not quite ready to give Meta the stiff middle finger it so richly deserves. At least not yet.

So what are my alternatives? In addition to this blog (which I do not want to share with everyone I know on Instagram) I also have an account on Tumblr; again, not exactly something I want to share with Insta for many of the same reasons. I suppose I could set up a second,  SFW Tumblr account and direct everyone who follows me on Instagram to go there?

Thoughts?

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“Picture It…San Francisco, October 1986…”

Don’t know what prompted me to post this on Instagram last night, but I figured why not do it here as well?

This was the first place in SF my ex and I shared after moving from Tucson.  It was a building that was being renovated by a friend of the architect I was working for at the time.

Bernie and I had already gone our separate ways by this time, but we decided to try living as roommates to see how it went. We were still friends after all, and the parting had been amicable.

There are lots of memories associated with this flat, but one that stands out above all the others was the night the owner (who lived on the third floor) decided to clean oil stains off the new garage floor with gasoline.  Seeing how this was a recipe for disaster, we called the fire department and upon arrival the fire captain screamed at him for the stupidity. “We have a half dozen homes go up every year because of this kind of stupidity!”

Needless to say our relationship with the landlord went downhill from then. The following June, when we put a pride flag on the front of the house he demanded it be taken down because we had “modified the exterior” by attaching the flagpole to the exterior of the building. We complied, and then hung the flag in the front window.

When it came time to renew the lease, he raised the rent an exorbitant amount (3-unit buildings did not fall under the maximum 4% annual increase clause in San Francisco), and after discussing everything that had happened since the gasoline night (including his continually yapping rat-dog that he would put out on the back fire escape) we decided it was time to move on.

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Never mind that the Olympics display was not The Last Supper…actual drag queens have parodied the fucking holy relic several times and not ONCE did it turn into a pearl-clutching, panty-twisting international incident!

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I Remember This Place

I never got laid from going there, but I enjoyed the people-watching. One evening in particular (March ’91) stands out. Still reeling from Dennis’s passing I needed to get out and be with people. I didn’t particularly care for any of the Castro bars, but I’d visited the Lion Pub with friends some weeks earlier and enjoyed myself. It was pouring rain and I almost didn’t go, but I grabbed an umbrella, walked down to the Castro, hopped on the Divisadero bus and headed north. I distinctly remember grooving to the debut CD of a little group called Enigma during the ride to and from the bar, and it was there I fell in love with Clown Loaches (they had a big aquarium in the bar), a type of freshwater tropical fish that became an integral part of my own fish-keeping until I gave up the hobby entirely four years ago.

Of that particular night, I wrote in my journal:

I just got back from The Lions Pub. It was dismal. There was one guy there, a hot, smokin’ dark-haired number who I couldn’t figure out. We flirted off and on. Was he interested or not? He finally left, and, considering the two of us were the best looking men in the place, I decided to follow suit. The place had a definite lack of facial hair.

He drove off, probably never to be seen again.

Actually, I can’t just write it off like that. I would have liked to have met him. I suppose it’s reason enough to return next weekend.

I bought an absolutely wonderful recording yesterday. It’s by a new group called Enigma, and the CD is entitled MCMXC a.D. I don’t really have adequate words to describe it. It’s totally unlike anything else I’ve ever heard, yet it bears resemblence to several old and dear recordings, and takes me back to earlier times. It conjurs up all sorts of emotions, and, if only indirectly, prompted my journey back out into the land of gay bars.

The bar closed in 2016 with the death of its owner, and was converted into a six-million-dollar residence.

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