Sunday was the 13th annual Dore Alley street Fair, the opening fair of the entire citywide streetfair season, and the most quasi-renegade, alternative sexual fetish-themed, edge-play or sadomasochistic, bondage and discipline-focussed street fair of them all, beating out the absolutely huge and naturally more commercially oriented Folsom street fair as yet another excuse for gay men to run around scantily clad pinching their own nipples all day, perhaps urinating on someone, getting flogged (“I swear it’s better than getting high, girl!” I overheard) and feeling very “we are living on the edge wearing leather and rubber as sexual outlaws” about themselves and their peers, or shall I say the leather/fetish/SM/BDcommunity? It all seemed a little less “on the edge” than it should have in one respect most definitely, and that was musically. For the second year in a row the DJ/dance area chose to ignore and not feature at least one rock and roll DJ, favoring only dance oriented gaydiscofantasyland style DJs for the ever-so-edgy crowd of fetish revelers. I can attribute this to a very sad fact, and that is that street fair organizer David Dysart a.k.a. Puddles bowed out of some of his duties from previous years last year due to his health problems and this year he passed on just a few weeks before the fair. One thing David always remained true to was rock and roll and diversity, presenting at least one rock and roll DJ usually early on in the fair day, acknowledging it’s presence in the south of market stomping ground where all this fetish folly supposedly takes place, and not always to the tune of that new Cher song rather than filthy dark and dirty rock and roll, which seems somehow more appropriate to the whole alternative sex/fetish scene anyway. It was the Dore Alley Street Fair but apparently rock and roll doesn’t dress accordingly? Tell me that Rock and Roll hasn’t changed the face of the entire south of Market nightclub and bar scene over the last five years with The Hole In The Wall Saloon and The Eagle Tavern featuring Rock and Roll only and My Place at least 50% of the time and more recently with the development of the very busy club called Sixteen every Sunday night at Cat’s Club. I find it inaccurate and reprehensible that not a single DJ from any of these bars and clubs was invited to play at least one spot at the fair. To be ignored was not only erroneous in the sense of the neighborhood and properly representing it, but also disrespectful to the memory of a longtime organizer of the event who gave enough of himself over the years that at least his spirit should in some respect live on in at least honoring a certain sense of tradition. The same should apply to The Folsom Street Fair as well for that matter. For a subculture with a rich history that’s forever threatened by an eventual heterosexist whitewashing, it shocks me just how easily gays seem willing to do that to each other, just as quick as they can.
Speaking of a sense of history, does anyone remember the real Dore Alley–that stretch of one block between Folsom and Howard, 9th and 10th with a large parking area mid block? Several years ago after 2:00 am you could drive or stroll through that alley and find as many as 50 men lining the chain-link fence of that parking lot cruising for sex. Now a big ugly and occasional rat is the only sign of life you’ll find scurrying about that alley at that hour. It’s desolate, most likely due to complaints from neighbors whose homes bordered the lot. Complaints led to heavier patrolling of the area and cruising that strip became a ritual of the past, completely forgotten or possibly stanched out in part by the epidemic as well as the authorities. It’s difficult to remember exactly when that area became suddenly off limits or heavily patrolled but the simple fact that Ringold Alley just a half block off Folsom St, another one block stretch of highly active post bar cruising territory, existed as an alternative has a bit to do with not recalling much of a fuss about the demise of this other late night cruising spot. You see, Ringold Alley had a huge world-renowned reputation for being the late night cruising spot in San Francisco’s South of Market district. It still does to date, because I occasionally meet perplexed visitors from out of town scratching their heads in disbelief that Ringold Alley is not really happening in the cruising department anymore, which it isn’t, and I’m starting to understand the reasons why. It must have happened very slowly so as not to cause an uproar with the nocturnal meandering sexually obsessed gay men who frequent the alley to cruise. There was no initial shockwave noted in the local gay rags about any police crackdown on late night cruising on Ringold but sure enough, the number of men cruising the alley seriously started to diminish.
