Halloween

Halloween not a Friendly Ghost

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Fear not, ghouls and goblins. You’re still welcome in the Castro, at least one day a year. That’s right: Halloween’s back on. We got the word Wednesday night while we were celebrating all that is the Best of the Bay. Check out our Guardian’s San Francisco blog-all-about-it, and the Examiner ran a bit on it today as well. Sharpen your fangs, only three months away!

Halloween Not a Friendly Ghost

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by Amanda Witherell
amanda@sfbg.com

At the Guardian’s Best of the Bay party last night, we caught up with city officials fresh from a meeting on what to do about that pesky Halloween party in the Castro. Supervisor Bevan Dufty’s attempt to quash the celebration last week caught the ear of Mayor Newsom, who quickly mobilized city department heads including the SFPD and the Entertainment Commission, to brew up an agreement that protects the sacrosanct Castro event.

The Entertainment Commission took the stance that cancelling the city-run event would never work: it is ingrained in the Bay Area psyche to report to the Castro for All Hallow’s Eve, whether the people who live there like it or not. Police Chief Heather Fong said she would cancel cop vacation time instead and a full force would be dressed in blues and billy clubs for October 31. The plan is to shift the event from Castro to Market Street, but most importantly, the right to costumed revelry is no longer under attack.

Dufty wants to cancel Halloween

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By Tim Redmond

Yeah, it’s true: Sup. Bevan Dufty wants to cancel the official Halloween celebration in the Castro.

Of course, nobody — not even a district supervisor with the full backing of the Police Department and the mayor — can actually cancel Halloween in the Castro. I doesn’t work that way. But Dufty hopes that if the music, the road closures, and the city sponsorship go away, and the word is put out that Castro Halloween is over, not so many out-of-towners and troublemakers will show up.

“It’s not a draconian, fascist thing,” Dufty aide Rachlle McManus explained to me. “But frankly, we want to make it uncomfortable for people who want to cause trouble.”

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Nightmare city

PREVIEW Trench coat alert: The World Horror Convention is oozing all over Van Ness Avenue, unleashing four days of panel discussions (on everything from horror art to horror-themed television shows), readings (outstanding local true-stories zine Morbid Curiosity hosts an open mic), and special guests, including Ring author Koji Suzuki and cult-movie actor Bill Moseley, best known as sadistic Otis Driftwood in The Devil’s Rejects and — yee haw! — Iron Butterfly–loving grandma’s boy Chop Top in Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.

The event also features a dusk-till-dawn film festival curated by Shannon Lark, host of the Chainsaw Mafia movie nights at the Parkway Theater. (Side note: As part of that series, on May 25 she presents Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond, starring all the eyeball-crunching tarantulas your nightmares care to entertain.) For the convention Lark gathers more than two dozen shorts (Confederate Zombie Massacre sounds like a winner) and nine features, including the gloriously titled Frankenstein vs. the Creature from Blood Cove.

My weakness for anything starring P.J. Soles (Carrie, Halloween, Rock ’n’ Roll High School) drew me to Death by Engagement, writer-director Philip Creager’s slick slasher flick. A woman dumps her fiancé at the altar after realizing she’s about to marry the world’s biggest rageaholic (he’s addicted to rageahol!). He promptly tracks her down and beats her to a pulp — but is soon brought to the edge of death himself by a pair of trigger-happy cops, one of whom discreetly slides the honkin’ diamond ring off the bride’s bloody hand. The cursed bauble then snakes its way though the lives of several young and fabulous LA types, leaving a trail of corpses in its wake.

More of a raunchy comedy than a straight-up horror film (i.e., you’re more likely to be surprised by the sudden appearance of boobs than by any of the plot twists), Death by Engagement is notable for a few reasons: the appearance of the pawn shop from Pulp Fiction (but, alas, not the Gimp); the snarky dialogue, as when a cop refers to two brain-dead victims thusly: "So, we have a whole salad bar here, eh?"; and Soles, who is predictably great in a classic creepy-mom role. (Cheryl Eddy)

WORLD HORROR CONVENTION

Thurs/11–Sun/14

Holiday Inn Golden Gateway

1500 Van Ness, SF

$50–$140

www.whc2006.org

www.thechainsawmafia.com

Cruisin’ for a bruisin’

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EVER SINCE THAT fateful day on the family farm when our stud calf Beauregard threw me from his back and rammed me several times against a large oak, giving me one heck of a concussion, I knew I was destined to become a leather queen. I was only 11 at the time, and the options were few for actual experience, but dammit — if I couldn’t have the sex, then at least I’d have the outfits. “And what are you?” my innocent neighbors would ask when they opened their doors at Halloween. “I’m Freddie Mercury!” I’d reply with a wiggle of my little homemade chaps (Hefty bags and duct tape) for emphasis. And then they’d give me candy.

