Get your motor runnin’
I hate when this happens … I hate it when I hear a song on the radio that sounds for all the world like a young woman singing romantically about another young woman, only it turns out to be a young man singing. You just don’t hear that too often. There are popular songs about love and attraction that are just meant to make you feel dreamy, and for me that’s a woman singing about or to another woman, or singing without the sex of her dreamboat being mentioned. I didn’t know Olivia Newton-John had been bisexual when I first melted at “I Honestly Love You,” but that only made me feel even more dreamy.
There are songs it’s possible to imagine as being covered with the pronouns changed to great effect, such as The Crystals’ “He’s a Rebel.” “Just because she doesn’t do what everybody else does/That’s no reason why I can’t give her all my love.” I dated a tomboy in that range a while back, and oh, was I smitten. Sadly, she was also a flake, but a girl can dream.
The most recent example of my getting fished in came while listening to a digitally remastered 10@10 on Renee & Irish Greg’s Pop UP! on Patreon. Ten at ten was a feature on the late, lamented KFOG: “Ten great songs from one great year,” interspersed with news and movie clips, broadcast at ten in the morning on weekdays. Occasionally there would be another theme, like Soul Patrol, Hits from Hell, or a vertical tasting of songs on the charts on a particular day over a sequence of years. It’s great fun. I remember driving down to the South Bay for club meetings on a Saturday morning and listening to the 10@10 Marathon of the past week’s shows. I miss that, and I miss KFOG.
Renee and Irish Greg had remastered a 1978 10@10, and my ears perked up when I heard “Teenage Kicks,” which sounded like a young woman singing about a girl in the neighborhood she really wanted to meet and date. Only when I looked it up, it was a teenage boy, young enough to have pimples in the video, singing it with The Undertones from Northern Ireland. My heart sank. It’s still a really cool song about teenage infatuation, though.
Not long afterwards, I got to attend an actual lesbian event at a women’s bar in the Castro. It’s not officially a lesbian bar, but Rikki’s Women’s Sports Bar shows women’s sports and is named after the late bar owner Rikki Streicher. Rikki owned the first lesbian bar into which I snuck in with a fake ID. This was the famous Maud’s in the Haight-Ashbury, renamed at what point I don’t know from The Study. A Maud’s sign went up on the outside wall, and original neon The Study sign never came down. This was a nostalgic comfort for me, actually. At one point, Maud’s closed with a final celebration. There’s a documentary on DVD, “Last Night at Maud’s,” that tells the bar’s story.
The story includes the Maud’s softball team, which served as a fun community building phenomenon. After Maud’s closed, Rikki had another bar, Pier 50, across China Basin where the Giants’ new ballpark would be built. I never played on the Maud’s team, but I did play on the Pier 50 softball team, and I loved being able to say I played for Rikki.
The event at Rikki’s Women’s Sports Bar was a fundraiser for the Women’s Motorcycle Contingent, better known as the Dykes on Bikes®, and a celebration of their upcoming 50th anniversary ride leading off San Francisco’s Pride parade. I’m applying the Registered Trademark symbol because that, too, is historical. Under the leadership of Vic Germany, the Dykes on Bikes applied in 2003 for a trademark like any other outfit trying to control use of its own name. In 2004, the Patent and Trademark office denied the application pursuant to under Section 2(a) of the Lanham Act, which denies consideration of a proposed trademark which contains a term that is disparaging to a group of people.
Vic and her counsel made the points that the Dykes on Bikes, as many other lesbians had done in the past, were reclaiming the term as a point of pride for strong women. Like the ones who ride motorcycles. They pointed out other trademarks granted for other borderline language things like the television show “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” and other motorcycle clubs. They pointed out that PTO regs state that “whether a mark is disparaging and/or offensive is the perceptions of the individuals referred to and/or identified by that mark.” And so, since 2005, all 22 Dykes on Bikes chapters have been able to slap that symbol on their branding … such as on the commemorative metal beer glass I got to bring home by buying into the beer bust.
Most beer busts serve pretty generic beer, and the point of buying in is to save money and support the beneficiary. This beer bust, though, was serving a Kölsch from local microbrewery Standard Deviant. That was an unexpected treat! Moreover, the commemorative cup is really cool, and has gone into rotation in my home with some cool New Orleans Mardi Gras cups.
Aside from the thump-thump music that, sadly, has become standard in gay bars, it was a wonderful lesbian bar experience. I got to see lesbian friends like Vic Germany, Queen Cougar the extremely stylish black leather woman, and Terry Baum the playwright. I also got to see the classy and actually talented drag queen Donna Sachet. Donna Sachet has made a career out of emceeing fundraising events like that, including ones I’ve helped produce. She also, until recently, put on an annual lavish Christmas fundraiser, Songs of the Season. All cabaret and show tunes, so not a must-attend event for me. Instead of lip-synching, Donna will sing, and in her own male register. I respect that. I respect that a lot.
The emcee was this year’s SF Pride Director (I forget the exact title … because I don’t care), a transwoman who was affable enough and had a nice affect that being suspiciously tall in a frat boy way didn’t ruin. Honey Mahogany, who was in a drag Star Trek theater piece put together by drag king Leigh “Elvis Herselvis” Crowe, for whom I once recorded some backing tracks. Honey was also appointed to, then elected to, the Democratic County Central Committee, and brought official political greetings. It was good to be all getting along.
It’s a schlep for me to get to Rikki’s, because driving across the Bay Bridge and trying to find parking in the Castro is not fun. I may do it on occasion, like when the Valkyries have a road game. My first impression is that it’s a joint with which Rikki Streicher would be happy to be associated, and that’s high praise.