One night about 6 weeks ago, a Friday at 2:00 am I was heading down 9th Street to the 24 hour shell station with a friend and my friend suddenly stopped in his tracks and said, “There’s a cop car right up ahead, lets wait or cross the street.” I looked at him incredulously, as he was not your run of the mill drug-addled ex-con paranoiac and had never been in a Mexican prison either. “Are you serious? What could a cop do to us—we’re just walking to the shell station, they’re here to protect us, c’mon, we’re marching right by them proudly,” and we did, I even greeted the officers in my best butt-kissing little boy voice. It was after we passed them that I realized that the cop car was parked in a way that blocked any traffic from entering the mouth of Ringold alley completely—cutting off the circular pattern traveled by vehicles for years around that half block. I was astonished at this bold motion against this regular activity on the block for at least two decades and wondered why it was happening. Were there noise complaints from residents of the alley? Gee, didn’t they know about the cruising before they moved in, did a tricky slumlord just fail to mention it to a nice elderly couple? How many new and oblivious residents are there on Ringold Alley? When I moved into the South of Market area directly above a popular bar, I didn’t phone in complaints about the noise, I accepted it as something like the weather, a quality inherent to the area. If you hate cold climates, don’t move to Minnesota. If you want a tree-lined family-style lawn darts with the neighbors, peaceful after dusk kind of neighborhood, don’t move into an alley known for decades as an institution of late night cruising for sex.
Just the other night a friend of mine left my house just for a breath of fresh air and as he turned down the alley he noticed a cop car. He strolled towards it and the officer inside said, “Excuse me sir, could you come over to the car please—and remove your hands from your pockets.” My friend quipped back, “Paranoid?” He sensed the police were not amused and said, “Yes sir,” and approached the car. The police said, “The residents of the area have been complaining about the noise—you’re going to have to leave the area.” He then told them he was sort of a resident of the area—just over on Folsom and how nice it is to take a walk at night like he was doing. They replied that a few of the guys gather in groups and get loud, but it is nice to be able to walk at night.” They weren’t entirely unpleasant, but pretty adamant about keeping the alley clear of people. Perhaps they wanted the cruising strip all to themselves, which would be fine by me if they were the pair of heroes in blue who came to my female room mate’s rescue over a disturbance outside of our front gate one night. They were so fine she tried to think of a way to get them inside! There have even been reports of non-uniform or undercover cops patrolling the alley and telling people to leave.
This sudden backlash against cruising areas has made itself apparent in a variety of formerly hot spots to mill about in the dark or in nature for sex. A friend told me recently that the Windmills were completely abysmal these days and a recent trek to Buena Vista Park proved even more uneventful with the clearcutting notion that less foliage will stop men from having sex in the bushes has been exercised to such an extreme that it makes my inner sierra club member cry out in pain. On the snootier side of town, Lafayette park still poses too much of a danger of being arrested by undercover cops and branded for life as a sexual offender. It appears that Collingwood park in the Castro is the only cruise spot that is still bustling but I’m sure that’s soon to be eradicated as well, seeing as how several popular gay bars in the Castro have closed and the former Gay Mecca is truly seeming like a neighborhood with a plan if you know what I mean.
So what in the hell is going on here folks? Call me paranoid but I think San Francisco is trying to tell us something, like “Goodbye Homosexuals, goodbye Poor people, we don’t want you and your tawdry ways anymore, except maybe once or twice a year when your money is what we want, like Gay Day, Folsom and Castro Street Fairs, oh, and Christmas too.” HIV care and disease management has turned Gay Males into the welfare mothers of the millennium. Landlords city-wide are commiserating amongst themselves over how difficult it can be to evict a P.W.A. Well, I say it’s time we start taking back some of our old haunts and habitues on the alley, street and park levels as if the internet never existed for cruising for sex. The old-world ways could likely prove more fruitful than the obtuse and removed attempts in cyber-world if you ask me. So the next time you’re feeling lonely late at night think of the good old days and act accordingly. Just because they’ve co-opted our alternative sexual adventurousness into a safe one night a week Fetish focus field trip doesn’t mean our behaviors, traditions and rituals are but a closed chapter in anthropological history. Go outside and get your nut, people.