Nowadays everyone’s got to have at least one kinky fetish on their sexual resume — thanks, Madonna — yet often the men, women, and “other” of that twisted tribe known as the Leather Community still get a bad rap, especially among young gay club patrons. Part of this is fear, of course: Doesn’t all that pain hurt a little? And part of it is shame: The leather generation that came of age in the ’70s and ’80s has had to shoulder not just the burdens of age and rejection, but also a ridiculous cross between jealousy for living through the hedonistic homo heyday and blame for AIDS. And then, of course, there’s the primal terror of turning into one of those old men with cottage-cheese buttocks and a basketball belly who strut around the Eagle wearing nothing but rainbow flip-flops and a leash.

Oh sure, we’ll let them take us home and spank us on weeknights, but when we see them at the disco, we just shudder and throw shade.

In response, it seems, the leather queens closed ranks. No longer feeling welcome, they became a kind of secret society in the ’90s. Once-omnipresent social institutions like the Imperial Court of San Francisco and the Rainbow Motorcycle Club went underground ��� and, sadly, saw their profiles dwindle. Tight-knit contingents like Mama’s Family and the Men of Discipline sprang up, with their unique rituals and dress codes, shunning the clubs in favor of charity Golden Gate potlucks, cabaret fundraisers, and converted-garage play parties promoting safe-sex awareness. (Leatherfolk are all about the benefits, these days.) The sash circuit moved to the suburbs. Half the community morphed into bears. Even the dawn of the Internet connection only increased the generation gap.

But as the first Arab American leather hip-hop disco clubkid muppet queer San Francisco Drummer Boy 2001 (runner-up), I feel it’s my deep responsibility and honorable duty to reprazent my peeps in the hide. If there’s one thing my leather dad (love you, Ray) taught me, it’s respect, and if there’s another, it’s how to keep from passing out after hanging upside-down for 40 minutes. It’s time for all this nonsense to stop. This year may have seen three more local leather haunts — Loading Dock, My Place, and Club Rendez-Vous — close to become upscale, straight-type martini lounges; the baths are still outlawed; and creepy tweekers have invaded the sex clubs; but the leather lifestyle is still brilliant and vital, bouncing back up through the queer underground and swelling its ranks with curious alternaqueers and radical faeries, who fetishize being open-minded.

Today, the only places the whole queer community can come together regularly are our precious few leather bars. Daddy’s, Aunt Charlie’s, Marlena’s, and The Eagle have all undergone recent renaissances, fueled by a combo of renegade young promoters, indulgent owners, and a healthy new lust for the underground. Where else can beef and chicken meet? Not to mention old punks, baby dykes, hustlers, drag queens, bull daggers, grandpas, gymbots, ex-clones, Aberzombies, club kids, A-gays, bikers, circuit boiz, transgendered hotties, Log Cabin Republicans, and the odd closeted TV anchorman. It seems the more the mainstream media bleaches out our filthy abominations, the more we return to our fruitful past, when lust was the glue that held us together, and abomination was a kind of gang handshake. We may be more diverse than ever, but leather’s still our common ground.

Daddy’s. Daily, 9 a.m.-2 a.m., 440 Castro, SF. (415) 621-8732, www.daddysbar.com.

Marlena’s. Mon.-Fri., 3 p.m.-2 a.m.; Sat.-Sun., noon-2 a.m., 488 Hayes, SF. (415) 864-6672.

Aunt Charlie’s. Mon.-Fri., noon-2 a.m.; Sat.-Sun., 10 a.m.-2 a.m., 133 Turk, SF. (415) 441-2922, www.auntcharlieslounge.com.

The Eagle Tavern. Daily, noon-2 a.m., 398 12th St., SF. (415) 626-0880, www.sfeagle.com.

E-mail Marke B. at superego@sfbg.com.